GITS Laughing Man in Real Life

The real lesson of the GITS Laughing Man for the digital age is not about myth or becoming a folk hero. Anti-corpo is just the surface level

It is about copycats and the viral spread of memes. Not all memes succeed in going viral. But Once everyone (even foreign adversaries manufacturing outrage) amplifies a meme, it takes on a life of its own, to become a powerful force to shape opinion and distort truth.

Agents spam memetic messaging to gain acceptance and followers, not to spread truth. With willing followers, you can direct them to storm the Capitol, vote against their interest, transfer their money to scammers, buy snake oil, or kill the enemy within.

Attribution doesn't matter- even if you reveal the original OP identity and their intent (the actual laughing man, Russia), the meme victims are already infected, the election has been tampered with. Fact checks by news sites fail against Facebook AI memes. We get spin-off memes and imitators, because we can just tweak the formula to get a lot of money and power.

The audience doubles down on their positions, even if you disprove the source or the "facts". It is more psychologically comforting to double down than to admit your stupidity. The bigger the lie people fall into, the more they harden themselves against leaving the bubble of lies. This is the golden age for bullshitters and con men, as we have seen with Donald Trump (the first cyberpunk president - truly a high tech shitposting lowlife), Musk as the first cyberpunk billionaire (EVs, Twitter, rockets, DOGE, propaganda, neuralink, class warfare) and crypto rug pulls (trust me bro, $xyzcoin is going to the moon, not like $abcCoin).

With info spam and opinion manipulation reaching billions of people through the Internet, people will not change when faced with truth. But I believe they will change with pain and starvation. I believe the physiological signals of hunger can override digital spam brainwashing. People need to starve and die before they learn to hate spammers into their bones.

Until direct brain interfaces can override the hunger directive, people will revolt when they starve. You can't eat memes yet.

FAFO time is here