I don’t know why I thought of it this morning, but I started reading up on honeypots. Honeypot is computer jargon for a computer system or network which is designed intentionally to attract hackers. Basically, it masquerades as the type of weak or vulnerable system which hackers usually exploit. The purpose of it, though, is usually just to gather information about the hackers - namely their methods, and if possible their identities.

They may also be set up as a diversion to keep hackers away from more important machines on a network, and also as an early-warning system. It acts sort of like a canary in a coal-mine, being able to detect attacks ahead of the rest of the system. Honeypot websites may also be set up to do things like catch child pornographers also.

I often like to take computer concepts like this and try to apply them in a broader cultural context. So I started thinking about if you were going to set up a “cultural honeypot,” what would that mean? Probably, you would want to attract people who are “culture-hackers.” That is, people who are non-conformist thinkers, who enjoy digging deeply into things and breaking them open.

So how would you set up a honeypot which would allow you to attract and analyze them and their methods? You’d basically have to set something up which masqueraded as the type of cultural riddle which they like to crack. The best example I can think of is probably conspiracy theories.

Culture-hackers tend to be people who are able to see the nuts and bolts (the underlying “code”) both of how things happen, and how they are reported in the media. Take my previous post about “hostage slaughterhouses” as a textbook example. You could either look at it as paranoid ramblings, or you could look at it from a culture-hacking perspective, as me perceiving a weakness in a story, and trying to hack it open. Really heavy conspiracy websites take this sort of thing to the extreme. Every little thing that happens is subjected to intense scrutiny, trying to locate and analyze flaws, and somehow exploit or expose them. Culture-hackers are also like the provebial canary in the coalmine, in that they will spot trends and problems ahead of the general population.

So if I was some kind of weird PR company or a government agency trying to influence public opinion, I would totally set up some kind of network of conspiracy theorists, complete with websites, lectures, email discussion lists, books, videos, you name it. I would then study the shit out of the people who were attracted to it. I would gather demographic data, and I would analyze their thought processes and emotional responses. I would then use this information to engineer better-designed news stories, press releases, publicity stunts, and the like. Ones which would be more hack-proof. Simultaneously to studying them, I would also flood the people I was studying with vast amounts of erroneous data to sift through in order to distract them from the more important and more straightforward cultural trends and events that are going on.

The other benefit this type of conspiracy-honeypot network would have is that you could release real true information through it which you didn’t want to ever have enter the mainstream. Just dress it up in some conspiratorial trappings. Since these stories or facts would be perceived as originating from “conspiracy theorists” then it would be immediately discredited by the culture-at-large. It’s that old idea about how the best place to hide is in plain sight.

I wonder if any of this really happens, because it seems like it would be very effective.