Streisand Squeeze
The "Streisand Squeeze" is a strategic tactic conceptualized by Eric Weinstein, introduced in a Twitter thread on April 28, 2021. This concept builds on the "Streisand Effect"—a term derived from an incident involving Barbra Streisand, where efforts to suppress information inadvertently led to its wider dissemination.
Unlike the unintentional effect, the Streisand Squeeze involves deliberately engaging and harassing public individuals to provoke a response, thereby manipulating their audience to focus on a specific issue or narrative. This method incorporates elements of media manipulation, signal boosting, social engineering, and stalking, and involves initiating actions or comments that lead the targeted person to engage with them, thus drawing their audience’s attention to the initiator’s cause or message. This might involve controversy, misleading statements, or other forms of engagement that do not require the initiator to be straightforward or honest.
The Streisand Squeeze is an unethical strategy designed to manipulate, exploit, and erode public discourse and personal reputations. The desired outcome is twofold: increased visibility for the initiator's message or product, and potential discrediting or manipulation of the target's responses in ways that benefit the initiator.
I called this the Streisand Squeeze in a slightly different context. So the idea is that a low value human becomes obsessed with you because what they get out of it, is if you react to them, they want the attention and the portion of your audience that dislikes you to become their audience. And if you answer the criticism. like, intellectually, you're fundamentally playing into a gambit. So you try not answering the criticism, and then it becomes, why won't he answer his critics? And then you're saying, well, are you applying this criticism uniformly? Are you—? It's an absolutely diabolical situation.
- Eric Weinstein on Modern Wisdom 833
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