Moving beyond "Reputation"--the Market View of Reality

[David Honig]

At 08:18 AM 12/1/01 -0800, georgemw at speakeasy.net wrote:
>On 30 Nov 2001, at 22:05, Petro wrote:
>> 	What makes you think a reputation cannot be bought and sold?
>> 	Ever hear of Public Relations firms? Politicians?
>> 	Both are in the business of buying and selling reputations.
>> 
>
>Not exactly.  You can pay a PR firm to try and help improve
>your reputation, but that's not the same thing a reputation
>pre-assembled and gift wrapped.  Most likely they'll just tell you
>to wear more earth tones, which won't actually help.
>

George, Petro is *way* off here.  A PR firm/psyop division can only try to 
promote an opinion.  They cannot control others' estimations of 
their clients' reputations.  Consider a PR firm that fucks up.
A pile of little baby arms, to excerpt Coppola.

Yes, a good psyop operation can deny negative information,
promote the positive, and thereby influence the population.  
That is a matter of 
information flow & control; the reps (which are distributed
in the minds of subscribers) are not directly controlled.

I suggest recognizing the distinction between controlling
info and slant (psyops and Dan Rather and Turner and Murdoch, I 
don't actually follow that stuff) and controlling
reps which can't be done directly (but which can be measured).  

The fact that info & slant *can* influence distributed reps is why psyops
folks have jobs.

Finally the reps which can (or can't) be bought and sold (the
subject of an amazingly advanced thread, presently) is distinct from 
control of info and reps thereof.

Petro is unfortunately mixing 'selling-of-nym-reps' with 'PR's effect
of reps in a given population'.  With all due respect.