Case Study: What's the Mana in the Meme?
Case Study: What's the Mana in the Meme?
Færytale Beginning XIII: Counter Disinfolklore ~ Controlling War Magic
In Counter Disinfolklore, we look for the “Mana” or intention immanent in the “thing” (usually a unit of information or a meme) which we are analysing.
Sometimes the object of our study is the original intention or motivation of the ultimate author of the Disinfolklore - a troll farm, for example, or a Russian state propagandist like Putin or a mil blogger on Telegram. At other times, it is not clearly recognisable whether or not the author meant either knowingly or not to repeat, say, a Russian troll. Still, on other occasions, it is easy to know that what someone has communicated is a Russian troll that may have emanated from a Russian Disinfolklore spewing troll farm owned by the character we will meet in a later chapter whom I have termed the Chef of Disinfolklore (Prigozhin).
Due to our mastery of any information domain (and we are all masters of many information domains, including our family history, the folklore of our workplace, our favourite football team’s performances this season, etc.), we understand the meaning of a variety of symbolic systems being referenced in any story about this information domain. And we can compare a new informational unit’s Mana / energy to everything we know in that information domain, and draw our conclusion: it is Disinfolklore. It is a lie that, for example, our favourite male football player whom we know is gay, has supposedly copped off with some other male football player’s wife. Or the story’s Mana suggests it is counter Disinfolklore: it’s a story referencing how improbable the story is, as the footballer is, say, gay, and everyone knows this.
In the Disinfolklore Domain of “Ukraine” we can quickly grasp what Russia’s Mens Rea (or Mana) feels like or looks like - it Smells Like Disinfolklore! Its Mana reeks of Coercive Control. Even when Russian Disinfolklore is masquerading as Ukrainian information, the Mana of Coercive Control is immanent in it. Russian state Disinfolklore projects into everyone else its own misogynistic and coercive control qualities. It cannot imagine that anyone else is different. Its lack of empathy is a signature we can use to detect its Mana in Disinfolklore.
If any unit of information bearing on Ukraine minimises or justifies Russia’s crimes in Ukraine since February 2014, then, Russia’s Mana is clearly discernible.
Traditional definitions of “Disinformation” distinguish it from mere “Misinformation” on the grounds of intention to mislead. If you are trying to define some unit of information as “Disinformation” rather than “Misinformation,” then you are acting as a lawyer does in English criminal law: you are making a call about the intention of the author of the meme or the intention in the inanimate unit of information. You are saying that the person spreading this is purposely trying to deceive us, or that the intention inside the unit of information is to trick us.
The problem, here, which Disinfolklore as a new analytical method for parsing Disinformation solves is that the same item of information may end up, in different contexts, being classified correctly as both “Disinformation” and “Misinformation.” Instead of making declaratory statements about what is and what is not “misinformation” or “disinformation,” in Counter Disinfolklore we take units of information, and we attempt to discern the quality of the Mana immanent in them. Only then do we make a call about whether the story that meme is embedded in is Disinfolklore or counter Disinfolklore.
I am illustrating the Disinfolklore method of parsing Disinformation, mainly, with examples from the information domain of Russia’s genocidal war in Ukraine. Yet, the same method can be used in other domains. I justify focussing on this particular information domain (Ukraine) by reference to the historical fact that Russia was one of the first countries to use “Disinformation” as a hybrid-warfare tactic. And because in Counter Disinfolklore I am trying to communicate the method I evolved as a diplomat in eastern Ukraine (2015-2022) that has become almost intuitive to me into your mind.
I did not initially begin to think in terms of “Mana” or “information domains” or memes. As a diplomat on that bridge, I was simply trying to parse vast amounts of demonically confusing Disinfolklore for some truth.
And now having spent a decade on this problem in Counter Disinfolklore I am laying out the steps my mind takes in the blink of an eye when it is confronted with potential Disinfolklore.
Say, the Chef of Disinfolklore claims that he lost twenty-five thousand soldiers over nine months in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. This is Disinformation. We know this because the Chef of Disinfolklore never says what is right or true. Their every activity, individually, and on behalf of the Russian sovereign state and their troll farms. was orientated towards adulterating negatively our civilisation’s collective Mana through trolling, roiling, and emotion-moving linguistic and visual memes. Everything they said and their industrial scale troll farms said is aimed at hacking our intentions / moods /attitudes / motivations so that we support Russia’s violation of the post-World War Two legal consensus - this signature Mana is part of everything that emanates from the Chef of Disinfolklore and their businesses. As we will see in a later chapter I brand the Chef of Disinfolklore as the Chef Saucerer and apprentice Magus in Chef to the Chief Sorcerer Putin.
When a global media brand repeats as a fact that it cost Russia twenty-five-thousand Russian souls to conquer Bakhmut that media outlet is engaged only in misinforming its consumers, if we take this traditional definition of the difference between misinformation and disinformation as gospel truth. Russia knows that it can launder disinformation by using resonant memes to persuade well intentioned media outlets, like the BBC or New York Times or Bild or Le Monde, to repeat its trolls. We do not impugn the intention of those legacy media outlets - they aspire to tell the truth. Yet if they repeat that undercounting troll of how many soldiers Russia lost in Bakhmut, they’re repeating Disinformation and laundering it into merely misinformation. Counter Disinfolklore, by contrast, offers the world’s first basis for solving this problem that Misinformation can be laundered Disinformation provided that the purveyor of the misinformation is acting in good faith without any intention to deceive.
Counter Disinfolklore (with its associated concepts of Disinfolklore, counter Disinfolklore, Mana, and the stipulation of an objective set of criteria for determining what is positive, negative, or neutral trolling) doesn’t care about whether you intend to deceive when you repeat informational units. Counter Disinfolklorists look for the Mana in the meme you’re repeating. And if the Mana in the meme is to undermine Ukraine’s Sovereignty, Security or Prosperity / Fertility then we declare: that’s Disinfolklore ripe to be countered.
Russian Disinfolklore becomes a part of you when you consume Russian Disinfolklore, and you absorb its intention / mood / attitude (of, say, Coercive Control) / motivation to deceive and undermine the post World War Two rules-based order as your own. It becomes a part of your Mana, which in this sense is the well from which the intention / mood / attitude / motivation in all your activities flows. In the example above, Russian Disinfolklore’s purpose is to embed a false view of how many Russian soldiers under the command of the Chef of Disinfolklore were killed in Bakhmut. After reading Counter Disinfolklore, you will understand the mythological significance of the battle for that city (see the “Terrible Beauty of Bakhmut” chapter). You will also get the true significance of the Chef of Disinfolklore. You will learn to classify any information emanating from the Chef of Disinfolklore (or their stable of Disinfolklorists) as necessarily Disinfolklore.
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