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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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What Alternate Reality Games Teach Us About the Dangerous Appeal of QAnon

This story was originally published on mssv.net by Adrian Hon (@adrianhon)

The far-right QAnon conspiracy theory is so sprawling, it’s hard to know where people join. Last week, it was 5G cell towers, this week it’s Wayfair; who knows what next week will bring? But QAnon’s followers always seem to begin their journey with the same refrain: “I’ve done my research.”

I’d heard that line before. In early 2001, the marketing for Steven Spielberg’s latest movie, A.I., had just begun. YouTube wouldn’t launch for another four years, so you had to be eagle-eyed to spot the unusual credit next to Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, and Frances O’Connor: Jeanine Salla, the movie’s “Sentient Machine Therapist.”

Close-up of the A.I. movie poster

Soon after, Ain’t It Cool News (AICN) posted a tip from a reader:

“Type her name in the Google.com search engine, and see what sites pop up…pretty cool stuff! Keep up the good work, Harry!! –ClaviusBase”

(Yes, in 2001 Google was so new you had to spell out its web address.)

The Google results began with Jeanine Salla’s homepage but led to a whole network of fictional sites. Some were futuristic versions of police websites or lifestyle magazines; others were inscrutable online stores and hacked blogs. A couple were in German and Japanese. In all, over twenty sites and phone numbers were listed.

By the end of the day, the websites racked up 25 million hits, all from a single AICN article suggesting readers ‘do their research’. It later emerged they were part of one of the first-ever alternate reality games (ARG), The Beast, developed by Microsoft to promote Spielberg’s movie.

The way I’ve described it here, The Beast sounds like enormous fun. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by a doorway into 2142 filled with websites and phone numbers and puzzles, with runaway robots who need your help and even live events around the world? But consider how much work it required to understand the story and it begins to sound less like “watching TV” fun and more like “painstaking research” fun. Along with tracking dozens of websites that updated in real time, you had to solve lute tablature puzzles, decode base 64 messages, reconstruct 3D models of island chains that spelt out messages, and gather clues from newspaper and TV adverts across the US.

This purposeful yet bewildering complexity is the complete opposite of what many associate with conventional popular entertainment, where every bump in your road to enjoyment has been smoothed away in the pursuit of instant engagement and maximal profit. But there’s always been another kind of entertainment that appeals to different people at different times, one that rewards active discovery, the drawing of connections between clues, the delicious sensation of a hunch that pays off after hours or days of work. Puzzle books, murder mysteries, adventure games, escape rooms, even scientific research—they all aim for the same spot.

What was new in The Beast and the ARGs that followed it was less the specific puzzles and stories they incorporated, but the sheer scale of the worlds they realised—so vast and fast-moving that no individual could hope to comprehend them. Instead, players were forced to cooperate, sharing discoveries and solutions, exchanging ideas, and creating resources for others to follow. I’d know: I wrote a novel-length walkthrough of The Beast when I was meant to be studying for my degree at Cambridge.

QAnon is not an ARG. It’s a dangerous conspiracy theory, and there are lots of ways of understanding conspiracy theories without ARGs. But QAnon pushes the same buttons that ARGs do, whether by intention or by coincidence. In both cases, “do your research” leads curious onlookers to a cornucopia of brain-tingling information.

In other words, maybe QAnon is… fun?

ARGs never made it big. They came too early and It’s hard to charge for a game that you stumble into through a Google search. But maybe their purposely-fragmented, internet-native, community-based form of storytelling and puzzle-solving was just biding its time…

This blog post expands on the ideas in my Twitter thread about QAnon and ARGs, and incorporates many of the valuable replies. Please note, however, that I’m not a QAnon expert and I’m not a scholar of conspiracy theories. I’m not even the first to compare QAnon to LARPs and ARGs.

But my experience as lead designer of Perplex City, one of the world’s most popular and longest-running ARGs, gives me a special perspective on QAnon’s game-like nature. My background as a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist also gives me insight into what motivates people.

Today, I run Six to Start, best known for Zombies, Run!, an audio-based augmented reality game with half a million active players, and I’m writing a book about the perils and promise of gamification.

It’s Like We Did It On Purpose

Perplex City “Ascendancy Point” Story Arc

When I was designing Perplex City, I loved sketching out new story arcs. I’d create intricate chains of information and clues for players to uncover, colour-coding for different websites and characters. There was a knack to having enough parallel strands of investigation going on so that players didn’t feel railroaded, but not so many that they were overwhelmed. It was a particular pleasure to have seemingly unconnected arcs intersect after weeks or months.

Merely half of the “Q-web“

No-one would mistake the clean lines of my flowcharts for the snarl of links that makes up a QAnon theory, but the principles are similar: one discovery leading to the next. Of course, these two flowcharts are very different beasts. The QAnon one is an imaginary, retrospective description of supposedly-connected data, while mine is a prescriptive network of events I would design.

Except that’s not quite true. In reality, Perplex City players didn’t always solve our puzzles as quickly as we intended them to, or they became convinced their incorrect solution was correct, or embarrassingly, our puzzles were broken and had no solution at all. In those cases we had to rewrite the story on the fly.

When this happens in most media, you just hold up your hands and say you made a mistake. In video games, you can issue an online update and hope no-one’s the wiser. But in ARGs, a public correction would shatter the uniquely-prolonged collective suspension of disbelief in the story. This was thought to be so integral to the appeal of ARGs, it was termed TINAG, or “This is Not a Game.”

So when we messed up in Perplex City, we tried mightily to avoid editing websites, a sure sign this was, in fact, a game. Instead, we’d fix it by adding new storylines and writing through the problem (it helped to have a crack team of writers and designers, including Naomi Alderman, Andrea Phillips, David Varela, Dan Hon, Jey Biddulph, Fi Silk, Eric Harshbarger, and many many others).

We had a saying when these diversions worked out especially well: “It’s like we did it on purpose.”

Every ARG designer can tell a similar war story. Here’s Josh Fialkov, writer for the Lonelygirl15 ARG/show:

“Our fans/viewers would build elaborate (and pretty neat) theories and stories around the stories we’d already put together and then we’d merge them into our narrative, which would then engage them more. The one I think about the most is we were shooting something on location and we’re run and gunning. We fucked up and our local set PA ended up in the background of a long selfie shot. We had no idea. It was 100% a screw up. The fans became convinced the character was in danger. And then later when that character revealed herself as part of the evil conspiracy — that footage was part of the audiences proof that she was working with the bad guys all along — “THATS why he was in the background!” They literally found a mistake – made it a story point. And used it as evidence of their own foresight into the ending — despite it being, again, us totally being exhausted and sloppy. And at the time hundreds of thousands of people were participating and contributing to a fictional universe and creating strands upon strands.”

Conspiracy theories and cults evince the same insouciance when confronted with inconsistencies or falsified predictions; they can always explain away errors with new stories and theories. What’s special about QAnon and ARGs is that these errors can be fixed almost instantly, before doubt or ridicule can set in. And what’s really special about QAnon is how it’s absorbed all other conspiracy theories to become a kind of ur-conspiracy theory such that seems pointless to call out inconsistencies. In any case, who would you even be calling out when so many QAnon theories come from followers rather than “Q”?

Yet the line between creator and player in ARGs has also long been blurry. That tip from “ClaviusBase” to AICN that catapulted The Beast to massive mainstream coverage? The designers more or less admitted it came from them. Indeed, there’s a grand tradition of ARG “puppetmasters” (an actual term used by devotees) sneaking out from “behind the curtain” (ditto) to create “sockpuppet accounts” in community forums to seed clues, provide solutions, and generally chivvy players along the paths they so carefully designed.

As an ARG designer, I used to take a hard line against this kind of cheating but in the years since, I’ve mellowed somewhat, mostly because it can make the game more fun, and ultimately, because everyone expects it these days. That’s not the case with QAnon.

Yes, anyone who uses 4chan and 8chan understands that anonymity is baked into the system such that posters frequently create entire threads where they argue against themselves in the guise of anonymous users who are impossible to distinguish or trace back to a single individual – but do the more casual QAnon followers know that?

Local Fame

A Beautiful Mind

Pop culture’s conspiracy theorist sits in a dark basement stringing together photos and newspaper clippings on their "crazy wall." On the few occasions this leads to useful results, it’s an unenviable pursuit. Anyone choosing such an existence tends to be shunned by society.

But this ignores one gaping fact: piecing together theories is really satisfying. Writing my walkthrough for The Beast was rewarding and meaningful, appreciated by an enthusiastic community in a way that my molecular biology essays most certainly were not. Online communities have long been dismissed as inferior in every way to “real” friendships, an attenuated version that’s better than nothing, but not something that anyone should choose. Yet ARGs and QAnon (and games and fandom and so many other things) demonstrate there’s an immediacy and scale and relevance to online communities that can be more potent and rewarding than a neighbourhood bake sale. This won’t be news to most of you, but I think it’s still news to decision-makers in traditional media and politics.

Good ARGs are deliberately designed with puzzles and challenges that require unusual talents—I designed one puzzle that required a good understanding of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs—with problems so large that they require crowdsourcing to solve, such that all players feel like welcome and valued contributors.

Needless to say, that feeling is missing from many people’s lives:

“ARGs are generally a showcase for special talent that often goes unrecognized elsewhere. I have met so many wildly talented people with weird knowledge through them.”

If you’re first to solve a puzzle or make a connection, you can attain local fame in ARG communities, as Dan Hon, COO at Mind Candy (makers of the Perplex City ARG), notes. The vast online communities for TV shows like Lost and Westworld, with their purposefully convoluted mystery box plots, also reward those who guess twists early, or produce helpful explainer videos. Yes, the reward is “just” internet points in the form of Reddit upvotes, but the feeling of being appreciated is very real. It’s no coincidence that Lost and Westworld both used ARGs to promote their shows.

Wherever you have depth in storytelling or content or mechanics, you’ll find the same kind of online communities. Games like Bloodborne, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress, Animal Crossing, Eve Online, and Elite Dangerous, they all share the same race for discovery. These discoveries eventually become processed into explainer videos and Reddit posts that are more accessible for wider audiences.

The same has happened with modern ARGs, where explainer videos have become so compelling they rack up more views than the ARGs have players (not unlike Twitch). Michael Andersen, owner of the Alternate Reality Gaming Network news site, is a fan of this trend, but wonders about its downside—with reference to conspiracy theorists:

“[W]hen you’re reading (or watching) a summary of an ARG? All of the assumptions and logical leaps have been wrapped up and packaged for you, tied up with a nice little bow. Everything makes sense, and you can see how it all flows together. Living it, though? Sheer chaos. Wild conjectures and theories flying left and right, with circumstantial evidence and speculation ruling the day. Things exist in a fugue state of being simultaneously true-and-not-true, and it’s only the accumulation of evidence that resolves it. And acquiring a “knack” for sifting through theories to surface what’s believable is an extremely valuable skill—both for actively playing ARGs, and for life in general.And sometimes, I worry that when people consume these neatly packaged theories that show all the pieces coming together, they miss out on all those false starts and coincidences that help develop critical thinking skills. …because yes, conspiracy theories try and offer up those same neat packages that attempt to explain the seemingly unexplained. And it’s pretty damn important to learn how groups can be led astray in search of those neatly wrapped packages.”

“SPEC”

I’m a big fan of the SCP Foundation, a creative writing website set within a shared universe not unlike The X-Files. Its top-rated stories rank among the best science fiction and horror I’ve read. A few years ago, I wrote my own (very silly) story, SCP-3993, where New York’s ubiquitous LinkNYC internet kiosks are cover for a mysterious reality-altering invasion.

CITYBRIDGE/NYC

Like the rest of SCP, this was all in good fun, but I recently discovered LinkNYC is tangled up in QAnon conspiracy theories. To be fair, you can say the same thing about pretty much every modern technology, but it’s not surprising their monolith-like presence caught conspiracy theorists’ attention as it did mine.

It’s not unreasonable to be creeped out by LinkNYC. In 2016, the New York Civil Liberties Union wrote to the mayor about “the vast amount of private information retained by the LinkNYC system and the lack of robust language in the privacy policy protecting users against unwarranted government surveillance.” Two years later, kiosks along Third Avenue in Midtown mysteriously blasted out a slowed-down version of the Mister Softee theme song. So there’s at least some cause for speculation. The problem is when speculation hardens into reality.

Not long after the AICN post, The Beast’s players set up a Yahoo Group mailing list called Cloudmakers, named after a boat in the story. As the number of posts rose to dozens and then hundreds per day, it became obvious to list moderators (including me) that some form of organisation was in order. One rule we established was that posts should include a prefix in their subject so members could easily distinguish website updates from puzzle solutions.

My favourite prefix was “SPEC,” a catch-all for any kind of unfounded speculation, most of which was fun nonsense but some of which ended up being true. There were no limits on what or how much you could post, but you always had to use the prefix so people could ignore it. Other moderated communities have similar guidelines, with rationalists using their typically long-winded “epistemic status” metadata.

Absent this kind of moderation, speculation ends up overwhelming communities since it’s far easier and more fun to bullshit than do actual research. And if speculation is repeated enough times, if it’s finessed enough, it can harden into accepted fact, leading to devastating and even fatal consequences.

I’ve personally been the subject of this process thanks to my work in ARGs—not just once, but twice.

The first occasion was fairly innocent. One of our more famous Perplex City puzzles, Billion to One, was a photo of a man. That’s it. The challenge was to find him. Obviously, we were riffing on the whole “six degrees of separation” concept. Some thought it’d be easy, but I was less convinced. Sure enough, fourteen years on, the puzzle is still unsolved, but not for lack of trying. Every so often, the internet rediscovers the puzzle amid a flurry of YouTube videos and podcasts; I can tell whenever this happens because people start DMing me on Twitter and Instagram.

This literally came a few days ago

A clue in the puzzle is the man’s name, Satoshi. It is not a rare name, and it happens to be same as the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. So of course people think Perplex City’s Satoshi created bitcoin. Not a lot of people, to be fair, but enough that I get DMs about it every week. But it’s all pretty innocent, like I said.

More concerning is my presumed connection to Cicada 3301, a mysterious group that recruited codebreakers through very difficult online puzzles. Back in 2011, my company developed a pseudo-ARG for the BBC Two factual series, The Code, all about mathematics. This involved planting clues into the show itself, along with online educational games and a treasure hunt.

To illustrate the concept of prime numbers, The Code explored the gestation period of cicadas. We had no hand in the writing of the show; we got the script and developed our ARG around it. But this was enough to create a brand new conspiracy theory, featuring yours truly:

My bit starts around 20 minutes in:

Interviewer: Why [did you make a puzzle about] cicadas?

Me: Cicadas are known for having a gestation period which is linked to prime numbers. Prime numbers are at the heart of nature and the heart of mathematics.

Interviewer: That puzzle comes out in June 2011.

Me: Yeah.

Interviewer: Six months later, Cicada 3301 makes its international debut.

Me: It's a big coincidence.

Interviewer: There are some people who have brought up the fact that whoever's behind Cicada 3301 would have to be a very accomplished game maker.

Me: Sure.

Interviewer: You would be a candidate to be that person.

Me: That's true, I mean, Cicada 3301 has a lot in common with the games we've made. I think that one big difference (chuckles) is that normally when we make alternate reality games, we do it for money. And it's not so clear to understand where the funding for Cicada 3301 is coming from.

Clearly this was all just in fun – I knew it and the interviewer knew it. That’s why I agreed to take part. But does everyone watching this understand that? There’s no “SPEC” tag on the video. At least a few commenters are taking it seriously:

I am the “ARG guy” in question

I’m not worried, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t a touch concerned that Cicada 3301 now lies squarely in the QAnon vortex and in the “Q-web“:

Here’s a good interview with the creator of the “Q-web”

My defence that the cicada puzzle in The Code was “a big coincidence” (albeit delivered with an unfortunate shit-eating grin) didn’t hold water. In the conspiracy theorest mindset, no such thing exists:

“According to Michael Barkun, emeritus professor of political science at Syracuse University, three core principles characterize most conspiracy theories. Firstly, the belief that nothing happens by accident or coincidence. Secondly, that nothing is as it seems: The “appearance of innocence” is to be suspected. Finally, the belief that everything is connected through a hidden pattern.”

These are helpful beliefs when playing an ARG or watching a TV show designed with twists and turns. It’s fun to speculate and to join seemingly disparate ideas, especially when the creators encourage and reward this behaviour. It’s less helpful when conspiracy theorists “yes, and…” each other into shooting up a pizza parlour or burning down 5G cell towers.

Because there is no coherent QAnon community in the same sense as the Cloudmakers, there’s no convention of “SPEC” tags. In their absence, YouTube has added annotated QAnon videos with links to its Wikipedia article, and Twitter has banned 7,000 accounts and restricted 150,000 more, among other actions. Supposedly, Facebook is planning to do the same.

These are useful steps but will not stop QAnon from spreading in social media comments or private chat groups or unmoderated forums. It’s not something we can reasonably hope for, and I don’t think there’s any technological solution (e.g. browser extensions) either. The only way to stop people from mistaking speculation from fact is for them to want to stop.

Cryptic

It’s always nice to have a few mysteries for players to speculate on in an ARG, if only because it helps them pass the time while the poor puppetmasters scramble to sate their insatiable demand for more website updates and puzzles. A good mystery can keep a community guessing for, as Lost did with its numbers or Game of Thrones with Jon Snow’s parentage. But these mysteries always have to be balanced against specifics, lest the whole story dissolve into a puddle of mush; for as much we derided Lost for the underwhelming conclusion to its mysteries, no-one would’ve watched in the first place if the episode-to-episode storytelling wasn’t so strong.

The downside of being too mysterious in Perplex City is that cryptic messages often led players on wild goose chases such that they completely ignored entire story arcs in favour of pursuing their own theories. This was bad for us because we had a pretty strict timetable that we needed our story to play out on, pinned against the release of our physical puzzle cards that funded the entire enterprise. If players took too long to find the $200,000 treasure at the conclusion of the story, we might run out of money.

QAnon can favour cryptic messages because, as far as I know, they don’t have a specific timeline or goal in mind, let alone a production budget or paid staff. Not only is there no harm in followers misinterpreting messages, but it’s a strength: followers can occupy themselves with their own spin-off theories far better than “Q” can. Dan Hon notes:

“For every ARG I’ve been involved in and ones my friends have been involved in, communities always consume/complete/burn through content faster than you can make it, when you’re doing a narrative-based game. This content generation/consumption/playing asymmetry is, I think, just a fact. But QAnon “solved” it by being able to co-opt all content that already exists and … encourages and allows you to create new content that counts and is fair play in-the-game.”

But even QAnon needs some specificity, hence their frequent references to actual people, places, events, and so on.

A brief aside on designing very hard puzzles

It was useful to be cryptic when I needed to control the speed at which players solved especially consequential puzzles, like the one revealing where our $200,000 treasure was buried. For story and marketing purposes, we wanted players to be able to find it as soon as they had access to all 256 puzzle cards, which we released in three waves. We also wanted players to feel like they were making progress before they had all the cards and we didn’t want them to find the location the minute they had the last card.

My answer was to represent the location as the solution to multiple cryptic puzzles. One puzzle referred to the Jurassic strata in the UK, which I split across the background of 14 cards. Another began with a microdot revealing which order to arrange triple letters I’d hidden on a bunch of cards. By performing mod arithmetic on the letter/number values, you would arrive at 1, 2, 3 or 4, corresponding to the four DNA nucleotides. If you understood the triplets as codons for amino acids, they became letters. These letters led you to the phrase “Duke of Burgundy”, the name of a butterfly whose location, when combined with the Jurassic strata, would help you narrow down the location of the treasure.

The nice thing about this convoluted sequence is that we could provide additional online clues to help the players community when they got stuck. The point being, you can’t make an easy puzzle harder, but you can make a hard puzzle easier.

Beyond ARGs

It can feel crass to compare ARGs to a conspiracy theory that’s caused so much harm. But this reveals the crucial difference between them: in QAnon, the stakes so high, any action is justified. If you truly believe an online store or a pizza parlour is engaging in child trafficking and the authorities are complicit, extreme behaviour is justified.

Gabriel Roth, editorial director for audio at Slate, extends this idea:

“What QAnon has that ARGs didn’t have is the claim of factual truth; in that sense it reminds me of the Bullshit Anecdotal Memoir wave of the 90s and early 00s. If you have a story based on real life, but you want to make it more interesting, the correct thing to do is change the names of the people and make it as interesting as you like and call it fiction. The insight of the Bullshit Anecdotal Memoirists (I’m thinking of James Frey and Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris) was that you could call it nonfiction and readers would like it much better because it would have the claim of actual factual truth, wowee!! And it worked! How much more engaging and addictive is an immersive, participatory ARG when it adds that unique frisson you can only get with the claim of factual truth? And bear in mind that ARG-scale stories aren’t about mere personal experiences—they operate on a world-historical scale.”

ARGs’ playfulness with the truth and their sometimes-imperceptible winking of This Is Not A Game (accusations Lonelygirl15 was a hoax) is only the most modern incarnation of epistolary storytelling. In that context, immersive and realistic stories have long elicited extreme reactions, like the panic incited by Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds (often exaggerated, to be fair).

We don’t have to wonder what happens when an ARG community meets a matter of life and death. Not long after The Beast concluded, the 9/11 attacks happened. A small number of posters in the Cloudmakers mailing list suggested the community use its skills to “solve” the question of who was behind the attack.

The brief but intense discussion that ensued has become a cautionary tale of ARG communities getting carried away and being unable to distinguish fiction from reality. In reality, the community and the moderators quickly shut down the idea as being impractical, insensitive, and very dangerous. “Cloudmakers tried to solve 9/11” is a great story, but it’s completely false.

Unfortunately, the same isn’t true for the poster child for online sleuthing gone wrong, the r/findbostonbombers subreddit. There’s a parallel between the essentially unmoderated, anonymous theorists of r/findbostonbombers and those in QAnon: neither feel any responsibility for spreading unsupported speculation as fact. What they do feel is that anything should be solvable, as Laura Hall, immersive environment and narrative designer, describes:

“There’s a general sense of, ‘This should be solveable/findable/etc’ that you see in lots of reddit communities for unsolved mysteries and so on. The feeling that all information is available online, that reality and truth must be captured/in evidence somewhere”

There’s truth in that feeling. There is a vast amount of information online, and sometimes it is possible to solve “mysteries”, which makes it hard to criticise people for trying, especially when it comes to stopping perceived injustices. But it’s the sheer volume of information online that makes it so easy and so tempting and so fun to draw spurious connections.

That joy of solving and connecting and sharing and communication can do great things, and it can do awful things. As Josh Fialkov, writer for Lonelygirl15, says:

That brain power negatively focused on what [conspiracy theorists] perceive as life and death (but is actually crassly manipulated paranoia) scares the living shit out of me.

What ARGs Can Teach Us

Can we make “good ARGs”? Could ARGs inoculate people against conspiracy theories like QAnon?

The short answer is: No. When it comes to games that are educational and fun, you usually have to pick one, not both—and I say that as someone who thinks he’s done a decent job at making “serious games” over the years. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it’s really hard, and I doubt any such ARG would get played by the right audience anyway.

The long answer: I’m writing a book about the perils and promise of gamification. Come back in a year or two.

For now, here’s a medium-sized answer. No ARG can heal the deep mistrust and fear and economic and spiritual malaise that underlies QAnon and other dangerous conspiracy theories, any more than a book or a movie can solve racism. There are hints at ARG-like things that could work, though—not in directly combatting QAnon’s appeal, but in channeling people’s energy and zeal of community-based problem-solving toward better causes.

Take The COVID Tracking Project, an attempt to compile the most complete data available about COVID-19 in the U.S. Every day, volunteers collect the latest numbers on tests, cases, hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every state and territory. In the absence of reliable governmental figures, it’s become one of the best sources not just in the U.S., but in the world.

It’s also incredibly transparent. You can drill down into the raw data volunteers have collected on Google Sheets, view every line of code written on Github, and ask them questions on Slack. Errors and ambiguities in the data are quickly disclosed and explained rather than hidden or ignored. There’s something game-like in the daily quest to collect the best-quality data and to continually expand and improve the metrics being tracked. And like in the best ARGs, volunteers of all backgrounds and skills are welcomed. It’s one of the most impressive and well-organising reporting projects I’ve ever seen; “crowdsourcing” doesn’t even come close to describing its scale.

If you applied ARG skills to investigative journalism, you’d get something like Bellingcat, an an open-source intelligence group that discovered how Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was shot down over Ukraine in 2014. Bellingcat’s volunteers painstakingly pieced together publicly-available information to determine MH17 was downed by a Buk missile launcher originating from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Rocket Brigade in Kursk, Russia. The Dutch-led international joint investigation team later came to the same conclusion.

Conspiracy theories thrive in the absence of trust. Today, people don’t trust authorities because authorities have repeatedly shown themselves to be unworthy of trust – misreporting or manipulating COVID-19 testing figures, delaying the publication of government investigations, burning records of past atrocities, and deploying unmarked federal forces. Perhaps authorities were just as untrustworthy twenty or fifty or a hundred years ago, but today we rightly expect more.

Mattathias Schwartz, contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, believes it’s that lack of trust that leads people to QAnon:

“Q’s [followers] … are starving for information. Their willingness to chase bread crumbs is a symptom of ignorance and powerlessness. There may be something to their belief that the machinery of the state is inaccessible to the people. It’s hard to blame them for resorting to fantasy and esotericism, after all, when accurate information about the government’s current activities is so easily concealed and so woefully incomplete.”

So the goal cannot be to simply restore trust in existing authorities. Rather, I think it’s to restore faith in truth and knowledge itself. The COVID Tracking Project and Bellingcat help reveal truth by crowdsourcing information. They show their work via hypertext and open data, creating a structure upon which higher-level analysis and journalism can be built. And if they can’t find the truth, they’re willing to say so.

QAnon seems just as open. Everything is online. Every discussion, every idea, every theory is all joined together in a warped edifice where speculation becomes fact and fact leads to action. It’s thrilling to discover, and as you find new terms to Google and new threads to pull upon, you can feel just like a real researcher. And you can never get bored. There’s always new information to make sense of, always a new puzzle to solve, always a new enemy to take down.

QAnon fills the void of information that states have created—not with facts, but with fantasy. If we don’t want QAnon to fill that void, someone else has to. Government institutions can’t be relied upon to do this sustainably, given how underfunded and politicised they’ve become in recent years. Traditional journalism has also struggled against its own challenges of opacity and lack of resources. So maybe that someone is… us.

ARGs teach us that the search for knowledge and truth can be immensely rewarding, not in spite of their deliberately-fractured stories and near-impossible puzzles, but because of them. They teach us that communities can self-organise and self-moderate to take on immense challenges in a responsible way. And they teach us that people are ready and willing to volunteer to work if they’re welcomed, no matter their talent.

It’s hard to create these communities. They rely on software and tools that aren’t always free or easy to use. They need volunteers who have spare time to give and moderators who can be supported, financially and emotionally, through the struggles that always come. These communities already exist. They just need more help.

Despite the growing shadow of QAnon, I’m hopeful for the future. The beauty of ARGs and ARG-like communities isn’t their power to discover truth. It’s how they make the process of discovery so deeply rewarding.

What Alternate Reality Games Teach Us About the Dangerous Appeal of QAnon syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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philippaoliver · 4 years

Text

This Article Will Change The Way You Think About Clickbait Forever!

(Originally published during my time at The Leith Agency, in September 2017)

I was recently perusing the latest Teen Vogue political journalism masterpiece (no, really). When I came to the bottom of the article, I was greeted by the usual suggestions of other articles I might want to read. As always these days, the titles were clickbaity.

Part of me — a large part, the part that’s usually dominant — is screaming words dripping in sarcasm. Lord forbid I’m making an eyebrow mistake! But there’s another part, the one that’s normally buried deep down, asking if there even are 15 mistakes you can make with eyebrows, and then again what if my eyebrows are a bit shit? And so I click. And in a new tab I also open the one about the benefits of sleeping with my hair in a bun because honestly, I’d love to read the opinion of someone who is probably equally as unqualified to talk about hair as I am.

(Fear not, it turns out my eyebrows have not undergone any major catastrophes.)

But why did I click? I knew perfectly well that it’s not a subject I’m particularly interested in. Anyone who’s ever met me knows my usual aesthetic is ‘scruffy at best’. I also knew that it was clickbait, and that the contents would be disappointing. And yet, here we were. Again.

So, deeply disappointed in myself and coated in my own self loathing, I did some digging, and it turns out there’s actually a fair amount of research on clickbait (it was even mentioned on a recent episode of QI) and it’s fascinating stuff.

Is anyone immune to clickbait?

We all know someone who, whenever the subject comes up, will smugly proclaim ‘Oh, I never click on that rubbish. I can’t imagine why anyone would.’ They’re just better/smarter/savvier than that. But the truth is that we know clickbait works. There are whole websites that rely on it and reputable news publications are increasingly using it to pad out their offerings and increase website views.

Diply claims to generate 1 billion video views on Facebook and 150 million unique website visitors per month. Given that they sell advertising space, it’s fair to say that clickbait is big business. So claiming that clickbait doesn’t work just isn’t going to cut it with me and the science backs me up. So what are the key reasons clickbait works?

Curiosity and Dopamine

Studies have shown that the reason clickbait is so alluring is partially down to dopamine responses (the body’s reward system). So if someone’s claiming to be completely immune, chances are they’re either lying or joyless. Dopamine is the chemical in our bodies that makes us feel good, and the levels of it rise when we find something good. It’s hella addictive. But interestingly, we release dopamine in anticipation of a reward, not when we receive the reward itself.

Kanye’s probably immune to clickbait.

Additionally, dopamine is the impetus to do the work to receive the reward (in this case, clicking the link and navigating through sixteen pages of pop-up ads and auto-play videos). So we don’t actually need to see the cute or funny or shocking thing in order to feel good about it, but feeling good about it is what makes us click the link in the first place. So those particular clickbait headlines, the ones that add a “#23 will appall you!”, are especially effective; it’s anticipation that keeps you clicking through.

And even worse, we’ve been set up by our own bodies. Dopamine levels grow even higher when there’s a chance that there won’t be a reward at the end of our work (as we all know there probably won’t when it comes to clickbait). Psychologists and neuroscientists call it intermittent reinforcement. When we introduce a ‘maybe’ factor, that addictive surge fills us like never before. This explains gambling, but it also explains clickbait. We’re addicted to the fact that maybe it won’t be good. We’re slaves to our own curiosity.

The Information Gap

Further to this, behavioural economist Loewenstein describes an ‘information gap’. This takes a similar approach in that it has the same end point — that curiosity, and especially its intensity, is driven not by the satisfaction of obtaining information, but by the pain of not having it. There is therefore pleasure in the anticipation of obtaining it.

Studies have also found that guessing and feedback increase curiosity. In a sense, many clickbait headlines pose a question (What do these child stars look like now?). Readers may have an idea of what the answer is and, by internally guessing, their curiosity increases. The information gap has now widened to include whether or not they’re correct.

In studies on deprivation, researchers have also found a link between deprivation and impulsivity. Loewenstein links this to the impulsivity we see in curiosity situations; we’re curious when we see clickbait so we impulsively click on it, without stopping to consider if it’s clickbait. Anyone who’s ever fallen into a Wikipedia hole knows this to be true — you go on to find out whether cuttlefish sleep and through clicking on interesting links somehow end up learning about the black market organ trade, also reading about every living member of the Dutch royal family on the way.

Actual footage of me in a Wikihole.

The Language and Tropes of Clickbait

It’s all well and good to understand the dopamine responses that curiosity elicits, but how is curiosity elicited in the first place? The headlines of clickbait articles are written in such a way as to pique that curiosity, and the pictures are too. One of the major tropes of clickbait is a partially obscured picture — clearly linked to copy that throws up an information gap (You’ll Never Guess What This Teacher Bought For Her Class! I Was Shocked!), but with the information gap part obscured, only increasing the urge to click.

Writing these headlines is not so much an art as throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. With the rise in technology, websites can serve you the same article with 20 different headlines and simply eliminate all but the one that works best. Nevertheless, there is skill attached to good clickbait headlines, and you’ll also see certain ways of phrasing used repeatedly. These often take advantage of the things we’ve mentioned above: information gaps, taking advantage of emotion (including disdain) and using lists.

But it’s not just the content of the headline that draws you in, and what’s particularly interesting to me are the ways in which grammar and semantics are manipulated to grab your interest. Clickbait headlines frequently follow specific patterns, which are really odd compared to everyday language. They often refer to a specific person or persons by only a pronoun (e.g. he, she, they). That’s super weird when you don’t actually know who they’re referring to. In linguistics, it’s called a deixis: it’s a word or phrase that cannot be understood without further contextual information.

Consider the two following headlines, both clickbaity:

1. ‘She Gave This Bear A Pair Of Headphones… What Happened Next Will Shock You!’

2. ‘A zoologist gave a grizzly bear a pair of headphones… what happened next will shock you!’

While it’s written in an annoying way, I’d argue that the first is more successful in grabbing your attention and getting you keen(ish) to find out more. This is for a number of reasons, but key among them is the use of deixis. There are a couple of ways deixis are normally used — anaphora and cataphora — and this headline sort of defies both of them.

The first headline would be completely normal in situations where there was some text preceding it, which explained who the reference was in ‘she’ (e.g. ‘A zoologist was doing some research on grizzly bears and their reactions to music. She gave…’). This is called anaphora — where the deixis in a sentence or clause refers to some information that came before. That’s fine. We’re cool with that. Cataphora is sort of the opposite — it’s where a deixis refers to some information which will come later in the discourse. It’s a little stranger to explain, but it happens a fair amount, especially in rhetoric, literary prose, or storytelling. The reason it happens more in literary prose and story telling is that it adds an element of suspense. We’re also pretty cool with that.

What clickbait does is to separate the deictic words from their cataphor — you’ll find out what they refer to, but only if you click on the link. It’s not something we normally see, so it throws you off a little bit. And like an open bracket that never closes, it makes you a tiny bit stressed. We’re not so cool with that. By not giving up that contextual information we need to understand ‘she’ or ‘this’, the headline effectively and infuriatingly adds further curiosity.

What does this actually mean, though?

As advertisers, we cannot ignore the fact that clickbait exists primarily to allow its publishers to thrive on advertising money. In a sense, we fund and pay for clickbait (and as part of that, fake news). Guilty as charged, we’re proliferators of evil (but we already knew that). A question to ask ourselves is whether we’re able to reclaim clickbait and harness it and its techniques as a force for good. So what, if anything, can we learn from clickbait?

Loewenstein suggests that the information gap could be used to motivate learners in educational settings, by drawing attention to what they don’t know. It��s an interesting point, and could hint towards clickbait as a force for social good. For those of us in the business of behaviour change advertising, there are real questions to be asked about whether we can learn from clickbait in inciting our targets to learn for themselves. Am I suggesting that the answer to all social good is clickbait? Absolutely not, it’s still fairly abhorrent, but I do think there are learnings to be had — certainly in terms of our approach and possibly from the way we use language (even if it’s just manipulating cataphor better).

It may also be useful when we’re trying to solve particularly modern problems. In our recent campaign for the Scottish Government, our aim was to educate the Scottish public about the introduction of new legislation against the non-consensual sharing of intimate images (NCSII) — commonly known incorrectly as revenge porn. NCSII is not a new thing — people have been doing it since we had cameras — but it’s become more of a problem in recent years due to the ease of dissemination through internet channels. It made sense that we would talk about it on the same channels our audience are likely to encounter it and proliferate it, and potentially in the same salacious tones that make people so morbidly fascinated by it.

In came clickbait.

With headlines like ‘Her Boyfriend Shared This Video Of Her Online…You’ll Never Guess What Happens!’ (spoiler: he gets arrested), we infiltrated our targets’ newsfeeds with authentic looking clickbait to pique their interest and get them clicking. On the other side, a ‘trojan horse’ ad — starting off looking like an authentic homemade video (we shot on an iPhone 4), we see what looks like the beginning of a sexual act, with our female actor placing handcuffs on the wrists of our male actor (who, for authenticity, was also the cameraman). A quick cut later and the fluffy handcuffs have been replaced by real ones, his girlfriend by a stern policewoman.

A still from the campaign. By luring people in using curiosity gaps and the implied promise of the very thing we’re legislating against, we hope we can encourage them to examine their own behaviour (which will ultimately prove more effective than lecturing and finger wagging). Companies are already using clickbait to sell their products, I can’t help but wonder if we can use it in a more worthwhile way, as we did for our NCSII campaign.

Given that viewing clickbait is itself viewed as a shameful act, can we use that to our advantage, to access topics that people find hard to talk about? Clickbait taps into morbid curiosity, it’s car crash internet. Let’s take a long look at how we can take advantage of that, rather than simply dismissing it as an annoyance to avoid. I’m not saying clickbait is good, or even that it’s not annoying, but it’s unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon — so let’s at least take it seriously (even if it does make our copywriters want to vomit).

And to finish on a lighter note, my favourite piece of (parody) clickbait, which delivers on its headline in spectacular fashion by presenting you with the entire text of Moby Dick: ‘The Time I Spent On A Commercial Whaling Ship Completely Changed My Perspective On The World’. Plus, my current favourite Facebook page, TL;DR, who helpfully summarise clickbait articles so you don’t have to click on them. Not all heroes wear capes.

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katrinratto · 6 years

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10 Loss Aversion Marketing Tactics to Help Your Small Business Retain Customers and Win Sales

People don’t like to lose.

Whether it’s losing a game, an argument, or an item we want to buy, we don’t like it.

In fact, people make buying decisions that are motivated by their desire to avoid a loss.

Savvy marketers know this.

They keep loss aversion in mind as they plan their campaigns and write their copy.

Here’s what you need to know about loss aversion and 10 proven loss aversion marketing tactics that can help amplify your marketing efforts.

What is loss aversion?

Loss aversion refers to the tendency of people to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Studies show that loss aversion is twice as powerful psychologically as the acquisition of something.

Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (you might remember them from our article on marketing and the anchoring effect) studied the impact of loss on human decision-making and were able to confirm their central assumption that:

…losses and disadvantages have greater impact on preferences than gains and advantages.

Humans are hard-wired to avoid losses. And, in the years since Tversky and Kahneman first developed their behavioral theory based on loss aversion, science has proven this to be true. Stanford University psychology professor Russell A. Poldrack explains:

…psychologists and neuroscientists have uncovered how loss aversion may work on a neural level. In 2007 my colleagues and I found that the brain regions that process value and reward may be silenced more when we evaluate a potential loss than they are activated when we assess a similar-sized gain.

Poldrack goes on to say,

Perhaps most interesting, the reactions in our subjects’ brains were stronger in response to possible losses than to gains—a phenomenon we dubbed neural loss aversion.

Just the idea of a loss is enough to create a strong reaction. There’s no question that loss aversion is a powerful motivator in all aspects of life – including consumer behavior.

Loss Aversion and Urgency

You’re familiar with loss aversion marketing tactics whether you realize it or not.

They’re everywhere.

“Only 3 left in stock! Order now!”

“Available while supplies last.”

“Flash Sale! Today Only!”

“Don’t miss out on this awesome deal!”

We are invited, pressured and cajoled to purchase using the fear of loss every single day. These hard-sell pressure tactics create what marketers call “urgency.”

And, while these urgency tactics may sometimes be obnoxious, they work.

Just this morning I was shopping for a small shelf to go above my headboard. I wasn’t planning to buy one, but I found a shelf that I liked and noticed that it said, “Only one left in stock” in small red script under the picture.

Before I knew it, I ordered the shelf.

Urgency plays directly to our desire to avoid loss. I didn’t want to miss out on that shelf. So, my lizard brain took over and clicked “Add to Cart,” ensuring that I wouldn’t “lose” what I’d found. Even though I’d never really had it to begin with.

Your marketing efforts should take these fear of loss tactics into account when planning their overall strategy.

What You Can Do

Attach a time frame to your offer. This will motivate customers to purchase within that time window to avoid losing out on the lower price. This is typical, for example, with retail sales.

Let people know if there is a limited number of products or service packages available at a particular price point. With the knowledge that the item or service they want may become unavailable at any time, customers will be motivated to buy now, so they don’t lose out. You can see this effect every year on Black Friday.

Add visible count-down timers and stock notifications to your website or landing page. The visual reminders will help to encourage customers to purchase before it’s too late.

Don’t overuse these tactics! While these tactics are effective, they are not sustainable as a stand-alone marketing strategy. If you constantly offer “limited time only” sales, people will catch on and only purchase during sales. Or worse, a constant deluge of “limited time” offers and “exclusive” deals will make customers feel lied to and manipulated. Use these tactics with restraint for maximum impact.

Loss Aversion and Status Quo Bias

Loss aversion can also help your business keep existing customers.

Fear of loss has a way of immobilizing people. As the old saying goes, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” We want to hold on to what we know, even if there may be something better waiting for us.

And, why do we stick with what we know? Because it’s also possible that what’s waiting for us is worse than what we already have.

Dr. Shahrah Heshmat Ph.D. explains:

…people have a tendency to stick with what they have unless there is a good reason to switch. The loss aversion is a reflection of a general bias in human psychology (status quo bias) that make people resistant to change. So when we think about change we focus more on what we might lose rather than on what we might get.

For many people, our natural inclination is to stick with what we’ve got.

But, people do brand-hop. So, what can your marketing team to do encourage existing customers to stay?

What You Can Do

Provide a great customer experience and customer service. Don’t give people a reason to leave.

Create a loyalty program that allows customers to accumulate points or status. Once people have those points or status, it will feel harder for them to leave since leaving will mean losing the goodies they’ve earned.

Find ways to remind your clients what problems your product or service solves in their lives. Customers don’t like to lose a good thing. An email campaign or social media is a great way to do this.

Loss Aversion and the Ownership Effect

People work hard to get what they have.

And once we’ve got something, we hate to let it go.

This is true whether the thing we have is actually ours or if we just think of it as ours.

At the end of the day, despite our best intentions, all people really do subconsciously think that they are the center of the universe. And, why not?

We spend our entire lives seeing the world through the lens of our own experience. We are the centers of our own little universes.

What that means is that when we see things happen to other people, we subconsciously imagine that happening to ourselves as well. So, if we see someone holding an item we think looks cool, we imagine ourselves in that role, too.

Couple this feeling of ownership with the fear of loss and it creates a powerful hook into our brains.

Magda Kay, founder of Psychology for Marketers, puts it this way:

Because we don’t like losing, once we have something, we don’t want to let go of it (and to top it even more – we value it much more). This is called the ownership effect. What it means, is that by making your audience feel they already own your product, they will be more likely to buy it- because not doing so, would mean losing it.

If you want to convert leads into sales, help them envision themselves already owning your product or using your service.

What You Can Do

Help prospects imagine owning your product.

Write marketing copy that suggests that your audience already owns the product.

Show images of people happily interacting with your product or service.

Show videos of your product being handled by other people.

Offer a free trial or free samples, so that the prospect can directly interact with your product or service with no risk. You can do this even if you offer a digital service. For example, we allow prospective clients to freely browse active and completed design projects. Clients looking to create a new brand identity or rebrand their existing business might be interested in a professional logo design and would love to see examples of other brands and logos created on crowdspring. They can easily do this by exploring other projects that have been posted on crowdspring.

Include testimonials from other customers to which your target audience will relate. We do this at crowdspring by letting our clients and prospects look at thousands of crowdspring reviews. They can even filter the reviews by project type (like naming a business, packaging design, web design, etc.)

Loss aversion marketing can be an incredibly effective tool in your marketing repertoire. Be sure to test some of these tactics in your overall marketing strategy.

from http://bit.ly/2ylLGtN

#Marketing

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steverhey-blog · 6 years

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MUSIC, a way to express our emotions

“Music can touch our hearts in a different way. Change the way how we think, or maybe a medium for us to express our emotions, what we feel, what we really feel inside.”

The way music affect our life is really quite amazing, the new things we experience when we start to appreciate it. The way it connects people from all over the world, and most

importantly, the way it helps us to express our emotions. It is proven that music is a medium for us to show and express what we really feel. In times of sorrow and despair or simply when we are alone, music can be our friend.

I AM IN NEED OF MUSIC

I am in need of a music that would flow

Over my fretful, feeling fingertips over my bitter-tainted, lips

Trembling lips with melody, deep, clear and liquid slow

Oh for the healing swaying old and low

Of some song sung to rest the tired dead

a song to fall like water in my head

and over quivering limbs dream flushed and glow

there is a magic made by melody

a spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool

heart, that sinks through fading colors deep.

To the subaqueous stillness of a sea

And floats forever in a moon-green pool

Held in the hands of rhythm and sleep.

ADVANTAGES OF MUSIC

If you love listening to music, you’re in good company. Charles Darwin once remarked, “If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.” Albert Einstein declared, “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.” Jimi Hendrix called music his “religion.”

Recent research shows that listening to music improves our mental well-being and boosts our physical health in surprising and astonishing ways. If we take a music lesson or two, that musical training can help raise our IQs and even keep us sharp in old age. Here are 15 amazing scientifically-proven benefits of being hooked on music.

1. Music Makes You Happier

“I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.” – William James

Research proves that when you listen to music you like, your brain releases dopamine, a “feel-good” neurotransmitter

. Valorie Salimpoor, a neuroscientist at McGill University, injected eight music-lovers with a radioactive substance that binds to dopamine receptors after they listened to their favorite music.

A PET scan showed that large amounts of dopamine were released, which biologically caused the participants to feel emotions like happiness, excitement, and joy.

So the next time you need an emotional boost, listen to your favorite tunes for 15 minutes. That’s all it takes to get a natural high!

2. Music Enhances Running Performance

“If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.” – Eminem

Marcelo Bigliassi and his colleagues found that runners who listened to fast or slow motivational music completed the first 800 meters of their run faster than runners who listened to calm music or ran without music.

If you want to take your running up a notch, listen to songs that inspire you.

3. Music Lowers Stress and Improves Health

“I think music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from.” – Billy Joel

Listening to music you enjoy decreases levels of the stress hormone cortisol in your body, which counteracts the effects of chronic stress.

This is an important finding since stress causes 60% of all our illnesses and disease.

One study showed that if people actively participated in making music by playing various percussion instruments and singing, their immune system was boosted even more than if they passively listened.

To stay calm and healthy during a stressful day, turn on the radio. Be sure to sing along and tap your feet to the beat to get the maximum healing benefit.

4. Music Helps You Sleep Better

“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” – Berthold Auerbach

Over 30% of Americans suffer from insomnia.

A study showed that students who listened to relaxing classical music for 45 minutes before turning in slept significantly better than students who

listened to an audiobook or did nothing different from their normal routine.

If you’re having trouble sleeping, try listening to a little Bach or Mozart before bedtime to catch some Zs.

5. Music Reduces Depression

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” – Maya Angelou

More than 350 million people suffer from depression around the world. A whopping 90% of them also experience insomnia.

The sleep research above found that symptoms of depression decreased significantly in the group that listened to classical music before bedtime,

but not in the other two groups. Another study by Hans Joachim Trappe in Germany also demonstrated that music can benefit patients with depressive

symptoms, depending on the type of music.

Meditative sounds and classical music lifted people up, but techno and heavy metal brought people down even more.

The next time you feel low, put on some classical or meditative music to lift your spirits.

6. Music Strengthens Learning and Memory

“Music is the language of memory.” – Jodi Picoult

Researchers discovered that music can help you learn and recall information better, but it depends on how much you like the music and whether or not you’re a musician. Subjects memorized Japanese characters while listening to music that either seemed positive or neutral to them. The results showed that participants who were musicians learned better with neutral music but tested better when pleasurable music was playing. Non-musicians, on the other hand, learned better with positive music but tested better with neutral music.

Memorize these results. You now have a strategy to study more effectively for your next test.

7. Music Relaxes Patients Before/After Surgery

“He who sings scares away his woes.” – Miguel de Cervantes

Researchers found that listening to relaxing music before surgery decreases anxiety.

In fact it’s even more effective than being orally administered Midazolam, a medication often used to help pre-op patients feel sleepy that also

has gnarly side effects such as coughing and vomiting.

Other studies showed that listening to soothing music while resting in bed after open heart surgery increases relaxation.

Globally, 234 million major surgeries are performed each year.

If you or someone you know is going into surgery, be sure to bring some soothing tunes to ease anxiety.

It may work better, and will certainly have fewer adverse side effects, than the meds they dispense.

8. Music Reduces Pain

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” – Bob Marely

Research at Drexel University in Philadelphia found that music therapy and pre-recorded music reduced pain more than standard treatments in cancer

patients. Other research showed that music can decrease pain in intensive care patients and geriatric care patients, but the selection needed to be

either classical pieces, meditative music, or songs of the patient’s choosing.

Bob Marely was right about this one – listen to music you love to take your pain away.

9. Music Helps Alzheimer’s Patients Remember

“The past, which is not recoverable in any other way, is embedded, as if in amber, in the music, and people can regain a sense of identity.” – Oliver Sacks, M.D.

A non-profit organization called Music & Memory helps people with Alzheimer’s Disease and other age-related dementias remember who they are by having them listen to their dearest songs.

The awakening is often dramatic. For example, after Henry listens to music from his era, this wheelchair-bound dementia sufferer who can barely speak sings Cab Calloway songs and happily reminisces about his life .

Dr. Laura Mosqueda, Director of Geriatrics at the University of California at the Irvine School of Medicine, explains that because music affects so many areas of the brain, it stimulates pathways that may still be healthy.

One in three seniors die with Alzheimer’s Disease or another dementia, so odds are you know someone who has it. To connect with loved ones who suffer from age-related dementia, try playing some of their best-loved music.

10. Music Improves Recovery in Stroke Patients

“I know why the caged bird sings.” – Maya Angelou

Research at the University of Helsinki showed that stroke patients who listened to music they chose themselves for two hours a day had significantly improved recovery of cognitive function compared to those who listened to audio books or were given no listening material. Most of the music contained lyrics, which suggests that it’s the combination of music and voice that bolstered the patients’ auditory and verbal memory.

Stroke is the number 5 cause of death in the United States. If you know someone who has suffered a stroke, bring their favorite songs as soon as you can. Listening to them can significantly ramp up their recuperation.

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thedeadshotnetwork · 6 years

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You can slow down time by making even the smallest moments into lasting memories using 3 steps Building a reservoir of good memories can increase your happiness and make time seem less like it's speeding by. You can do this by creating moments of elevation — attending things that are sensory, raising the stakes on events, or breaking the script. Celebrate moments of pride — even when you achieve small things. Do things with your friends and family that build connection — but require some sort of struggle, like board games or touch football. Your first kiss. Graduation. Your first job. Your wedding day. Birth of your first child. These are the big memories that we all cherish. But there are other little memories that stick out because they had such a powerful emotional impact on you. Moments that enriched your life, bonded you with others and helped you define who you are. Well, the latter are just "magic" right? Serendipity. Can't engineer that. They just "happen"… *Writer rolls his eyes so hard he gets a migraine.* Yeah, and sometimes they don't . More often than not, one day rolls into the next, one month rolls into the next, you blink your eyes and you're staring down the barrel of another New Year's Day saying: where the heck did the time go? Serendipity can be a bus that never arrives. So why do we leave special moments to chance? And why do we not do more to create those special memories for others — the way we'd like them to make some for us? We get tired. We get lazy. And then boom — suddenly CVS is loaded with Christmas ornaments and it signals the end of another year. No good. If we want great memories we have to make them. But how do you do that? What makes some little moments so powerful? And others the epitome of "meh"? Chip and Dan Heath have a new book that lays out the science you need to know — The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact. Time to learn how to construct more events that will restock your reminiscence reservoir. Boost your nostalgia number. Fill your flashback fund. Let's get to work… 1. Create moments of elevation Parties. Competing in sporting events. Taking off on a spontaneous road trip. What do they have in common? From The Power of Moments: "Moments of elevation are experiences that rise above the routine. They make us feel engaged, joyful, amazed, motivated." If you feel the need to pull out a camera, it's probably a moment of elevation. (Unless you're taking a selfie. In that case, just put it away, you narcissist.) So what is it at the core of a moment of elevation that we can add to any event to make it more special? Remember the 3 S's: sensory, stakes, and script. Boost sensory appeal: This is why concerts, museums and great meals stick in your memory and why sitting on the couch is so forgettable. Engaging the senses more intensely makes moments stand out. Raise the stakes: Competing in a sporting event is more exciting than watching one. In fact, betting on a sporting event makes watching one more entertaining. If there's something to gain or lose, you'll be paying attention. Break the script: Don't do the usual thing. Don't just get coffee or have dinner. Boring. Take your default and flip it on its head. Defy expectations and strategically surprise people. Southwest Airlines broke the script by tweaking their normal flight safety announcement. One of the lines they added was: "If you should get to use the life vest in a real-life situation, the vest is yours to keep." People loved it. In fact, those who heard the new messages actually flew more. And that resulted in an extra $140 million per year for Southwest. Breaking the script produces delightful moments. Strelka/Flickr The Heath brothers write, "The most memorable periods of our lives are when we break the script." Sounds kinda pat and corny — but it's true. Research shows that when older people look back on their lives, a disproportionate number of their big memories happened in a very narrow window: between ages 15 and 30. That's not even 20% of the average lifespan. Is this because our memory is sharper then? Or because young adulthood is a "magic" time? Heck, no… It's because after 30 life can get pretty darn boring. After their third decade has passed, most people don't do anything as novel as falling in love for the first time, leaving home, going to college, or starting their first job. So months and years blur together because nothing new and shiny happens. But neuroscientist David Eagleman says that when you inject novelty into your life, you prevent the blur. Surprise stretches time. So break the script and interrupt the blur with moments of elevation. (To learn more about the science of a successful life, check out my new book here .) So boosting sensory appeal, raising the stakes and breaking the script can turn little moments into big memories. What else has that power? 2. Celebrate moments of pride A graduation party. The ceremony where you received your black belt. Or that special session when the parole board declared you "rehabilitated." You want to commemorate achievements. When you have your skill noticed by others, you can puff your chest out and take a second to feel really good about yourself. And this is not a "nice to have." Research shows we need these. From The Power of Moments: "Carolyn Wiley of Roosevelt University reviewed four similar studies of employee motivation conducted in 1946, 1980, 1986 and 1992. In each of the studies, employees were asked to rank the factors that motivated them. Popular answers included 'interesting work," 'job security,' 'good wages,' and 'feeling of being in on things.' Across the studies, which spanned 46 years, only one factor was cited every time as among the top two motivators: 'full appreciation of work done.'" According to one survey the Heath brothers found, the #1 reason people leave their jobs is "a lack of praise and recognition." So take the time to appreciate what you've accomplished and to let others celebrate with you. Now I know what some people are thinking: But I don't achieve big stuff very often… But you've already made big strides that you never took the time to revel in. Surface the milestones that already exist. How long have you and your BFF been friends? Ever celebrated that? Didn't think so. (No, that does not make you a bad friend. I still like you. You're cool.) The Heath brothers tell the story of one couple that even looked back and actually celebrated fights the two of them had during their first year of marriage. Why? Because they got past them. They overcame the obstacles. That's worth appreciating. Michael Dodge/Getty Images And for extra credit, set goals. Build milestones on the road ahead. Why? Because the more finish lines you set, the more moments of pride you'll be able to celebrate. Not only does that feel good, it will motivate you. George Wu at the University of Chicago looked at the data on how long it took over nine million runners to complete marathons. Most took about 3.5 to 5 hours. But the results weren't evenly distributed. There's this huge spike right before the 4 hour mark. Why? 4 hours is arbitrary, right? Yeah — but it's a nice round number. And for many it is achievable if they push themselves. People saw that "arbitrary" time limit approaching and kicked in the afterburners so they could say, "I finished in under 4 hours." And so many did. Celebrate moments of pride. You don't have to win a Nobel Prize. In fact, celebrating a silly milestone "breaks the script" and may be even more memorable. Set goals so you have more moments of pride to motivate you to achieve and have more things to celebrate in the future. (To learn the seven-step morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click here .) So you've elevating and celebrating milestones. Great. But relationships are what brings us the most happiness. (And ice cream. Ice cream brings happiness, too.) So how do we make memories that deepen our relationships with others? (And may involve ice cream?) 3. Build moments of connection Vacations. Reunions. Holidays. The times that bond us with others where we feel all kinds of warm fuzzies. These are the moments when some of the most powerful memories are formed. What does the research say deepens the connections you feel with others? Struggle. Yeah, struggle . No, I'm not saying you should get in an argument with Uncle Jack again. Anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas (say that three times fast) found that groups that went through "high-ordeals" bonded far more than those that went through "low-ordeals." Struggling together made people closer. This is why fraternities haze. Why soldiers feel like they are kin. So what the heck does this have to do with relaxing vacations and get-togethers with friends? Less watching movies and more playing board games as teams. Less shopping and more touch football. If it ends with high-fives, you're probably in the ballpark. Mark Guim/Flickr And even better if it's a team activity that is connected to meaning . Yes, that even means helping your friend paint their new kitchen and having beers after. You're helping them turn "that house" into "their home." Even if it sounds like a chore beforehand, we often look back fondly on those times…. especially if your friend paints himself into a corner. (To learn the 4 rituals from neuroscience that will make you happy, click here .) Okay, we've learned a lot. Hopefully it was a memorable moment — but just in case, let's round it all up and learn how to make the most powerful memories of all… Sum up This is how to create happy memories that will last a lifetime: Create moments of elevation : Boost sensory appeal (light some fireworks). Break the script (don't wait for the 4th of July). Raise the stakes (hope you don't get arrested). Celebrate moments of pride : If your first book comes out and someone insists you go someplace special that night, do it . Otherwise you wouldn't have a vivid memory. You wouldn't have photos. All you would have is some random date to remember like in 8th grade history class. Build moments of connection : Struggle. Working together on something, especially something meaningful, bonds us together. So just help Gary move this weekend and stop whining. How do you make the most powerful memories of all? You don't have to use just one of the tips above to improve a moment — you can use them all . Celebrate a friend's "moment of pride" with the "struggle" of a paintball match and "break the script" by also making it a costume party with everyone getting decked out in full military regalia — from the Revolutionary War. Now that's memorable. And insane. But insane is memorable. And not boring. You now know how to make great memories that can last you the rest of your life. You can make them for friends as well — even better, share them with friends… But usually we don't. We do the hum-drum and the days blur together. Life becomes stale and boring and we die a little inside. But you don't have to. Break the script. Don't let the script break you. Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here . NOW WATCH: Here's what those white marks on your nails say about your health November 16, 2017 at 03:35AM

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Hardcore Gamer Battles Hemorrhoids and Video Games

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Hardcore Gamer Battles Hemorrhoids and Video Games

The different day I turned into told about a hardcore gamer that battles video games and beat hemorrhoid in actual lifestyles. It’s a friend’s son who is going to college. He has been a serious hardcore gamer considering he changed into going to school. The video games he performs the maximum are MAG, Dark Void, and Dante’s Inferno. Being a gamer had in no way been an issue within the past, outdoor of him not keeping up what he changed into presupposed to do to help around the house. That’s traditional with teenagers which can be usually connected to the Internet, gaming or connecting with human beings on social networks.

His first 12 months in college hit him tough. He changed into taking a full timetable of instructions and nonetheless looking to get in as many hours as he may want to play the video games Dark Void, MAG, and Dante’s Inferno. Many proctologists agree that stress can cause outside hemorrhoids to increase. I’ve recognized the young man on the grounds that he became in high college. He’s usually been relatively competitive within the international of gaming and creating apps. It is a natural choice he is pursuing a diploma in computer technology. It needs to have been the stress finally prompted his digestive gadget to tighten.

The frightening moment in his life passed off while he changed into having hassle passing bowel actions generally. The new strain of university and his hardcore video gaming periods had triggered bad constipation (also called costiveness, dyssynergia defecation, and dyschezia) that was turning into painful. Teenagers sometimes will keep matters to themselves that they feel are too embarrassing. He by no means spoke about it to his parents. Constipation and straining throughout bowel moves is linked to being a primary cause of hemorrhoids.

As past hemorrhoid affected person it is frightening and stunning to comprehend you have got a painful external hemorrhoid. This college student and hardcore gamer never expected that at his younger age hemorrhoids have been a medical condition he could get. He changed into terrified while cleansing himself that he felt a mass out of doors of his anus and there were strains of blood. This might make each person’s coronary heart pound faster. He, in the end, informed his parents what he had found. After assembly with a doctor, this hardcore gamer and university student changed into advised he had an external hemorrhoid that had ruptured creating bleeding.

The outside bleeding hemorrhoid turned into caught before it had grown too big, so hemorrhoid surgical procedure becomes now not needed. What his health practitioner did suggest turned into using a chilly treatment makes use of controlled extreme bloodless to kill hemorrhoid at its base. This is done by means of freezing hemorrhoid causing it to die and lightly fall off.

For healing pain alleviation and to forestall destiny bleeding even as selling healing he becomes advised to take a size tub on an each day basis until the broken tissue around the anal hollow space turned into absolutely healthy. This has been a treatment that has been used for hundreds of years with notable outcomes. It is a secure and natural method to offer comfort from the conditions of hemorrhoids and hemorrhoid healing.

One of the most helpful and low priced consolation products advised by using the medical doctor to this hardcore gamer become to use hemorrhoid cushion or seat while sitting for lengthy periods. This would offer relaxed support, sell good circulation, and save you hemorrhoids from returning. If he was going to spend hours studying and gaming he needed proper raise and assist. I now not suffer from piles, however nevertheless use a hemorrhoid cushion at domestic, work, and while riding. My buddy’s hardcore gamer son absolutely healed from his outside hemorrhoid and yet again taking part in what he loves, gaining knowledge of approximately PC science and gaming ache free.

He never advised his friends about having outside hemorrhoid, but some of them observed he become usually sitting on a cool searching cushion whilst gaming that was amazingly relaxed and now they’re the use of them. There is concrete evidence that severe hardcore gamers that play Dante’s Inferno, MAG, and Dark Void gets piles. However, the use of a cushion with first-rate elevate and assist in sitting on will reduce the threat of nasty piles growing.

Why Video Games Are For Everyone

“If instructional video games are nicely carried out, they could provide a strong framework for inquiry and challenge-primarily based gaining knowledge of”, says Alan Gershenfeld, co-founder, and president of E-Line Media, a publisher of PC and video games and a Founding Industry Fellow at Arizona State University’s Center for Games and Impact. “Games are also uniquely proper to fostering the talents essential for navigating a complicated, interconnected, hastily converting the twenty-first century,” he provides.

According to Isabela Granic and her fellow researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands, attaching labels inclusive of “correct”, “terrible”, “violent”, or “prosocial” in large part overlooks the complex photo surrounding the brand new technology of video games now to be had. Players are attracted to the video games they pick and the benefits or drawbacks to how they interact with these games are in large part formed by means of their motivation for playing.

Grant also highlighted the possibility that video games are powerful equipment for gaining knowledge of resilience inside the face of failure. By getting to know to cope with ongoing screw-ups in video games, she indicates that youngsters construct emotional resilience they are able to rely on of their regular lives.

Mean even as, Daphne Bavelier, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester, New York, says “We want to be far more nuanced whilst we communicate approximately the effects of video video games.”

Bavelier and her friend published a studies in 2003, wherein they used a sequence of visual puzzles to illustrate that folks that performed movement video games at the least four days in keeping with week for at least 1 hour according to day have been higher than non-gamers at hastily processing complex facts, estimating numbers of objects, controlling where their attention changed into targeted spatially and switching swiftly among duties.

Play motion-primarily based video games and you can make correct selections 25% quicker – According to scientists from the University of Rochester, they have got performed research in which individuals elderly 18 to twenty-five had been cut up into two companies. One organization performed 50 hours of the movement-packed first-man or woman shooter games “Call of Duty 2″ and “Unreal Tournament,” and the opposite institution performed 50 hours of the simulator game “The Sims 2.” The motion game players made choices 25% faster in a challenge unrelated to gambling video games, without sacrificing accuracy.

Lastly but now not least, Surgeons can step forward their laparoscopic abilities by means of playing video games – medical doctors who spent one month gambling both Wii Tennis, Wii Table Tennis, or a balloon struggle recreation (called High Altitude Battle) finished better in simulated obligations designed to test eye-hand coordination and motion precision, in keeping with the observe published inside the Journal PLOS One.

Note: laparoscopic is a manner in which a thin tube with a digital camera is inserted into the abdomen to look organs on a display, instead of reducing patients extensive open.

That’s an excellent locating. Everyone must strive gambling video games every time they’d a hazard.

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