Not to defend these particular criminals, but it's worth considering what actually happened in historical witch-hunts (that is, where people were looking for what they thought were actual witches). Thousands of innocent people were manipulated/forced/tortured into "pleading guilty" in real witch hunts, and all of their confessions were fake - not a single person convicted of witchcraft in history was guilty.

Flynn, Gates, etc, are guilty.

I didn't even know what a red band trailer was until "How Movie Trailers Manipulate You".

It's called advertising - it's supposed to manipulate you.

Your video, How Movie Trailers Manipulate You, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 24 Badge!

Who believes this shit? Trump supporters, and that is near 35% of the voting population. They may not buy into it happening in 72 hours, but they do think this is a religious war, and that Christianity is under attack, and that Trump is appointed by God to lead this country back to being a Christian nation and all us evil Liberals are fighting the will of God. This is the thing most people on the left don't understand. They don't realize how deeply personal and holy this thing is for the right. Everyone just keeps seeing all the trip ups that Trump does, and thinks, "Blue Wave!" but those trip ups energize his base, and help guarantee they'll be out in fore come November. They are being manipulated by Fox, talk radio and their churches to believe all this stuff. Remember, his supporters supported a child molester in Louisiana over a Democrat, because they think Democrats are that truly evil. Just watch a bit of TBN, watch Jim Baker, watch Fox News... just begin to imagine that this sort of stuff is what you absorb all day every day, this is what you are being fed in church, this is what your social media circles are feeding you. You'll begin to see, this isn't that far out there, this is what they think is happening. They think we are in the end times, and Trump is our last hope against the Anti-Christ, even though he and the GOP are EVERYTHING the Bible warned us the Anti-Christ would be like... it's insane. I'm surrounded at home, at work... all over by these types.

O! and, sorry 'bout the manipulative title...I was feeling punchy.

Congratulations! Your video, IMPORTANT! YOU ARE BEING MANIPULATED!!!, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

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I would like to thank the Sift. I would NEVER be fed this on any social media, youtube, etc. (not on Facebook, never have, FIGHT THE POWER)

Even though the the upvote/downvote part is not unlike the manipulation they're talking about, at least I get content that isn't in my bubble. A bubble I'm more and more convinced is being forced on me, not because I'm afraid of being wrong or of change.

Your video, IMPORTANT! YOU ARE BEING MANIPULATED!!!, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 5 Badge!

heretic, my concerns with the account being unused until extremely recently relate to the problem of trolls. It isn't uncommon for aged / unused accounts to a site to be sold for the sake of lending an appearance of authenticity to a user with negative intentions. Your account being a full 3 years old with no visible activity until now made me think you could simply be a troll, looking to foment discord. Videosift has a fairly pronounced agnostic / secular bias, so this is exactly the sort of topic a troll account could easily manipulate to cause arguing.

Having seen your subsequent comments in this thread, I'm fairly confident you're not a troll. Still seems odd to me you waited this long to put the account to any evident sort of use, but that's certainly not a problem in and of itself. Hell, my account is over 11 years old with thousands of votes and hundreds of comments, and I've not bothered to upload a user pic.

Krishnan proposed "They think they're manipulating me, but I know what I'm doing".

To gain a better understanding of how this is possible, watch this great video about AI that ant posted:

https://videosift.com/video/Do-You-Trust-This-Computer-Documentary

Saying that you can handle the attempts to manipulate you would be like the world's chess, poker and go champions saying they can handle their AI challengers.

In reality, AI doesn't just beat them at their games, it now completely destroys them with ease. Statistically affecting your worldview is a much easier task.

If there is an opportunity to manipulate people, there will be plenty of people/ organizations to take advantage of this.

I gotta say I don't like throwing that at these guys because it gives them an actual defense. Their behavior and actions are indefensible and evil. Don't give them the chance to drum up support from other more sane people who believe:
1.Life begins at conception/fetuses are human
2.Execution of people who've committed sufficiently horrific crimes is justifiable

There's lots of people that believe those 2 things, but can still be 100% on board with condemning the awful, manipulative evil of Bakker and co.

I'm very big on religious freedom, but the depths of emotional exploitation, deceit and manipulation of this entire program should be criminal. We recognize other kinds of con jobs and convict for it, this crew should be too.

Religious freedom should start getting cut off when you preach the necessity of giving the speaker your money in exchange for what they will do for you. Giving to a charity that will go on to help others is one thing, it's another to pay money to get someone to promise you their 'blessing', prayers, or even financial rewards that will metaphysically be manifest in return.

I'm in the "who cares?" camp.

If you're gonna be mad about studio tricks, why even stop there?

How about multiplying vocals for harmonic effect, speeding up or slowing down the vocals, echoes, fades, etc etc etc?

And why stop at vocals? Instrumentation and arrangements are manipulated in tons of "unrealistic" ways as well.

Production is an art in itself. I consider is as one of the ingredients, together with the "organic" stuff," in the stew which is the final recordeding.