Episode Details

Introduction: Disinfolklore, AI, and the MAGA Cult

People who are still part of the MAGA cult may find the exemplar of Dawn — Druidy Dawn, disinfolklore — a bit unappealing as one of the main examples I use to illustrate this. It occurred to me that maybe I could quickly talk about how the Code of Positive Trolls will work with AI algorithms, and help people manage this transition many of us are going through at the moment, where we’re dealing with chatbots and different AI algorithms to help us in our work.

M.ockers and Will: A Morality Tale in Infolklore

First, I wanted to talk about something. Mockers and Will had this great exchange on Volia for Ukraine Radio Space on X last Saturday, relating to the Russian military intelligence — the GRU general who was born in Ukraine, who was almost assassinated in an elevator in Moscow.

It occurred to me that that exchange, which I mean to record — I haven’t done it quite yet, but I’ll go back to the Volia Spotify channel and record it, and then perhaps try and speak to Mockers about it, if she was willing to one day on Volia Radio — just because it is an example of what I call archetypal infolklore.

What Mockers was doing in her mocking tone, which her moniker “Mockers” clearly is well earned, was basically turning this assassination attempt of this treacherous Ukrainian — responsible, as we’re now told, for much of the organisation of the so-called Wagner military arm of the Russian military and their activities until they were destroyed by Ukraine in Bakhmut — their activities in Africa. She turned it into a morality tale, all relating to the allegation that he was visiting somebody who was not his wife at the time that he was shot several times.

That struck me as being archetypal infolklore, in the sense of folklore — the folklore we encountered as children — which often had a message in it, a moral message and an identity and action point: don’t go into the forest, don’t go to the seashore, don’t fall into the swimming pool, all of these things.

Infolklore and Disinfolklore: The Divine Twins

What Mockers was illuminating there was a perfect example of infolklore. When I first coined the term disinfolklore, I didn’t really think of the term infolklore. In fact, I’ve really only been developing it since these radio shows — this is our 37th by my count.

Basically, infolklore spoke for itself until around 2014–2015. What I now call infolklore and disinfolklore — immanences in the news, immanences in our general culture, in the kinds of stories which we exchanged to manifest our interest in our community — news, whether local or national — they were balanced.

I won’t go quite as far as an Adam Smith situation where I talk about the unseen hand of God balancing out infolklore and disinfolklore. However, there was a relative balance between them.

The Internet Research Agency and the Disruption of Balance

Then what happened in 2014–2015, not least because of the Internet Research Agency, which Putin’s — the person, the character, the disinfolklore character I call the Chef Sorcerer (as in sauce, as distinct from the Chief Sorcerer, as in magician or magus) — meant somewhat ironically for Duncy Putin, who never seems to learn from his mistakes.

The Chef Sorcerer’s financing of the Internet Research Agency and their interference in the 2016 presidential election and in the Brexit referendum through Cambridge Analytica and all of that malarkey — that upset this balance.

I wouldn’t have needed to invent the word disinfolklore if I hadn’t seen its power to change the identities of people inside Russia’s occupation of Ukraine, to turn Ukrainians into thinking they were Russians, to turn your favourite aunt into someone who may now be supporting somebody who engaged in the most horrendous crimes against Mexican children trafficked over the bo