社交媒体的心理游戏
Social media mind games 

        Last year, the ultra-powerful website The Huffington Post ran a haunting slideshow depicting urban decay in Detroit. It was an online hit: some 25,000 people posted a “like” verdict on Facebook and 4,000 placed comments online.         
        No surprise there, perhaps. Not only were the photos stunning but they also tapped into one of the great themes – and anxieties – of modern America: industrial decline. As such, they were perfect “economic disaster porn”, as some pundits like to say.         
        But there is a catch. A couple of years earlier, some equally brilliant pictures of Detroit’s decline were also displayed on Magnum Photos’ website. But while those ones displayed the haunting faces of the city’s inhabitants, they caused no ripples at all, receiving just 21 comments in three years, tantamount to media death.        
        Does this difference matter? If you believe Ryan Holiday, a 25-year-old blogger-cum-spin doctor, the answer is an emphatic “yes”. Last week, Holiday published the first book that sets out to blow the whistle on all the darkest arts of spinning the social media, under the catchy title Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator.         
        By any standards, this is an astonishing, disturbing book. Holiday has worked for several years as a self-proclaimed media manipulator, running campaigns for companies such as American Apparel. He is now intent on revealing all the tricks that his ilk use to influence – if not control – us via the social media. Unsurprisingly, many of these stories are chilling. He describes, for example, how media manipulators and a hungry blogosphere routinely pervert the political process, creating the kind of gimmicks seen in the Republican presidential nomination race earlier this year (remember Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and so on?). The stories of his antics in the celebrity world are also shocking (one particularly memorable scene describes how Holiday placed posters in Los Angeles, deliberately defaced them and then sent indignant posts to blogs about the “vandalism” under false names to get a storm of publicity for his friend, the author Tucker Max).           
        While the tale of the Detroit slideshow looks pretty innocuous in comparison, it is highly revealing. One reason why The Huffington Post slideshow did so well relative to Magnum, Holiday argues, is that the blog is extremely popular: readers typically “spread” articles to their friends (ie copy them), giving great power to the crowd. But the other issue is more subtle. Readers were willing to “spread” the Huffington Post photos because they did not contain any distressing pictures of real people, but just used artistic shots of decaying buildings, Holiday says. “The photos that spread … are deliberately devoid of human life … seeing the homeless and drug addicts and starving and dying animals would take away all the fun. It would make the viewers feel uncomfortable and unsettling images are not conducive to sharing.”          
        The Magnum photos, by contrast, showed real – suffering – people, and as such were more challenging, albeit more truthful. “The economics of the web make it impossible to portray the complex situation in Detroit accurately,” Holiday adds. “Simple narratives like the haunting ruins of a city spread and live, while complicated ones like a city filled with real people who desperately need help don’t.” Or to put it another way, “real” life is not usually popular with the crowd if it is too subtle, complex or real; unreal stories are what tend to spread.           
        Now, if you want to be optimistic, you might as well hope this does not matter. After all, unreal, stereotypical gossip exists in any culture (many years ago, when I worked as an anthropologist, I used to live in poor, central Asian villages, and found those societies as addicted to crazy rumours as any 21st-century cyber-addict today).         
        Moreover, this is not the first point in history when mob rule has driven the media. In the 19th century, when American papers started marketing themselves on the street for the first time, the so-called “yellow press” was as sensational as the social media today – and as easily manipulated. However, that earlier wild phase of journalism later self-corrected, to a degree, when papers such as the New York Times started to sell themselves as credible alternative sources of news as the public got tired of excessive drama.          
        Perhaps that counter-reaction will happen again; after all, social media is still a young phenomenon. And Holiday says a key reason he wrote this book is that he hopes to start an outcry about media manipulation – and thus another backlash. But what makes 2012 different from 1912 is that not only can news now spread with stunning speed, but corporate power is better organised than ever before. The more that modern society becomes addicted to quick-fix information and instant media gratification, the greater the risk that a new generation grows up with very different ideas about what is “real”. That may not matter (much) for Detroit; but it has dangerous consequences for politics as a whole. Particularly when the US is facing so many profound economic challenges – and a potentially crucial (and manipulated) set of election campaigns.        

影响力极大的网站赫芬顿邮报(Huffington Post)去年登载了一组照片，反映底特律这个城市的衰败景象。这组照片在网上引起了轰动：约2.5万人在Facebook上点击了“喜欢”，约4000人在网上发表了评论。 
这或许不足为奇。这组照片不仅令人触目惊人，也直击了当代美国的一大主题（以及焦虑）：工业衰落。用行话来说，这样的一组照片，是绝佳的“经济灾难片”。 
 但有一个令人费解的问题。两年前，Magnum Photos网站也登载了一组关于底特律衰落的照片，照片质量毫不逊色。然而，尽管照片上一张张底特律人的脸令人难忘，但那些照片没有引起任何反响，3年来总共只有21个评论，作为一个媒介，这组照片已被宣告死亡。
这两组照片境遇的差别要紧吗？如果你相信25岁的博主兼舆论导向专家(spin doctor)瑞安•霍利迪(Ryan Holiday)，你会斩钉截铁地回答：“要紧”。最近，霍利迪出版了第一本揭露操纵社交媒体的最黑暗手法的书，书名十分抢眼，叫《相信我，我在说谎：一个媒体推手的自白》(Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator)。  
以任何标准来衡量，这本书都是令人震惊和不安的。霍利迪以自称的媒体推手的身份工作了好几年，为服装零售商American Apparel等许多企业做过推手。如今，他打算揭露同行们通过社交媒体来影响（如果还算不上“控制”的话）大众的所有阴招。不出意料的是，许多故事都令人不寒而栗。比如，霍利迪描述了媒体推手和渴望成名的博客世界如何经常扰乱政治进程，制造出各种骗局，如今年早些时候共和党总统候选人提名争夺战中出现的那些（还记得赫尔曼•凯恩(Herman Cain)、米歇尔•巴赫曼(Michele Bachmann)这些人吗？）。霍利迪在名流圈中那些怪招也令人震惊（特别令人印象深刻的一个例子是，霍利迪在洛杉矶各处张贴了一些招贴画，故意涂毁，然后用假名在各个博客上发帖，愤怒地指责这种“毁坏行为”，从而让他的朋友、作家塔克•马克斯(Tucker Max)爆红）。
尽管相比起来在底特律照片的例子中似乎没有任何人受到伤害，但这个例子相当发人深省。为何赫芬顿邮报登载的照片反响比Magnus的大那么多，霍利迪认为，原因之一是前者人气很高：读者往往把文章“传播”给他们的朋友（也就是复制文章内容），这种行为赋予“群体”很大力量。但另一个原因则更为隐秘。霍利迪说，读者愿意“传播”赫芬顿邮报的照片，因为那组照片上没有任何会引起不良观感的真实人物，只有一些拍得很唯美的衰败的大楼，这样的照片大家习以为常。“那些有意不拍活物的照片……容易传播……看到无家可归者和吸毒成瘾者、忍饥挨饿和奄奄一息的动物，谁都开心不起来。这样的照片会让观者感到不舒适，人们往往不愿意分享一些令人不安的照片。”
相形之下，Magnum的那组照片展示了真实的、在痛苦中挣扎的人。这样的照片，尽管更加真实，却也更令人难以接受。“网络的经济规律意味着不可能准确描述底特律的复杂境况。”霍利迪补充说，“一些简单的叙述（比如一座城市中令人触目惊心的一些废墟），将不断传播并在网络上生存，而复杂的画面（比如一座城市中许许多多急需帮助的真人），则难以凝聚人气。”或者换个方式说，过于细腻、复杂或逼真的“真实”生活，通常不受大众欢迎；传播开的往往是虚假的故事。
如今，如果你希望朝乐观的方向去想，你还不如希望这无关紧要。毕竟，虚假、类型化的八卦存在于任何文化（许多年前，作为一名人类学家，我曾在中亚一些贫穷的村庄里生活过。当时我就发现，那些村民对离谱流言的痴迷程度，丝毫不逊于21世纪世界任何一名沉迷网络的人）。 
 此外，媒体已经不是第一次被强盗规则所劫持。19世纪，美国的报纸首次开始在街头叫卖时，所谓的“黄色新闻”（yellow press，指耸人听闻的夸张报道，这里的“黄色”并不等于色情——译者注）跟如今的社交媒体一样耸人听闻，而且容易被操纵。然而，新闻业早期的蛮荒状态后来在一定程度上自我纠正了。随着公众对过分夸大的报道感到厌倦，《纽约时报》(New York Times)这样的严肃报纸应运而生，以可信的新闻来源为卖点。
 或许这种“拨乱反正”的情况会再次出现。毕竟，社交媒体还是一个年轻的现象。霍利迪还说，他写这本书的关键原因就是，希望引发一场操纵媒体行为的公愤——从而推动另一场反弹。但2012年与1912年的不同之处在于，如今不仅新闻的传播速度快得惊人，企业的力量也比以往任何时候都更有组织。现代社会对速食型信息和即时媒体满足越上瘾，新一代人对“真实”的概念出现极大偏差的风险就越大。这对底特律来说可能没有意义（或意义不大），但会对整个政治造成危险的后果——特别是在美国面临如此多深层次的经济挑战，以及一场可能十分关键（且可能被操纵）的竞选活动时。 
                  译者:吴蔚