Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’
April 1st, 2008“Hi, Kevin, um, yeah, this is Bob from U.S. Special Operations Command. We’re running an introductory offer over here that might interest you. We know that you’ve fled the U.S. for good and have several thousand pages of, well, unpleasant information on your site, mmkay. But, for a limited time only, the U.S. Government is willing to pay you $149.95 per month to just tone it the f*ck down a little bit * chuckle * and include some stories about how U.S. troops are building democracy in Iraq and other bullshit like that. Can you work with me here, Kevin? Talk to me. Is this a sweet deal, or what? America the Beautiful! $149.95 per month! How you gonna beat that? Limited time offer!”
Via: Wired:
Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence… to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.
An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog. In some cases, their talents might be redirected toward operating blogs as part of an information campaign. If a military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources, it could rise in rank fairly rapidly.
Haha Kevin…Thanks man, you just made me Laugh Out Loud Cats 😀 made my day!
Love and blessings, keep it real, Ninja.
Wow Kevin what a deal! “You’ve fled the U.S. for good and have several thousand pages of, well, unpleasant information on your site,” and, you could, REALLY, aid and abet so “the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital.”
Sounds like a CIA add to me. All the journalists who were on the CIA newsprint and TV payroll must be retiring.
Sheesh Kevin, you could be the next Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Joe Scarborough blogging screeds at about a dime per word!
I wouldn’t take less than 149.95 per month times ten or a hundred or a thousand to be hit blogger.
FAME! GLORY! BULLSHIT!
I outbid you. Hopefully there’s enough electronic money to go around.