Originally published via The Daily Bell:
Tik Tokers, many of whom are barely out of adolescence, serve as the latest conscripts in the corporate state’s information war. Their assigned task is to push its literal wars on their impressionable Gen Z audiences — whether kinetic (in Ukraine) or biomedical (using COVID terror):
“On Thursday afternoon, 30 top TikTok stars gathered on a Zoom call to receive key information about the war unfolding in Ukraine. National Security Council staffers and White House press secretary Jen Psaki briefed the influencers about the United States’ strategic goals in the region and answered questions on distributing aid to Ukrainians, working with NATO and how the United States would react to a Russian use of nuclear weapons.”
Meet Tik Tok superstar Jules Terpak. When she’s not attending cyber meetings with the White House press secretary and national security advisors (see below), Terpak mostly produces content that’s a weird hodgepodge of vapid Cosmopolitan-style pop-culture clickbait and pseudo-intellectual commentary on tech and the digitization of social life such as:
- beauty filters and the intersectional tyranny of beauty standards or whatever
- The return of low-rise jeans
- sponsored Bill Gates bootlicking to promote carbon-offset apps where you can “donate” $15/month to go “carbon-neutral” (the Catholic Church used to operate the same scam when it sold so-called “indulgences” to the peasants in a pay-for-play scheme to access heaven. Back to the Dark Ages we go!)
- [unironically] decrying “ideology as poison” wherein she quote-mines Terence McKenna (how dare she insult my psychedelic guru! )and pretends to understand the nuances of modern political discourse
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Props to her, at least, or charting out a new lane in terms of the mix of content.
Side note: Scrolling through her videos, notice how she employs the classic Ben Shapiro technique of speaking super fast so as to create the impression of depth and expertise. By design, the viewer doesn’t have time to process her nonsense before she moves onto the next thing, with the intended effect of the viewer just throwing his (or her, or zher) hands up in dialectic surrender.
Via Breaking Points, and interview in which Terpak discusses her infatuation with WH Press Secretary Jen Psaki and her excitement at being invited to join her digital Ministry of Truth Pravda-style team:
- 03:00, “The White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was there… Jen Psaki was like ‘I heard about this and I wanted to jump in’ which of course, that’s pretty cool” (cringe)
Right off the bat, the fact that Terpak was so shamelessly enamored with Jen Psaki’s appearance (read all about what’s wrong with Psaki and her propaganda “press briefings”) is a giant red flag.
- 03:34, “Throughout the entire thing they were actually kind of going to three key points, circling back within every question, kind of pushing them. So the first was of course that they want to deescalate the situation and basically that all decisions are being made based off of the want to put an end to this war as soon as possible. The second was more so that $250 million in aid has been sent over the past two weeks… so that’s economic, military, and humanitarian. And the third point that they continued to push was that obviously Russia is having a harder time than they anticipated… They kept going back to those three key points.”
(conditioning by repetition, classic indoctrination technique)
- 07:10, the interviewer asks her about how the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” are weaponized by powerful corporate state actors at the highest levels of White House staff to silence critics, and how she views that fact in light of the context of the Ukraine war.
Terpak clearly does not have the background knowledge to process and answer the question coherently, which would be fine if she just acknowledged she was out of her depth honestly. But instead, she goes off on a string of unintelligible talking points that Psaki or some national security apparently whispered in her ear like a serpent. She muddles through about a half-minute going on about “depictions of violence, ‘subjective morale,’ … something, something, TikTok comments section,” and never coming close to answering the admittedly difficult question.
- 09:00, the interviewer attempts to rephrase the question more directly, albeit still gently: “How do you prevent yourself from just being used as a talking point receptacle? It’s easy to say ‘oh my gosh Jen Psaki’s here, I’m just going to repeat whatever she says’…”
Terpek again delivers a self-unaware, incoherent talking points word salad: “All of these [TikTok influencers] are very much … independent thinkers… At the end of the day, like, just still approaching this White House briefing and the information we learned there as you would every day with the content on the platform… and it also pushes back on you if you’re not putting the correct information out there.”
- Here’s the kicker at 12:00:
“I grew up watching like NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams… so, like, when I was watching NBC Nightly News, I always associated with Brian Williams… I have been getting a lot more respect for legacy media over the past year.”
Yikes!
How long until Jules gets a job as a talking head on MSNBC? Or Fox News, for that matter – there’s not much of a difference anymore, especially when it comes to consensus-engineering to start new wars. Wars for geopolitical interests they don’t understand (and that other people’s kids die in) are catnip to corporate media people.
Without a hint of self-awareness, Terpak claims that Russia’s big military problem in Ukraine is “soldier morale because they don’t necessarily understand why they’re invading fully” – the implication being that Slay Queen Psaki and the propaganda team she assembled, with Jules playing a starring role, not only understands the nuances of the Russian invasion but is committed to conveying to their audiences the objective truth free of an agenda.
Here she dinging the irony meter is in a separate TikTok video uploaded to her channel:
“Gen Z is particularly great at giving misinformation more reach… Every single day, I see people falling for false narratives that could change their entire worldview.”
False narratives altering worldviews, huh?
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Terpak offers the definitive takeaway in distorted media representations of reality: “Basically it’s just a mess on all human levels,” she concludes.
Truer words were never spoken.
For sure, this Tik Toker’s valley girl vocal aesthetic (where the confusing upward inflection concluding every declarative statement, like, makes it sound like a question?) and her obvious naiveté and ignorance regarding US foreign policy are mockable.
But, really, overall, the whole situation is really just sad.
Terpak apparently means well, and appears to genuinely believe that she’s doing something noble partnering with the White House digital propaganda all-star team. She comes off as more personable and level-headed than most internet narcissists.
In reality, she’s being used as what Lenin called a “useful idiot” – in this case, an internet personality with a large following who can be counted on to repeat government talking points with an official-sounding digital meeting with Slay Queen Jen Psaki.
We no longer live in a serious world. Spare yourself from Biden muddling through future Congressional addresses — the current State of the Union is: totally fucked beyond repair. Let use predicate the creation of a breakaway parallel society on this reality, and the desperate need to restore sanity.
“Give it up for working stiffs
And those who sell their bodies time and future
The popular people who can shout and spread
A catchy rationalization
Let’s have a cheer for androids, robots,
Servants and their masters
‘Blind leading the blind’ and ‘slavery is freedom.’
…Of course someone asks are they still victims if
They never realize it?”
-NOFX, Pimps and Hookers
Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose, Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter. Please support his independent operations however you can.
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