Let’s start with this premise — we’re in a hot cyber-war.
We’ve been in one for a long, long time.
There’s an online personality that uses the name Erika Jordan (IG@ErikaJordan; TikTok@ErikaJordanMFT). They post TikTok selfies and have a following online (on average, 3K+ shares, 1.5K comments per video). I used a screenshot from one of their videos to provide the reference image shown above.
Yes, I am aware that I chose “pronouns” to describe them. Not intended to connote anything. It is the mildest way to respect someone you simply don’t know anything about.
The way I use all FB/ Meta presentations is to keep the sound turned off — it is better to remain a visual learner. One less distraction. I read the scrolls. Here’s what they said in that post, and it was the transcript of their scrolling text that got my attention:
"The appeal of a man who failed upward his entire life should be studied in labs. No charisma, just loud repetitive whining, no charm, just smug, greasy used car salesman energy. No intelligence, just word salad and incoherent ranting. No strength, just petty insecure crying about late night TV levels of weakness, and yet millions don't just support him they worship him. Why? Because he gives them permission to be their worst selves. The ignorant love him because he makes stupidity feel like patriotism. Racists love him because he makes bigotry socially acceptable again. Misogynists love him because he treats women like trash and gets away with it. Weak men love him because he lets them cosplay as alpha males without doing anything remotely strong. It's not about policy, intelligence or leadership. It's about validation. He makes people feel good about their worst instincts. If you see him for what he is it's maddening. Watching people fall all over themselves for this man is like watching an entire nation lose its mind in real time. You're not crazy, you're not alone. It's not that you're missing something. It's that they've lost something - basic reality. "
First, let’s look at the obvious — whoever they are, they have a great makeup and hair artist. No question. Mannerisms and voice keep the viewer interested or at least, curious. Presentation is well coached, and the textual nature is carefully composed and scripted. They have mastered the art of propaganda, perhaps, in a good way.
We need better, more aggressive propaganda for our team.
I’m always looking to find the “snakes in the grass” not necessarily to eliminate them, but to note what the snakes are doing, and where they’re feeding and copulating. Is this Erika Jordan a snake in the grass, poised to strike? Is this a Russian Bot, intended to bring about even more chaos, pressing us into making bad choices, bad decisions, clouding our judgement? Are they an advanced AI creation, one that seems to harmonize with us, win our trust?
Or, have we found ourselves a Rosie the Riveter, an icon of resilience and resistance, a token that can be taken to heart by young men, young women, troops on the ground in this Psy Ops battle for the soul of America?
The reality of this war we’re fighting is that largely, it is being done without firing a single shot.
The front is at people’s homes, it is where they live, where they work, how they pay their bills, how they plan for the future. The cyber-and-info-war is being brought to you by various media outlets, sponsored by advertisers, promoted by big business, and it is dressed up as entertainment. Older folks are at the point in life where they’ve tuned out so much of what they hear; they’ve become unresponsive and have locked in to being on a path toward destiny. Workers are inundated by whatever news source has been placed or approved of on their company’s intranet and workstations. Young people, desperate for a leg up, trying to get away from being a life-long barista or doing gig work forever, are in need of proper heroes, proper motivation, rational thinking and straightforward, honest beliefs.
As it has been in every single war, the old crows cook up these wars, and the young men and women have to fight them.
It is not so much a manipulation as it is a conditioning through visual and auditory illusions.
The real key to whether an indoctrination or conditioning works is whether it elicits an emotional property within you. Does it make you sad? Happy? Angry? Scared? Does it just disgust you?
Do you feel something primitive rising up within, an urge that shouldn’t be expressed publicly, or a desire you did not think you had? Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable posters adorned ready rooms, barracks, quonset huts and stations during WW II for that reason. The guys needed something to keep them motivated, something to keep up the fight against a truly horrible and awful man and his vile regime. Nobody really wants to go out and engage in a hot war, because that causes death, destruction, permanent injury, scars that are both visible and hidden deep inside.
Hot wars happen. They’re happening right now. We’re just not looking at them every hour, every day like the folks on the front lines do.
Hot wars cause loss, destruction, death and demoralization. If you are having any thoughts or feelings like that, it means for you, this war has heated up substantially.
This IS a hot war, and it needs to be spoken of as such. The technology we found to be a fun toy, a useful tool, has now become an ultimate weapon, and as in all wars, those weapons leave us with regret after the aggression stops.
The Other Side in WW II had Axis Annie and Tokyo Rose. They broadcast demeaning and demoralizing messages to cause the troops to lose heart in their fight, to give up, to abandon their positions. The side of the aggressor is always looking for ways to bring the resistance to its knees without bloodshed, because, well, they really don’t want to lose the soldiers, either.
We have a hard time distinguishing self from other when a psychological assault is under way. And that is exactly where we are. There is no clear enemy. It is a collective of ghosts that evaporate, and the best we can do is make screen captures of the moment we saw the attack happen.
We can also turn away and pretend it isn’t going on.
But it is still happening whether we hide our heads in the sand or not.
Whether you follow them on FB or at TikTok makes no difference to me, but what DOES matter is whether you get beyond your baser instincts and hindbrain/midbrain responses, and read the words these series of videos offer. The scripting is motivational. It provides the best way to achieve reinforcement that we’re up against a clear and present danger. It reminds us that “being nice” is something we have long ago gone past doing. We cannot afford to play “nice.”
This is hardball time. This is “The Show,” as Major League Baseball is referred to.
The opposition has been hurling “the Heat.” It’s high time we did the same.
My apologies, Erika, if you are a real, flesh-and-blood person, for putting you up as a poster child. I hope that was your intention by sharing these motivational reinforcement videos with all of us. We need influencers who are decidedly on the right side of history, not the side trying to rewrite it, obliterate it, trash it all out, throw away the naughty bits and parts that aren’t perfect. For a real person to literally put on “war paint” and go to the front lines takes guts. When someone decides to stop being a non-player character (NPC) in our war game and become one of the principals, that’s a big deal. It is also important to remember when to tag out. Don’t stay in the cage match any longer than you feel that you can.
And if you are synthetic, well,
.. that speaks to just how far we’ll go to fight a cyber-war.
