The likelihood of seeing propaganda is small, unless you have a job or a role in society that means it’s more useful for someone to target you in an online advert, a video, or across social media, than anyone else.
The way it’s passed around is not direct, in the sense of a formal appeal to you in the same way as financial scams. This type of attempt is to make you feel convinced about a different way of seeing things.
The usefulness for a criminal or hostile actor is that they are able to use you to fulfil a request. It may not be history making, but just a criminal task or a sleight of hand that undermines wherever you currently are.
An example of this sort of effort is a group known as “Faces That Are Banned”, who attract individual military personnel in a variety of ways. Their approach is via a direct appeal to a strong sense of self.
It’s subversive because it only engenders feelings of sympathy in the individual, and it’s only meant to alter their behaviour. In a sense, it’s supposed to make them feel sure of a particular way of action.
The achievement is that an operative is able to make small wins in his or her community. Their aim is not to prop up a dictator, but to make us look like fools over here. The goal is to win the argument anyway.
