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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>and, what a well-funded nation-state actor could do.

Release crap books nobody will read, or fill Soundcloud with bad music?

I think NKRFZ had a video about a weird genre of pro-war fiction that is published en mass in Russia and promoted quite alot, but which does not really sell.

Pro-war fiction? That's like the standard movie for several decades from Rambo to Michael Bay's epics and Top Gun Maverick, and in movie form that has far wider appeal, 10000x the audiences, and is way more glamorous! "weird pro war fiction" would be very low in effectiveness...

Reminds me of the "long tail effect". One work of weird pro war fiction is not enough, but different customised propaganda for every niche might be something.

michael bay and top gun, sure, but rambo? I don't remember that having a particularly pro-war attitude.

That's because it's about PTSD.

I suspect the commenter is either ignorant or just decided to roll in all the terrible sequels...

The first one, yes. But in every sequel to the original, he's transformed into the stereotypical loose-cannon action hero.

Rambo is a franchize. Why not roll in all the sequels? All those were huge when we were kids, and Rambo was synonymous with "macho super-soldier killings thousands on his own with bazookas", not "PTSD soldier back home from Vietnam is persecuted by local authority figures".

That's because you've erased Rambo 2+ from your memory :)

The original Rambo was actually anti-war. Did you even watch it?

Everyone should read the book (First Blood by David Morrell). I haven't watched the movies, since in my mind Stallone is type-cast as someone who doesn't seem smart enough to play Rambo. But my recollection from 30+ years ago is that the book is an excellent page-turner and might be the originator of the thriller genre. Also, spoiler alert Rambo dies at the end of the book.

That assumes selling is the point. What if drowning out other voices is the real goal?

Then they're doing a bad job at it :)

That's good to hear at least :)

But I imagine that abusing SEO to ensure search results don't show people the results they actually want to see (or maybe "need to see", but that's quite the can of worms to open) is a legitimate tactic in any propaganda machine.

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