How do you fight disinformation? With laughter. The Taiwanese government is no stranger to fighting disinformation: both from the Chinese government as well as domestic sources, particularly during the COVID-19 outbreak. They have deployed “memetic engineering” teams in each government department. They’re tasked to counter disinformation efforts using what they call a ‘humor over rumor’ approach. Each post follows the 2-2-2 template: 2 funny images, 200 words, 20 minute response time. Often these digital campaigns are reinforced by traditional PR techniques, for example, senior figures showing up wearing pink surgical masks at a press briefing after reports of boys being bullied surfaced. According to their digital minister Tang: “we have evidence to show that everybody who have seen this clarification through the community will never share the original disinformation again. In a sense, it acts as an inoculation, as a memetic vaccine”. If they encounter someone who manages to outmaneuver their team, they find and attempt to recruit the perpetrator, echoing the practice of hiring hackers who breach important systems as security consultants. Their counterparts in China, the Political Warfare Bureau, has similarly organized units, though communists aren’t known for their humor. As the old Soviet joke goes: A judge walks out of his chambers laughing his head off. A colleague approaches him and asks why he is laughing. "I just heard the funniest joke in the world!" "Well, go ahead, tell me!" says the other judge. "I can't – I just gave someone ten years for it!”
This isn’t the first instance of humor being used to fight wars. In World War II under Nazi occupation, humor became the Norwegian resistance’s secret weapon. Norwegians made a joke of wearing red, which the Germans subsequently banned, confiscating the clothing. Which led to jokes about women turning up at Police stations “asking directions to the dress department”. The Nazis took humor resistance seriously, punishing anyone found with a notebook of jokes with prison or even death. They even banned standing on public transport when seats were available, as it had become a running joke to make Nazis sit by themselves. Humor is essential to morale. There’s a reason people who work in high stress environments, like Doctors and Soldiers, commonly use dark humor to keep themselves going. You cannot laugh and be afraid at the same time. Laughter evolved over time as a hard-to-fake signal to our social circle we’re not afraid. Humans are able to distinguish between spontaneous laughter and the manufactured kind, which makes laughter a relatively honest social signal for differentiating friend from foe. Studies show that words or concepts that are linguistically far apart, are the funniest, as they violate expectations. When a situation seems dire, tension can be relieved by cracking a joke that stands in contrast to the context of the situation. The resulting catharsis relaxes those involved and removes the grip of fear on them, so they can better concentrate on solving the problem at hand. Therefore humor is our most effective in robbing propaganda, intimidation, and terrorism of their power. Laughter really is the best medicine.
| Name | Link | Type |
|---|---|---|
During the Nazi Occupation of Norway, Humor Was the Secret Weapon | Article | |
How Doctors Use Dark Humour to Keep Ourselves Going | Article | |
Humour over rumour? The world can learn a lot from Taiwan’s approach to fake news | Article | |
May I present to you the best chart ever published in an academic paper | Social | |
Memetic warfare | Reference | |
Protecting Democracy in an
Age of Disinformation | Article | |
Russian political jokes | Reference | |
Taiwan is using humor as a tool against coronavirus hoaxes | Article | |
The evolutionary origins of laughter are rooted more in survival than enjoyment | Article |