Here’s another good comment
Posted by Edward:
What I found extremely strange was the online popularity of the PL in the years leading up to the election. Personally, I still find it suspicious the way online polls seemed to favour the PL so much and in such a short time.
One could easily put it down to there being lots of people willing to suck up to the PL, but then again how would they know who clicked on what? Or maybe everyone is stupid?
Well, personally I think there is secret option number 3: the PL bought clicks and Facebook Likes from companies in places like Dhaka that specialise in fake fans and online popularity.
A simple Google search will lead you to websites where you can pay as little as $50 for 1000 Facebook Likes or YouTube hits in one day for example. Who knows what a little extra could get you?
Lots of fake Facebook profiles with pictures?
The opportunities are endless, as are the the clicks and Likes. So whenever you want an online poll to favour you, just give the man a call and within 24 hours you have your lead.
And can you imagine how the businessmen would have reacted? Seeing such a huge swell in PL’s popularity, they would have gone running to them.
This is a trick used by many, many businesses all over the world, and it works miracles. We also have heard many people talk about how Muscat runs the PL like a business, so I wouldn’t put it past him.
I have no actual proof that this is what they did, but I always suspected them of doing it.
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The Times comments board is wholly dominated by rabid Labourites too. One can hardy get a word in edgewise without the usual ranting.
It used to be the news site to go to, but it has really become a dump. What with the plummeting standards, the moronic comments board and the paywall nonsense it’s really not worth the bother anymore.
The Independent is not nearly as bad, but I sense the sharks gradually moving in for the kill. I hope it won’t be allowed to slide into inanity like the Times has.
Unless they bought votes in the same way, you are wrong, Edward. The PN has deluded the people in many ways and unless we are ready to admit that we will never wake up.
[Daphne – Edward is not at all wrong in his reasoning, and I speak as somebody who understands these things quite a bit. The Labour Party came to power on the back of a phenomenon called ‘the madness of crowds’. This is basically a temporarily sustained frenzy of enthusiasm during which normal judgement is suspended while we continue to believe we are thinking clearly. It builds up in adults in much the same way that ‘crazes’ take hold of children and teenagers. The build-up in enthusiasm feeds itself and spreads like wildfire.
The most famous historic example of this phenomenon is the ‘tulip mania’ that took hold of Holland in the early 17th century, which inspired the 19th century work Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Of course, yes, the conditions must be right for this to happen, but the frenzy must be started off and then it must be fed and sustained. Edward is quite right in suggesting that artificially building up popularity polls would have created precisely the right ‘wow, look what’s happening with Labour’ factor.
Popularity creates more popularity, and by starting out with artificial popularity you can create real popularity. When the fever breaks, it’s then too late. Already I know people who are embarrassed at having been carried away by the madness to the point where it affected their judgement. Now they are feeling: “What was I thinking?” Having taken that drunken liar on trust in 2008, because he came in a PN bag, I sympathise with them completely. I know how they feel.]
Mario, that’s what I thought too. But it works every time for any business.
Now let’s consider the logic: Malta before the election was doing extremely well considering the international crisis. Life in Malta hadn’t been as good for a very long time. The PN in government had opened so many doors, and the potential to go further was great. No wonder many PN voters thought misguidedly they would be in government forever. Why on Earth would anyone vote Labour when Labour had brought nothing but the total opposite. It’s like watching a student get A after A after A. There is no reason why it would stop.
But it did. The question is why? The buses? City Gate? Seriously? THAT is what people value so much? The reason why Labour have been out of government for so long was because of the rediculous state they had dragged Malta down to. Are the PN facing the same amount of time in opposition because of buses and a city gate project? Seriously?
It just doesn’t make sense.
But people have a fear of being left out of the winning team. And businessmen need to know who to favour in the next election just to cover their bases.
Faking hits, likes and clicks makes someone seem more popular than they really are, and so people follow suit.
Therefore, creating the illusion that the PL are popular sends panic down the spines of the businessmen, who rush to suck up to the new kid in town, and who also get their followers to do the same. Then the votes just cast themselves.
Mario if by “deluded the people” means not giving people whatever they wanted (as was clearly the case with JPO, Debono and Mugliett) than I am so glad the PN lost.
The madness of crowds phenomenon is as old as time and that book by Mackay is simply a topical read. The phenomenon provides explanation to many things from the macabre Roman arena slaughters, to the current Pamplona madness to more catastrophic things like the rise of Hitler. Some scholars are also attributing the recent international financial collapse to it.
Good observation, Edward.
Agree with Edward. I would also add pyramid schemes to the madness of crowds. I must confess I once took advantage of one. The glazed eyes, filled with greed, were a sight to behold.
That ploy was used to successfully put The Beatles on the map. A large number of teenage girls were paid to jam the front rows and scream and swoon at their initial performances, and then to mob them when the performance ended.
The whole charade then received similarly rigged media coverage.
The difference is that The Beatles actually were good. Joseph Muscat and the PL are not, and they have nothing to offer. The cracks in the facade showed from their first panicked day in government and they have been widening since.
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/01/joseph-muscat-holds-up-as-a-good-example-chinas-use-of-the-internet-against-foreign-manipulation/
For four years, we were told how everyone was ‘fed up’ of GonziPN, that it wasn’t the ‘real’ PN.
He had nothing to build on, only familiarity with the media. Both were his advantage.
The first thing he did was to meet the business community, that was two months after he became leader.
The amorphous mass forming had to be moulded, all he did, was follow a strict market build-up and time to implement.
Which he did, with the first ones to take up his gamble in his inner circle today.
It’s futile pointing out the number of gaffes, U-turns and impossibly daft language they’ve adopted since taking office.
Not at all slick compared with the wordplay, consistent mouldbreaking leaving arguments unanswered and textbook keyword exercises attenuating the utter lies.
Someone got paid and left.
Only time will tell Edward,but your theory is food for thought.
When a friend of mine first told me about this about a 2 years ago, I didn’t believe it was possible.
But then Channel 4 ran a documentary about it recently. You’d be surprised how easy it is.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/videos/all/celebs-brands-and-fake-fans-c4-mon-aug-05-8pm
Mario, the media played a major role during the last election.
All newspapers (with the exception of the ones owned by the Nationalist Party) were taken over by that ‘madness of crowds’ and approaching every story from the Labour angle.
And trust the Maltese to be ‘cool’ and act in droves. The word was that everybody was fed up with the PN and all were voting Labour. Or have you already forgotten the insipid ‘we need a change’ mantra, spoken by everyone from the most ignorant to the otherwise intelligent?
Manipulation on all fronts won the day. If we had to apply the logic and arguments used before the election to what this Labour administration has been up to, we should have had many resignations. But it will not happen.
Actually I had also thought along the same lines. Cast your memory on how all the PN accomplishments were not only played down, but almost pooh-poohed by the media. Take for example the EU funds, secured by Lawrence Gonzi. Compare that with the way the gallery was (is) played to whenever Labour appeared on stage:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100110/local/labour-pays-a-high-price-for-gigantic-l-istrina-cheque.289143
Notice the measly amount of comments (11) posted underneath.
Labour have (had?) got some good people in the backroom. Furthermore, the way they are rewarding all those who helped out will ensure their future loyalty. The PN, meanwhile, always took a perverse pleasure in rewarding its enemies, whilst ignoring its supporters.
I did notice that polls on timesofmalta.com would show a definite trend within the first few few hours and few hundred votes to then suddenly shift to favour Labour with a massive influx of votes. They must have been rather busy looking up proxy sites at Mile End or, as Edward suggests, Dhaka.
Mile End is Elve Central. They go back as far as Alfred Sant.
Edward, listen in: I’d hire you in a heartbeat.
What you described is cognitive warfare. It’s been around for ages, but it’s only been studied as a proper discipline since the mid-90s.
You’re not a graduate of the School of Economic Warfare, are you?
No, drama school. :P. The things literature can teach you are mind-blowing.
A fellow thespian?
I cracked the boards in my youth but I never really had it in my blood, and that’s what’s so essential, isn’t it? The theatrical zeal in the veins. Alas, I have little more than gin and memories.
While agreeing with Edward that such a tactic might have been adopted by the LP (and knowing what they’re made of, they surely did), I can confirm through my recent experience that if this was the case surely wasn’t their only major one.
Throughout recent years the NP was trying to empower fellow citizens to study and find careers under their own steam. This was being done on three fronts:
education (which was a success although criticised);
foreign investment(douze points for that);
and the most important of them all was the accession to the EU where citizens could now move freely throughout Europe with ease and understand how mature democracies (unlike ours) have evolved.
The latter would have been more appropriate if associated with the first.
In the last election campaign the Labour Party made the unprecedented move to approach Nationalist-leaning professionals (sometimes even personally) to help and/or contribute with the so-called road map to hell.
This must have aroused the contributors since the Nationalist Party never attempted such a move and they felt so important at the time that they even convinced their families to switch votes in exchange for an iced bun and a sense of the importance of being ‘in’, only to realise that they were taken for a ride all day long.
I can clearly recall when Alfred Sant pledged that he would eradicate VAT and soon after he won the election, Triq Aldo Moro was littered with cash registers. He introduced CET and poor old Joe had to go back and buy another one.
When Joseph Muscat hinted that the PN was tampering with the oil procurement, insinuating that the high energy bills were due to that fact, he promptly pledged that when he’s in power he will slash a quarter from our energy bills. This is a tell-tale sign that history is repeating itself.
The Labour people always failed to understand that politics is not about being in power. Politics is about those high-end tools which enable a society to move forward and not backwards.
Being able to master such tools doesn’t come only from academic achievements but more importantly from principles which one truly believes in and are definitely not tradable.
Buying Facebook Likes does not work in the medium to long term.
Edgerank, the algorithm that Facebook uses to push posts on the newsfeeds of readers, puts a lot of emphasis on posts which generate interest and engagement as a ratio of the number of users who like a page. People were commenting far more, sharing more and liking more on Gonzi’s page than Joseph Muscat’s, despite the fact that JM had around ten thousand more likes on his page.
Muscat probably had a few thousand fake page Likes on his page, but it didn’t help him get the message through. Then again, he had no message to get through to start with.
You need to see Edward’s comment in a wider context. Buying fake likes is only one aspect of what happened.
Muscat had five years and lots of resources to create the manic atmosphere that propelled him to power. One of those resources is the severe lack of critical thinking *outside* the tulip mania atmosphere.