Before diving into SEO growth hacking and behavioral marketing, I want to introduce two foundational concepts: the Cognitive Shield and Meta Cognitive Training. Both are designed to help us recognize—and ultimately resist—the systems of coercion, undue influence, and control that pervade our media and our minds.
1. The Cognitive Shield
The Cognitive Shield is an analytical framework—and soon, a fully featured app—built to assess how media frames information and employs coercive persuasion. Inspired by a podcast from the Center for Humane Technology, which argued that we need more than fact-checking to safeguard our minds, this tool analyzes text in four stages:
• NLP-AI (natural language processing driven by machine learning)
• NLP-human (neuro-linguistic programming techniques)
• Behavioral economics (how incentives and biases shape decisions)
• Lacanian psychoanalysis (uncovering deeper symbolic and desire structures)
It also flags political bias (left or right) and hate speech. You simply paste in an article, social-media post, or news excerpt, and the app breaks down each element before delivering a unified conclusion. I will be adding OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) capabilities over time but I need to carry out additional research, coding and testing to add these elements.
I’ve modeled the app on my own analytical process—though it doesn’t yet include behavioral observation or human-profiling features—and I’m documenting its mechanics on my Substack. Future updates will show how each technique affects us psychologically and physiologically, so we can understand their true impact at a deeper level.
If you invert this framework, you unlock what I call the “secret sauce” of ethical behavioral marketing and communication: how to capture attention and make a message resonate in service of positive, progressive social change. I’ll be writing more about those methods here, too.
2. Meta Cognitive Training
Meta Cognitive Training is essentially “thinking about thinking,” but taken a step further. It teaches you not only to recognize and challenge your thoughts, but also to observe their physiological triggers—those automatic chemical reactions that precede destructive or addictive thought patterns. By identifying both external triggers (like sensationalist media racing to tickle our brain stem) and internal ones, you can intercept the process before it spirals downward.
This training is a vital tool for staying sane in an insane world: it helps you maintain focus, avoid disillusionment, and set yourself up for sustained success. I’m no master—still a novice who stumbles often—but I’ve found tremendous benefit in combining mental skills with physical and spiritual practice. Over the past year I’ve embraced a Buddhist path (trained in Soto Zen), while also studying Shaolin martial arts: QiGong, TaiChi, and a bit of Yoga. In my experience, just a few weeks of daily QiGong yielded noticeable improvements in calmness and clarity—no surprise, since it’s considered foundational for TaiChi and Kung Fu.
My morning routine typically looks like this:
• Mindful martial-arts exercises (QiGong, TaiChi, Yoga)
• A pinch of Chaos Magick or analogous ritual to prime the imagination
• Mindfulness meditation, often followed by guided self-hypnosis or deep-trance techniques
• Manifestation practices to reprogram limiting beliefs
These disciplines give me structure, heighten my awareness of neurological and physiological reactions, and help me “debug” unhelpful mental scripts using neuro-linguistic programming as my coding language. The ultimate goal is simple but profound: to take back control of my mind. I also see a therapist twice a month to process the long-buried effects of growing up in a high-control religion.
Together, the Cognitive Shield, Meta Cognitive Training, my cyberpunk and creative writing, and my work in behavioral marketing, SEO, and growth hacking form an interconnected arsenal. Each element helps us unpick, bypass, and override the covert systems of coercion and control in a society that too often sleepwalks toward dystopia.
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Hack the system and get your message heard:Â Become a Cyberpunk: Hacking the Behavioural Architectures of Coercion and Control
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