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

We need fights, we need critics, we need debates that are refereed, that are ethical, where people shake hands at the beginning and hug at the end, touch gloves, you know. We don't have that! And we're dying from that. You'll notice that, for example, in the String Theory and the String Theory critics, they basically don't appear on the same stage ever. And this has to do with Wrestling versus MMA. You notice that you don't see—if wrestling is so effective, why don't we try it, like, professional wrestling inside of an MMA thing where you're jumping up on the cage and coming down and all this stuff, it's because one thing is an actual sport and one thing is a simulated sport. And I think that what we need is we need Queensberry Rules. Queensberry rules is how you avoid kayfabe, you have ideas, you can't gouge eyes. You can't use small digit manipulation where you break fingers. You can't go for the throat or the genitals. You put your finger on—I've never heard of this “Criticism Capture”, and I love it.
And that's why I developed the concept of the Streisand Squeeze. Either you allow us to whittle away at you, or you respond to us, you boost us, and you become part of the trap. You know, if you ever watch, like David Attenborough, naturalism, you'll see pack animals, whether it's orcas or hyenas, it doesn't matter. They do this thing where they nip at their target. And then there's this weird voiceover, which I don't understand at all. It says, you know, the hyenas are trying to trick the animal into expending its energy, to fend off these nips. The nips don't actually do much damage, but they do exhaust the animal, so it won't be able to fight later. So. Okay, so imagine that you don't respond to the nips. Do you live? No, no, no, no, you—then the hyenas become emboldened, and then you die a different way! So my point is, is that evolution would certainly have figured out not to respond to the nips if that was a winning strategy.
- Eric Weinstein on Modern Wisdom 833

Streisand Squeeze

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