Seductive Techniques Research Articles

CYBER CONFLICTS AND NEW PATTERNS OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE

The traditional concept of state sovereignty is shifting towards virtual reality as a result of the development of digitalization and the expansion of cyber warfare techniques and skills, particularly towards the contents of the so-called soft power that are used to attract public support. The case study of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia confirmed to us that, in the current geopolitical landscape, cyberattacks are used as a legal, low-cost strategy to debilitate the opposing side’s material and spiritual well-being. Also, this is how a new form of an asymmetric conflict emerges, which enables actors to inflict significant damage on political opponents and technologically and militarily superior enemies, with the potential for widespread impacts on the members of civil society. Fake news, misinformation, rumors, spins and various forms of unverified content are prevalent in the propaganda war between Ukraine and Russia. This paper also demonstrates how the digital revolution, with its sophisticated seduction techniques, is drawing us further into the world of algorithms, encrypted messages and social media with personalized accesses, along with the trends highlighting the growing power of smart filters controlled by artificial intelligence which determine the accuracy of information even before it is visible. Key words: national sovereignty, cyber conflict, political propaganda, Russia-Ukraine war, algorithms, artificial intelligence, new reality.

Feminism’s Flip Side: A Cultural History of the Pickup Artist

This paper provides a historical account of the ‘pickup artists’ (PUA) phenomenon, tracing the origins back to the early 1970s when more liberal attitudes towards sexuality were on the rise in the West. Today PUA advice not only includes information about seduction techniques, but also programs about self-improvement or so-called ‘inner game’. Seduction and dating gurus can be found across the internet—from individual bloggers to dating coaches and relationship experts—all providing niche services and products on how to seduce and/or have fulfilling relationships with women. By addressing the moral panics around the PUA discourse, the paper seeks to illustrate the connection between second wave feminism, as a discourse increasingly interested in the idea of ‘gender egalitarianism’ and the popularity of seduction techniques for men based on emerging scientific research.

By means of seduction: pickup-artists and the cultural history of erotic persuasion

ABSTRACTThis article is about the cultural heritage of a men’s movement, called PickUp, which gained momentum in the United States during the 1990s. It finds that the seduction techniques they use can be traced back to historical seducers. The discourse of seduction is reconstructed by identifying four stages in seduction culture from early modernity to the present. Thus contextualized, the article interpretatively examines three cases of three famous seducers: Don Juan, Giacomo Casanova, and Søren Kierkegaard, while highlighting their changing masculinities as connected to class position and affectual control. Providing insights into particular social constellations and emotional dynamics of seduction, the study finds a number of ‘social tropes’ that play a pivotal role in all the scenes portrayed. Moreover, they have strong structural equivalencies within the actively applied means of seduction that the PickUp-Artist’s methodology prescribes, which is outlined in several advice books that are part of the contemporary self-help discourse. The conclusion comes back to seduction’s complicated history, the theory of social tropes, and problematizes the changing faces of masculinity within them.

United States Holocaust Museums: Pathos, Possession, Patriotism

This article examines the role of United States holocaust museums in directing (American) knowledge and memory of World War II, and demonstrates how signifiers of race, colour and Jewishness are played out and theatricalised. Erected in two principal U.S. cities of Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., the Holocaust Museum and Museum of Tolerance uphold very different mandates: the first dedicated to revealing European civilian tragedies during WWII; the latter dealing with Jewish persecution and the L.A. Riots of 1991, with references to other cultural catastrophes. While these projects are different, they are not opposed; both museums locate the American perspective of events and their meanings at the forefront. 
 
 American holocaust museums seem to challenge spaces between memory and its direction, vision and revision. Within the gruesome context of holocaust portrayal, interrogate the valences of memory’s play and expose American holocaust museums as theatres of pornographic memory. The seduction of feeling does not invite change so much as purgation, what Aristotle identified as catharsis — an emotional and physical release, unfortunately replicating the seductive techniques used by Goebbels for the glorification of Hitler. Through manipulation of viewers as automatic audiences, these museums function as centres for pathos I question the policy and polity of presenting genocide as an entertainment leading to catharsis, recognizing that the final act of purgation is all too easily negation.

Labour of love: Female juvenile prostitution in the Netherlands

Summary Although the number of young prostitutes increases, little systematic research has been undertaken to gain more insight into the trafficking of these young women. The main object of the present study was to describe the processes (that is, grooming, incorporation, and maintenance) that underlie the trafficking of young women for prostitution. Police records of 16 adolescent prostitutes were analysed. Results show that these prostitutes were recruited by so-called ‘lover boys’ who applied various seduction techniques to make the vulnerable young women fall in love with them. In general, the young women were incorporated into prostitution by means of physical violence. To protect and secure their income and organization, the pimps used a wide range of power and control tactics, of which the use of physical violence can be considered the most effective.

El cobre convertido en oro. Christian Rifacimentos of Garcilaso's Poetry in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

^ HIGHIjIGET of Professor Otis H. Green 's admirable history of Iberian culture is the chapter on Garcilaso de la Vega which thrusts into view the complexity of the poet's feelings and thoughts.1 Professor Green does not focus attention only on the courtier, scholar and lyricist, but also on the believer who shared the deeply religious outlook of his age and rose to Christian contemplation. This interplay of human and divine love had escaped the comprehension of ecclesiastic authors in the sixteenth century who tirelessly inveighed against the moral peril which they saw in Garcilaso 's rhymes. Their strictures may well be regarded as implicit recognition of the poet's achievements; ultimately, derogatory comments gave way to repeated attempts to use Garcilaso 's novel form for Christian purposes by grafting upon it a salutary message. On the following pages, a tribute to the dean of American Eispanists, I shall review the premises on which these rifacimentos rest, and thereafter examine some hitherto unrecorded transpositions a lo divino. Among the detractors of the new school of poetry, few match the eloquence of the Hieronymite friar Juan de Ijuna (Hieronymus Guadalupensis). This Bible scholar, alarmed by what he considered a steadily growing refinement in seductive techniques, pointed an accusing finger at the sensuous lyrics then in vogue: