How perception is used for deception in promoting pseudoscience and conspiracy theories

Perception is one of the most commonly used tools of advertisers. If done correctly it can be used to sell a person a product or an idea, even if it's something they do not want or need. All you need is an image combined with some information (factual or not) that catches a person's eye and makes them interested in whatever is being sold which ultimately leads them to buying whatever it is that is being sold.

Promoters of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories know this as well, and will often times create pictures on the internet of images coupled with text in an attempt to get you to "buy" whatever claims that they are making.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

Looks nice, doesn't it? The pretty, smiling young woman that catches your eye and causes you to read whatever it is that the picture says and perhaps even gets you to try or believe whatever it is that the text is saying, which in this case is an advertisement to get people to try out Earthing.

This is an example of using positive images inorder to fool people into believing that something that isn't true. In this case it the original creator wants you to believe that Earthing works.

Now lets take a look at this next picture, courtesy of Illuminutti.com:

Not as nice looking as the previous picture, is it?

Except for the photo in the bottom left side of the page, everything else about this picture is exactly the same as the one above this one.

Most people probably would not have bothered to read the text on the second picture due to the shear fact that they would be to disgusted by the photo to bother read the text. Even if a person did read the text they probably wouldn't try Earthing in the first place out of shear fear of ending up like that guy.

This is ofcourse why the creators of the first photo wouldn't use such a photo. They know that such a photo would probably make a person sick to their stomach and not even bother to read the text, more or less be even interested in Earthing.

Ofcourse while positive images work very well in promoting pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, negative images can often have the same impact, if not more so than positive images if it's done right:

Now for many people if they saw something like that and then read the text they would probably never eat any GMO foods again, and they probably wouldn't bother to do any research into the claims either. They would just see the image and be to scared to actually investigate what the text is saying, which is probably what the creators of that picture intended it to cause people do.

The fact is that anytime you see stuff like this on the internet you should always question the claims being made, and always assume that whomever made it is trying to screw with your perception inorder to deceive you and get you to to believe them without questioning their claims.

I am Anti-Organic Foods

Anyone whom has read this blog is probably aware that I don't like the Anti-GMO movement. I find the movement to be highly deceptive and uses propaganda and fear mongering in order to get people to buy "organic" food, and to reject all GMO foods no matter what.

Normally in spite their BS I would still have bought and eaten organic foods, not because I believed it was healthier for you (although I admit I at one time I did believe that) but because it tasted a little better, but now knowing more facts about the Anti-GMO movement and the extremes that they have gone to, and about organic food and it's sustainability, as well as the organic food industry itself, I can no longer consciously buy and/or eat organic foods. To put it bluntly I am now Anti-Organic Foods, and I have several reasons (besides what I just what said here) why.

My first and foremost reasons for why I am now Anti-Organic Foods is because of the Anti-GMO movement itself and what it's highly deceptive propaganda and fear mongering has done, which is to cause governments around the world to pass completely moronic Anti-GMO laws that is based off of fear rather than legitimate science, and has at times because of these laws hampered research into GMO foods, and to cause normally intelligent to reject GMO foods without any reason other than what lies the Anti-GMO movement has told them.

Another reason why I am now Anti-Organic Foods is because of the deaths that have been caused by the Anti-GMO movement and their propaganda, particularly in developing in certain developing countries where the leaders of those countries actually rejected food donations because they were lead to believe (most notably by Greenpeace) that the food may have contain GMO foods and was (according to these Anti-GMO groups) poisonous. This type of deception has resulted in thousands of deaths, and possibly more.

My third reason why I have rejected organic foods is because of the physical destruction caused by the Anti-GMO movement, particularly of experimental GMO food crops due to the perception that these crops were dangerous. This destruction has caused millions of dollars worth of damage, not to mention the lose of valuable research data. The fact that many Anti-GMO groups (including Greenpeace) often praise this destruction, and have been accused of directly or indirectly responsible of being the cause of such destruction only makes the whole Anti-GMO movement look so much worse to me.

Now my fourth reason for rejecting organic foods isn't because of the Anti-GMO movement, but because of organic foods itself.

Organic foods are luxury foods. That's all they are. They are not any healthier or better for you, they just taste better. They won't solve the world's food supply problems, and infact will make them worse due to organic foods having lower crop yields than GMO crops, and also not being able to be grown in as many places as GMO crops can.

Organic crops are also not as environmentally friendly as they're made out to be and require far more land to grow on than GMO crops do, and require far more pesticides inorder to keep insects away than GMO crops (and despite what you have been told a lot of farmers that grow organic foods actually do use pesticides, and lots of it).

My fifth reason for rejecting organic foods is because of the organic food industry itself, particularly with the self created perception that the organic food industry is a small and humble force. It is not.

Some of the farmers in the organic food industry might be small and humble, but the industry as a whole is a huge, multi-billion dollar industry (Whole Foods Market, one of the largest organic foods supermarkets, made over nine billion in 2010) so in my opinion it's very deceptive how the whole organic food industry has made itself out to be.

My final reason why I have rejected organic foods is because of the self imposed perception that organic foods are ethical.

In my opinion organic foods are not ethical. It's perceived ethicalness is based off of lies created by a group do-gooder no-nothings who believe that because something that is created by a multi-billion dollar corporation then it must be evil and dangerous. This type of belief has lead to both the creation of the most outrageous lies and have been the cause of many deaths, all inorder to force people to eat luxury foods.

Because of all this I have decided to avoid eating organic foods when and where I can. I just don't feel right eating something that is based off of lies.