In the Blind Spot: Mass formation psychosis is happening again

Something very odd is happening online. It has all the hallmarks of a psychological operation designed to pit one side against the other in an escalating doom loop that destabilizes civil society, turning Western states into Ukraine.

I fear it’s a tried and tested playbook being rolled out.

I’ve come to this conclusion based on my usual tendency to assess the patterns in the information flow, not the messages themselves. Because it is the emergence of the pattern (mass amplification and repetition of triggering and emotive content in the context of shifting moral norms) that is the signal something’s going on.

The blind spot is how not to fall for the bait, and how to protect society from the negative-sum forces at play that can bring about societal collapse.

As we’ve always said, a key part of our mission here at the Blind Spot is to bust through the noise and explain to readers what’s going on in the grand scheme.

For sure, I don’t always get it right. But more often than not my weird super power expresses itself as being able to see the forest for the trees. And what I see happening now is a mass denial of service attack on our sensibilities in a bid to undermine our collective cognitive health with a view to polarizing and dividing us.

The end objective I fear is getting us to turn against each other on the streets, like in Ukraine.

This was originally a much longer piece, but it got far too emotive and waffly.

I’ve cut it short, not least because I’ve found a video that expresses what I was trying to say much more eloquently than me.

Check it out here:

If you don’t have time to watch the video, I’ve posted a summary below. It is focused on how we can all practice cognitive security when the information systems are not operating in our best interests.

The key IMHO is reviving positive sum brainwashing loops that lead to positive outcomes rather than negative ones.

And realizing too, that if you don’t have a pre-existing moral code burnt into your operating code through some tried and tested brainwashing ritual (usually a religion), you’re likely to be more susceptible than most.

An example of good counter brainwashing practice is recognizing that sometimes you have to set rationalism aside, because of how it still struggles with processing ambiguity or paradox — something that then leaves your cognitive faculties vulnerable to attack.

The best defense in this case is offense. Notably: voluntarily and consciously subscribing to a benign cult — even if you know it is full of logic flaws — because the positive feedback loops it generates lead to positive social outcomes for all.

A good example is our collective belief in Santa Claus.

The speaker is Chase Hughes, an American behavior expert and psyop expert who previously served as a U.S. Navy Chief in the intelligence community.

What is Going On:

• Political violence and murder are becoming normalized and even celebrated online, often with cheers and memes, suggesting a “new low” where violence is just another headline.
• The internet’s reaction to events like the purported murder of Charlie Kirk reveals an “evil mask slipping,” signaling a darker societal shift where violence is now part of the political conversation.
• Mainstream media outlets are repeatedly airing clips that encourage people to view those with differing political views not as neighbors, but as “enemies that need to be destroyed” and a “threat to society,” with some even suggesting violence is justified.
• This constant media exposure is subtly “nudging, suggesting, maybe planting seeds that maybe a fist, maybe a bullet is a legitimate form of political debate”.
• Hughes states that “the minute that your ideas require violence to enforce or spread, they are already completely bankrupt,” and that this substitution of killing for conversation leads to societal collapse.
• Society is being subjected to “the biggest con of our entire life,” which presents the problem as “left versus right” or “Republicans versus Democrats.” This is a “distraction fireworks show” designed to keep people screaming about one thing while “they’re doing something else”.
• Cable news and social media deliberately show only the “absolute fringe,” the “loudest dumbest most cartoonish people from the other side,” making viewers believe “these people are insane, they are the enemy”.
• This is not accidental; it is “word for word textbook psychological operations” (PSYOPS), which isolates a target audience, fills them with outrage, and creates a “tribal us versus them identity”.
• The goal of this “playbook” is to radicalize otherwise decent people, making them “cheer when other people suffer” and “laughing at a murder on the internet… without firing a shot”.
• The radicalization process follows a formula:
  1. Isolation: People are told not to interact, date, or work with those from the “other side,” cutting them out of their lives — which is also “step one of joining a cult”.
  2. Echo Chambers: Individuals surround themselves only with similar opinions, with social media algorithms intensifying this “rage”.
  3. Tribal Script: A “us versus them” narrative frames every issue, from taxes to healthcare, as a “holy war” of “good versus evil”.
• This combination of outrage and perceived “righteous superiority” makes people feel “morally justified in hating and silencing and celebrating violence,” turning regular people into “sleeper agents without them even knowing”.
• This engineering is designed “step by step to keep you outraged and blind and keep you just kind of stabbing and punching at shadows”.
• Assassinations, as seen with figures like Charlie Kirk, Martin Luther King Jr., and JFK, are not about stopping “evil” or “bad ideas,” but “about stopping ideas you don’t kill somebody because their argument was weak you silence them because you were terrified that their words are working on people”.
• The media, instead of being a watchdog, has become a “propaganda machine just churning out outrage,” where facts are ignored if they don’t fit the narrative, and stories are twisted into “blame games”.
• The real reason for this media manipulation is “distraction” to keep people “frothing at the mouth” while “entrenched people” — the “covert elite” (CEOs, mega donors, political lifers, media conglomerates) — profit from division.
• These elites “bankroll politicians and they write the rules,” winning “no matter who wins right or left” because they fund both sides.
• The “battlefield” for these psychological operations is now “your living room,” “your Twitter feed,” and “your nightly news”.
• The “real enemy” is “entrenched power” that “thrives on one piece of fuel and that fuel is chaos,” profiting when people are divided, distracted, and dehumanizing their fellow citizens.
• The “right versus left is fake”; it was “always about the people versus the powerful”.
• Algorithms and media “deliberately push exactly what’s going to piss you off,” feeding a “diet of enemies instead of neighbors,” programming people to see extremists as the norm.
• The “machine” of division and hatred “only works if we feed it,” running on “our clicks and our outrage and our willingness to see half of this country as a horrifying monster”.

How to beware of it (and resist):

• Recognize that the “left versus right” narrative is a “distraction fireworks show”.
• Understand that the media is showing you “professional lunatics” handpicked to make you see the “other side” as enemies; they are not showing you your actual neighbors.
• Realize that this is a “textbook psychological operation” designed to create tribal “us versus them” thinking.
• Acknowledge that you share more in common with someone “across the aisle” than with a billionaire donor or media executive.
• Be aware of the formula for radicalization: isolation, echo chambers, and the tribal script; recognize these tactics if you encounter them.
• Resist the temptation to let “outrage and righteous superiority” lead you to “hating and silencing and celebrating violence”.
• Remember that “if debate dies when open conversation gets replaced with suppression or intimidation and ultimately violence society walks into a death trap”.
• View the media critically, understanding it as a “propaganda machine” focused on selling outrage rather than presenting reality.
• Understand that the people benefiting from division are the “covert elite” and “entrenched power,” not your neighbors.
• Embrace “sanity” as “the most rebellious act”:
  • Ask yourself if you genuinely want political opponents murdered or neighbors mistreated for their votes.
  • Refuse to let electronic sources (CNN, Fox News, Twitter) decide who your enemies are.
  • Look across the “imaginary aisle” and recognize a “fellow human being” instead of a “caricature cartoon”.
  • Openly declare that “violence is not politics”.
  • Realize that the “weird idiots on the news” are a curated “cartoon,” not the norm.
  • Stop “playing the outrage game” and refuse to “cheer for blood”.
• Believe that “sanity is contagious” and that if enough people “refuse to take the bait,” the “machine will collapse”.
• “Starve this” machine by withholding your clicks, outrage, and willingness to see others as monsters.
• Look at your real neighbors, co-workers, and other parents; they are like you, not the “dipshits that you see on TV”.

The pledge

• Hughes offers a pledge to guide awareness and resistance:
  • “I will not let anything electronic decide who my neighbor is”.
  • “I will not let political violence become normal”.
  • “I will no longer let propaganda tell me who to hate”.
  • “I will never cheer for blood”.
  • “I will choose sanity, unity, I will choose to see the humanity in people before I see their politics”.
• Remember that there are “more sane people than there are psychopaths” and “more of us than there are of them”.
• Realize that if something online “pisses you off,” you are “witnessing social engineering”.
• He quotes Martin Luther King Jr., reminding that “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”.