Contagious psychogenic illness or psychic epidemics.

Human social behavior is imitated, and most social conventions, mannerisms and habits are acquired by imitation in early adult, childhood or infancy. Social imitation is morally agnostic, and imitated behavior can be a harmless mannerisms or dangerous, irrational, genocidal or self-destructive acts. Contagious self-replicating psychogenic illness are an unrecognized factor in human social behaviors and can be induced by IW tactics.

Latahs

Latahism is usually described as a Malaysian "culture bound" phenomena. Some social scientists believe imitative behaviors in latahs are related to the "startle response" as seen in Tourette's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorders.

Lawrence Osborne wrote in the New York Times magazine, “The startle reflex is a universal one. When we are jolted by surprise, we tend to scream, shout obscenities or make involuntary gestures. And some of us are a lot jumpier than others. But with latahs, as sufferers are known, these reactions become prolonged to an extreme degree. In Malay village life, people who are susceptible to such exaggerated reactions are deliberately provoked further – through furtive pokes in the ribs or tin pots thrown behind their backs – to induce a frenzied startle-trance. Over time, latahs become so sensitive that trances can be triggered by a falling coconut. [Source: Lawrence Osborne, New York Times magazine, May 6, 2001 ++]

A far higher percentage of human behavior is imitation and experienced subjectively as free choice. "One puzzling characteristic of culture-bound syndromes is that they often take the form of social epidemics. In other words, instead of being physiologically rooted in every afflicted individual, some syndromes can be infectious in a purely mental way.

What starts the chain of infection? In the case of latah…as awareness of the affliction permeated the culture, the disease spread through social mimicry. [Source: Lawrence Osborne, New York Times magazine, May 6, 2001 ]

Loud noises trigger the phenomena in a way very similar to "shock induction" a mass hypnosis technique that exploits the extreme receptivity to hypnotic suggestion in the immediate wake of a collectively traumatic event such as 9/11.

The latah phenomena is one example of a contagious mental illness there are hundreds of other, similar induced contagious illnesses not confined to any cultural or geographic area.

“…syndromes very like latah, Geertz reported, existed in several other cultures as well. In rural parts of the Philippines, for instance, a nearly identical condition known as mali-mali is widespread. In Siberia, there is a hyperstartle complex known as myriachit, while in Thailand it is known as baah-ji and in Japan, imu. In the 1930's, scholars made a curious film about hyperstartling among the Ainu, an ethnic minority in northern Japan. The faded reels show Ainu women being startled, waving their arms like windmills and running around in a frenzy. Are these all hyperstartle complexes different forms of latah, Geertz asked, or were they all unique syndromes?

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It is trivial to exploit our human propensity for imitation, as in latah-phenomena, and use it to create unconscious self-replicating social behaviors for purposes of marketing or social control.

The phenomena is currently being exploited by groups interested in controlling human social and economic behavior. Can you find five legacy media examples?

It is trivial to exploit our human propensity for imitation, as in latah-phenomena, and use it to create unconscious self-replicating social behaviors in a culture – for purposes of marketing or for social control.

It seems highly unlikely such a phenomenon, ripe for exploitation would be ignored by people interested in controlling human social and economic development. NSA hints that we share this planet with several "alien" species. Perhaps pop culture is not the organic phenomena it appears to us but a cultivated cultural medium which permits the rapid transmission of ideas and behaviors more sophisticated than a startle response?

“Indeed, the power of culture to propagate mental illness has become a subject of increasing fascination in the West. In recent years, scholars have seen mysterious maladies proliferate in a way that echoes the spread of latah. Multiple-personality disorder, for example, flourished among white, middle-class American women in the 1980's. And more recently, American and European psychologists have begun tracking apotemnophilia – a new, disturbing condition in which sufferers desire to amputate one of their own limbs. The Internet, medical anthropologists say, is helping spread the condition globally. As with latah, there is no cure."

WE ARE THE CURE