Crowds On Demand: How Money Can Be Used to Create Illusions

My first trip to Las Vegas was in 1991. I'd gone to attend a trade show on trade shows at Bally's Convention Center. It was highly informative. For two days my boss and I attended workshops and walked the show floor, absorbing everything we could learn. 

One thing we observed was there seemed to be three pricing tiers in the booth business, just like McDonald's, except that instead of 1, 2 and 5 dollar prices, these structures were priced 5, 50 and 200.... thousands. If you had the money, there was no limit to how much you could spend once you had consultants and architects paid off.

In a similar vein, there was a wide variety of talent you could purchase for your show booth. There are national organizations with models who you can hire for the duration of your show. Kelly Girls is one such organization, but an internet search will unearth others. There are also magicians you can hire to draw crowds. Who doesn't enjoy a good magic show? This is where the "almost famous" end up, I suspect. 

There are also look-a-likes of famous people whom you can rent to work your booth. A smiling Michael J. Fox stepped over and shook my hand. A veritable twin. Same voice and mannerisms, too. Ever wonder what an actors' doubles do when the actor is not working? Yep. You can probably rent him to attract people to your booth. And for a price, you can even have the real person, if you have the bucks.

All these memories came to mind when I saw an email this week about a company called Crowds On Demand. Having been an extra in a Hollywood film, I'm aware that when movies need lots of people for crowd scenes they have systems in place to recruit them. Were you aware that there are systems in place for manufacturing crowds in real life? 

Here's their sales pitch:

"Are you looking to create a buzz anywhere in the United States? At Crowds on Demand, we provide our clients with protests, rallies, flash-mobs, paparazzi events and other inventive PR stunts. These services are available across the country in every major U.S city, every major U.S metro area and even most smaller cities as well. We provide everything including the people, the materials and even the ideas. You can come to us with a specific plan of action and we can make it happen. OR, you can approach us with a general idea and we can help you plan the strategy then execute it."
https://crowdsondemand.com/

Next I learned about another group called Demand Protest. Here's info gleaned from their site.

We are strategists mobilizing millennials across the globe with seeded audiences and desirable messages. With absolute discretion a top priority, our operatives create convincing scenes that become the building blocks of massive movements. When you need the appearance of outrage, we are able to deliver it at scale while keeping your reputation intact.

Demonstrations

We develop, recruit, manage, and execute on your high-level objectives. Our trained operatives can lead entire crowds or simply steer events in your favor.

Movements

We have the proven expertise required to expertly shape political, corporate, or public health perceptions.

Intelligence

Our operatives can embrace and steer existing organizations, providing you valuable insights about those involved and their future actions.

Training

Our strategists can train your organization in our methods of creating effective demonstrations and design the situations that will deliver your goals.

Website: www.demandprotest.com

https://www.demandprotest.com/?fbclid=IwAR0A6p6AmfcudnVvNIlJCdcziBZ3seSf_b1e2H1CoCC2-ROz9BIye3vXeOs

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When I was growing up I remember being told, "Don't believe everything you hear." When the Internet came along, we were told, "Don't believe everything you read on the Net." As time went on, online misinformation was given a name: Fake News.

The purpose of these two sayings was to encourage a healthy skepticism and critical thinking. To these I'll add a third, attributed to Edgar Allen Poe. "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see."

When we read about these two groups--Crowds On Demand, and Demand Protest--it ought to cause us to question the things we're seeing in real life. What is really happening? Who is manipulating whom? When you see protests, are they spontaneous or organized? If organized, what's the real agenda?

Both of these organizations claim to be skilled at influencing public opinion. That is how they set their prices. Purportedly they are able to deliver on their promises. 

When we take a closer look, over the last 80 years U.S. clandestine activities have included similar hocus pocus shenanigans. On this topic much has been written and more can be said. As we following stories in the news, let's make an effort to be a little more discerning regarding what we swallow. As George Harrison once noted, "You know that what you eat your are // but what is sweet now turns so sour." 

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Related Link

He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People

Photo at top of page by Rob Curran on Unsplash

The original blog post here was published in November 2020. I republished with a new ending because I noticed some recent stories in the news about Crowds on Demand.

A Message from The Twilight Zone: People Are Alike All Over

I've recently been watching episodes of the old Twlight Zone series which first aired in 1959 and ran for many seasons. Last night I saw an episode that brought to mind a real life incident from a century ago. But first, the fictional tale from the Twlight Zone: "People Are Alike All Over." 

In this story two astronauts, Sam Conrad and Warren Marcusson, embark on a mission to Mars. When they crash land on the planet, Marcusson dies, but before he passes away he reassures Conrad that people are alike everywhere, implying they will find kindness and hospitality on Mars.

When their spaceship crash lands, Conrad is alone, a stranger in a strange land. When the Martians open the spacecraft door, however, they are very human looking, and quite friendly. They provide him with a luxurious home that is surprisingly similar to those on Earth. Briefly all seems well, but then Conrad discovers that his new home is actually a cage in a Martian zoo, and he is the exhibit. He opens the drapes and sees a crowd standing there enjoying this new specimen for display. The sign in front of his barred window reads Earthling in His Natural Habitat.

What's ironic is that this really is the way  people are here on earth. The incident I noted in paragraph one is the story of Ota Benga, which I wrote about in February 2019. Ota Benga was a pygmy from the African bush country who had been brought to North America as a sideshow. He was taken first to St. Louis to be displayed in the 1904 World's Fair there, and then to the Bronx Zoo in 1906. Ota Benga was an immediate sensation. His home was in the monkey house. 

It's a true story which you can read more about here: 

Ota Benga Story Challenges Our Illusions About How Enlightened We Are 

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EdNote: It's amusing how space travel was portrayed on TV in the late 1950s. Whether it be Mars or the surface of an asteroid, our space adventurers always seemed to have air to breathe. 

Media-Perpetrated Illusions: Crafting Perceptions and Shaping Realities

Can you believe your eyes?

The line segments are identical.

Amazing how perceptions are distorted by contexts.
The middle circles are the same size.

In today's world, the media holds unparalleled influence over public perception and opinion. The power of the media to shape narratives and construct realities can be both enlightening and deceptive. (And smetimes deoressing.) Media-perpetrated illusions refer to the deliberate or unintentional crafting of misleading or distorted representations of reality. These illusions can have profound effects on societal beliefs, behaviors, and decision-making processes.

One of the most common methods through which media perpetrates illusions is through framing. Framing involves presenting information in a particular way to influence how it is interpreted. It happens all the time.

Selective reporting, or the emphasis on certain stories while ignoring others, is another way the media creates illusions. By choosing which events to cover and which to omit, media organizations can steer public attention and concern. Even though I'm only an occasional listener I've noticed that not a day goes by without NPR broadcasting a story about climate change, always underscoring the impending doom that lies ahead if we fail to take drastic action immediately. Seldom will you hear about the risks or consequences of taking many of those drastic actions. 

Illusion on the floor of the Florence Cathedral

Media can also create the illusion of consensus, where a particular viewpoint is presented as overwhelmingly accepted, even if there is significant opposition or debate. How many times do we hear that "a majority" of women or blacks or Republicans or Red State voters are in favor of this or that. It may only 51% but it is a majority. Never mind that had the question been asked differently, the majority would have supported a contrary position.

Most issues are more nuanced than presented. But you'd never know it the way some issues are discussed, whether it be renewable energy, illegal immigration, poverty, crime, EVs or late-term abortion.

It's no wonder that the masses are uninformed or misinformed, especially when we repeatedly hear or read discredited fake news. I long ago concluded that the real conflict today is the clash between narratives, hence my essay "He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People." 

It takes work to stay informed and none of us can say we're up to speed on every issue in every field of study. The world is far too vast for that. And, as with the visual illusions at the top of this page*, sometimes we can't even trust our own eyes. 

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*Source: Vaclav Smil's Size: How It Explains the World

The Birth of Both Sci Fi and SFX: A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès

Moon shot is a direct hit.

It's probably one of the most memorable scenes in movie history (right) from the 1902 sci-fi spectacle A Trip the the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la Lune). But how much do you know about this historic film and its director Georges Méliès? If you're like me, probably very little.

Here are several factoids and some of the connections they triggered for me.

Georges Méliès was a groundbreaking film maker who pioneered story telling in the new visual medium of motion pictures. Before Méliès films, moving pictures would show a horse prancing or a train rushing past, all new and exciting in 1900 but nothing substantive. The French director, however, carried the medium to a new level as a method of telling stories and A Trip to the Moon, at just under 13 minutes, in length really is quite a tale.

Méliès was a true original, like Stanley Kubrick, but also the antithesis. If we begin with The Killing, Kubrick's output from 1956 to 1999 was eleven feature films. By way of contrast, the French director produced 520 films.

The novels of Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, were influential catalysts for A Trip to the Moon. According to The Village Voice, this film has been placed on the list of 100 Greatest Films of the 20th Century. (In 1902 it was probably the greatest.)

Like Alfred Hitchcock, the director Méliès frequently appears in many of his films. By "many" I mean 300, and in this film he is the leading character, Professor Barbenfouillis.

When I watched this first scene, in which a pandemonium ensues, it was impossible not to recognize an echo of a similar scene that occurs in Woody Allen's Zelig in which a pandemonium takes place with papers being tossed and a chaotic hubbub following. It seems obvious that Allen was tipping his hat to "pay tribute" to this earlier work.

The film begins with a meeting of professorial astronomers who are each given telescopes so as to turn their attention to the moon. A team is selected and the next scene shows a giant cannon aimed skyward. The astronomer-explorers seal themselves into a space capsule shaped like a large bullet, which a half dozen women push into the cannon.

The bullet is a bull's eye... making its famous splat into the eye of the man in the moon.

The travelers are tired when they arrive and lay down to catch a little rest, but there's goddesses or beings who dislike the intruders and send snow and cold, which wakens them and drives them underground. Under the moon's surface is a race of Selenites who get turned to dust when struck by the professor's umbrella.

The drama doesn't result in any nail-biting, but it's great fun. Eventually our pioneer adventurers make it back home, even without the use of a cannon to shoot them off the moon.

In addition to playing the role of Professor Barbenfouillis, Méliès was also director, producer, writer, designer, technician, publicist and editor, wearing an even wider variety of hats than Orson Welles on Citizen Kane.

Ready... Aim...  In a moment they'll be moonward bound.

Méliès, who was born in 1861, came of age at a time when illusionists and magicians were capturing the imagination. He became became a stage magician for a spell, which later played a role in his development of special effects in film making. He invented splicing techniques, multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color. He was also one of the first filmmakers to use storyboards.*

Sometimes we never know how our early experiences will play out later in our careers. For example, Steve Jobs shared how during his brief stint in college he took a calligraphy class. The result was that he wanted the computer he created to be able to have beautiful fonts and not just a typewriter look. Méliès' early fascination with illusions most certainly played a role in his own development as a movie maker.

If you've never seen A Trip to the Moon, here's your chance to catch a glimpse of movie history.

Related Links
Film History # 1
Le Voyage dans la lune

* Wikipedia

Both Sides Now

"Both Sides Now" is one of Joni Mitchell's most famous songs. Written in 1967 the song began to get covered by other artists almost immediately from Judy Collins and Dave Von Ronk to showmen like Frank Sinatra and Robert Goulet. The song ranks as #171 on Rolling Stone's list of all-time greatest songs.

The  appeal of the song is undoubtedly due in part to its simplicity and universality. Who among us has not experienced the emotions that accompany optimism toward love and life, and the subsequent disillusionment and despair. Mitchell's concise cycle-of-life story is presented in beautifully painful prose.

According to Wikipedia the catalyst that set Joni Mitchell's pen in motion was the experience of reading a passage about clouds while in a plane flying over the clouds herself. The poet penned lines that dance, the imagery so apt. "Row and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air and feathered canyons everywhere..."

But now, looking at clouds from another angle, they only block the sun. Who hasn't experienced this? The grey, the chill of our sun's warmth being blocked.... and the epiphany: "I really don't know clouds at all."

This is the pattern. We see. We think we understand. Then we see more and realize the smallness of our understanding.

In the second section of the song she turns her attention to love and the "dizzy dancing way you feel" when under its spell. But like clouds there's a dark side and in the end "it's love's illusions I recall, I really don't know love at all," she sings.

The final section repeats the pattern, with the subject being life.

Mitchell was 24 years old when she recorded this song.

Both Sides Now

Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way

But now it's just another show
You leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know
Don't give yourself away

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say "I love you" right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I've looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living every day

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

© 1967 Gandalf Publishing Co.

Judy Collins' more familiar version of the song has an airy upbeat quality that doesn't entirely correspond to the melancholy conveyed by Mitchell's lyrics. Here is a version sung later in life by Joni Mitchell herself.

Trivia: Both Joni Mitchell and Neil Young were afflicted with polio in Canada's 1951 polio outbreak just before Jonas Salk discovered the vaccine that bears his name. She was eight, he was five.