Week Links: Conspiracies, realities & crunchy goodness

InfluenceChronicles.com -- Welcome to Week Links, a lovingly curated demi-collection of digital destinations, fresh from the front-line trenches of influence minus the dirty words. It took us all week to write that first line and we ran out of time for the next one, so here we go:

Is that before or after we eat it? … There are two ways to create a brand tagline that rises above the clutter. One, you can proclaim a compellingly simple truth, like Levis’ “Quality never goes out of style” and De Beers’ “A diamond is forever.” Or two, you can proclaim a compellingly weird idea, like Nature Valley’s “Everything you need to know about life, you can learn from granola.”

​Flake News … Take a look at the #deepstate Twitter feed and you’ll notice how people get all lathered up about shocking but totally fabricated news reports from fake news sites. It’s almost wackily entertaining, except for the part about them being voters. Wikipedia – also a cog in the big wheel of globalist conspiracy – has a list of 50-plus known fake news sites. You’ll know which relatives need a copy.

Treachery Central … Donald Trump isn’t the first president to bring conspiracy theory to the Oval Office – that was GW – but nobody so brazenly wallowed in it as a political and publicity tool. This includes giving high praise to an egocentric Texan named Alex Jones, whose high-production InfoWars network is headwaters for conspiracies like how millions of people voted illegally, that both the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and the Boston Marathon bombing were staged government hoaxes, and that the Democratic Party ran a child sex ring out of a D.C. pizza joint. See for yourself.

Never saw it coming … Skin care brand Nivea went out with an ad campaign featuring the phrase, “White is purity,” earning two thumbs way, way up from white supremacists on the Internet (who knew?). We’re going to take a shot in the dark and guess that the company’s reputation risk management person wasn’t invited to the ad agency’s presentation.

A nation of touchy adult teenagers … Here’s how some sociologists explain why Americans are losing their ability to respectfully disagree with each other: The internet and social media are providing people with a constant self-affirming feedback loop, which is conditioning them toward a growing intolerance and indignation about anything that doesn’t jive with their customized Facebook reality. “New technologies are shaping behaviors and dissolving civilities,” writes columnist George Will. “There will rarely be disagreement without anger between thin-skinned people who cannot distinguish the phrase you’re wrong from you’re stupid.”

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