Peep “Manipulative Language”

Writing & Illustration

A media-criticism piece from October 2013 — the essay and its illustration, “Fooled Us,” restored together as originally published. A curator’s note follows.

An article on the popular website Business Insider claims to set the record straight about rumors of cheating at the World Series — the green smudge in Jon Lester’s glove, Game 1, Red Sox over the Cardinals. But manipulative language allows the writer to secretly reinforce a different message in our mind — and here’s how it’s done.

The article ends with this inconclusive paragraph:

We will probably never know if Lester was cheating during the World Series. At the very least there is reason to be suspicious. However, there is also reason to doubt he was up to no good.

It’s possible to manipulate a reader by taking advantage of how our brains work when reading. Scientists in the field of psycholinguistics believe that we rely on the end of each sentence to grasp its outcome.

Here’s the same paragraph, with only the end of each sentence:

We will probably never know if Lester was cheating during the World Series. At the very least there is reason to be suspicious. However, there is also reason to doubt he was up to no good.

These three statements (perhaps unintentionally) are weaponized versions of garden path sentences — far more conclusive, and incriminating, than they first appear.

Curator’s note

The illustration. “Fooled Us”: a long-nosed liar breathes wavy smoke over two small onlookers. One peers through a magnifying glass — and his eye has been replaced by a directed arrow, his gaze literally steered. The other kneels, wide-eyed, already convinced. The whole psycholinguistic mechanism, drawn as a single breath.

The provenance. The original 2013 publication ran under the earlier Nick Kaye identity — white background, NICKKAYE.COM, the NCK monogram in the corner:

It was later re-signed under the Outright Mental stencil on crumpled paper, and re-vectorized in Inkscape — one drawing, carried across a decade and two identities. The date matters too: this page corrects the record to October 2013, when Game 1 actually happened.

We question narratives — including our own, says the manifesto. This piece is that principle pointed at journalism’s most innocent-looking trick: the sentence that technically hedges and psychologically convicts. Peep the language. It’s still everywhere.