Hacking humans

Hacking computers is easy. Hacking humans is easy: they're not that bright, you know? (not you, of course) Advertisers are the original hackers: for decades they have been hacking away at humans, putting ideas and thoughts into their minds. Basically, human emotions are chock full of backdoors, so you can bypass reason and logic altogether. Plus, you can try and distort a person's sense of reality, especially that of those who don't get out much.

Evangelists and purveyors of religion perhaps predate advertisers in the art of hacking humans, short-circuiting reason and logic thourgh neurolinguistic virii and self-propogating memes to coerce humans into blindly serving said evangelists.

Highlights in the history of hacking humans through religion include:

• The Counterreformation: Ingeniously engineered by the Catholic church at the Council of Trent and the Jesuit Order and financed by the kings of Spain, the Counterreformation was implemented to draw back the crowds of humans that the Catholic church had lost to the upstart Protestant churches. This was achieved through commissioning art and architecture that highlighted intense melodramatic emotion and feeling. These works of art were designed to appeal to human emotion, thereby giving humans the feeling that they were touched by the "holy spirit." The art produced in this era later became known as the Baroque Period. Never before had the church enacted such and active and widely organized campaign to enlist new believers.
  See also: Kevin Smith's Dogma, Buddy Jesus, Caravaggio, Rubens, Descartes,
• The Great Awakening: A period in early American history that saw a revival in a "spiritual awakening." The movement was lead by travelling evangelists (such a George Whitefield) that gave emotionally moving speeches and lectures (otherwise known as sermons) to groups of gullible humans. Possibly the antecedant of Southern Fundamentalist Evangelism.
  See also: Bible Belt, Evangelist, Fundamentalist.
• The Crusades: A series of military conquests led by Catholic Christian Europe against Muslim held territories. Sparked by religious fervor and carried out by humans willing to kill and be killed in the name of one of the most sucessful memes in human history.
  See also: Jyhad, Islam, Holy Relics.
• Various Occult Religions and Cults: Read your newspaper
  See also: Jim Jones, Scientology.
• People who understand that organized religion is a joke: Church of the Subgenius, Discordianism, etc.
  See also: Cacophony Society.

See also: Memes, Virus, Social Engineering, Hacker, Linguistics, Gullible, Enlightenment, Church, Inquisition, Jesuit, Protestant, Lies, Belief, Stupid Cows, Tao, Human Evolution, The Matrix, Richard Dawkins, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, Information Theory.