The Wash Post blog on one of our “petitions” illustrates exactly a point that Ryan Holiday makes in his book Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator that Bob has recommended to us recently.

“Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed sent out an intriguing tweet yesterday with a link that I couldn’t resist clicking.”

That opening sentence of the Wash Post article is an example of what Holiday describes: you feed something to the low level blogs that higher level blogs customarily search for story leads, and your planted story can move up the chain to major media.

We didn’t have to plant that story, since the oddness of our message having appeared on the president’s site (and the need of media to publish, publish, publish something) was sufficient to launch it.

The petitions offer opportunities to use Holiday’s tricks. For example, we’ve noticed the anti-white petitions (one of them is on page 2 of that thread, and the 3-page thread is an entertaining read!) that have sometimes appeared that attack our own and (helpfully, lol!) focus on our own specific memes in particular as objects of their attacks.

If whoever’s been writing those continues, the rabid reaction of some SF’ers to them has illustrated the possibilities in planting stories in low level blogs about “the raging race war on President Obama’s website,” or whatever. As Holiday points out, most blogs are paid by their advertisers for page clicks, and so blogs are fiercely competitive in “being first” with a story and generally don’t have time or inclination to check sources.

I’ve noticed that those anti-white petitions take a long time to get their 150 sigs and become visible, so if they keep appearing it would be helpful if we could develop ways of helping get them up as quickly as we do our own, lest their author becomes discouraged! …let’s let him think he has some support… lol!

“Al Sharpton to ask Obama to block ‘White Genocide’ petitions from White House site. A close associate of Rev. Sharpton has reported that…”

Blogs like it if you write their stories for them.

But I think Holiday’s bag of tricks are going to take some finesse. I wouldn’t know right now what blogs are out there, which ones are good ones to feed to at the bottom of a chain, and exactly how to shape the tone and content of my communication to them so that they could at least pretend to themselves that what I’m offering them might be real. Do I just say, “I happen to know someone who is close to Al Sharpton…. I liked the report you did on….and I think your blog would be perfect for this story”?

I’ve hoped that in the months ahead I could begin to learn how to do some of Holiday’s stuff, but I really have no idea right now what I’ll be able to do or not do after a good long rest. Maybe what I’ve just written will spark interest and other ideas in some of you who already may be familiar with some blogs that could be used.

(While I’m thinking about getting ready to prepare to consider doing that, I can probably predict who may actually do it! )

Because this is what we want to achieve: MSNBC discusses White House White Genocide Petitions.