Some of you are likely familiar with the term DDOS as it applies to computers and networks today. It is a common thing these days for such an attack to take down sites on the internet temporarily, or to clog routers at some parts of the internet.

Source: giphy.com

Today I was having a discussion with some friends/coworkers and was teasing one about a brain eating amoeba. My boss responded asking if I was sure I wasn't talking about the media. I responded by saying that I think the media might be closer to a DDOS attack.

Then I thought about it. Right now life can feel like a DDOS attack. Our brains are daily being slammed with so many signals. This also is a new way to consider some propaganda techniques. Mainly I am referring to repetition. Repeat a lie enough and it eventually becomes true. I see it daily in most of the media. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat. The thing is that in a rational world this constant repetition is not really necessary unless it is for propaganda purposes. The things that are repeated generally are not backed by any sources that can be verified, challenged, etc. They are opinion/speculation passed as fact. They are repeated over and over again often with some highly charged emotional context and people suck it in and often if they are not aware what is happening their minds are overwritten with a new TRUTH that actually was not true at all.

So I see this as resembling a Distributed Denial of Service attack coupled with perhaps a Buffer Overflow. For those of you not familiar with DDOS. The idea is that you have multiple computers and devices at DIFFERENT locations (thus distributed) blast a single target with requests. Have them do this rapidly. If you do this from enough machines at the same time then eventually you will begin to exceed the internet bandwidth/capacity for the target site. It will become increasingly unresponsive. It is not DOWN as it is actually running still, but it is so flooded with requests that it might as well be down and the requests that it does manage to process might be really slow. In fact they get so slow that most machines that decide the site is down do so simply because a response took too long. The site is still up, but it is so over saturated with requests that it is taking far too long to respond to legitimate requests.

So does this describe the media and their assault on our minds?

As to the buffer overflow. In computer terminology a program could hold so much data as it comes in that it will process as fast as it can. Yet sometimes that is more information than the location that was set aside to handle it. You could picture this like a hallway outside of a door. People line up inside the hallway and then the door opens and the next person in line is processed. This hallway would be similar to a BUFFER and it can only hold so many people. So a buffer overflow occurs when more information was sent to the buffer than it was designed to handle. Depending upon the code and how it was written it often will just drop that information, however sometimes that buffer is simply a pointer in computer memory. So even though it is too much it splats it down. That is like more people than that hallway can hold getting dropped instantly into place... they OVERFLOW into adjoining rooms, etc.

Source: giphy.com

Sometimes this flaw can be used as an exploit so you can intentionally overlfow a buffer and have it so the data that flows over into adjoining areas can end up written in an executable area. You can use this to make the target computer run programs it did not intend to run.

So the media and propaganda could also be looked at in those terms. They are pounding people relentlessly and trying to overflow your buffer so they can reprogram your mind.

That might be the only thing I get to ramble about today. I'll be racking up some servers and such today.

EDIT: And I have a typo in the tag philosophy, but I cannot correct that at this point.

Steem On!