5 Signs It's Probably a Psy-Op

How to spot manipulated media

We are living in quite the era. An era where the primary battlefield isn't land or sea—it is your own psychology. Every time you open your phone, you aren't just consuming content; you are stepping into a crossfire of competing narratives designed to bypass your logic, trigger your emotions and push hateful agendas.

With each sign, I will give you a real-world example to help you to better spot them when they (inevitably) happen to you.

1. The Actors and Actions Are Exaggerated

The events depicted feel less like reality and more like a B-movie script. When the narrative relies on cartoonish villains, performative outrage, or scenarios that defy basic logic, you are likely looking at a piece of theater as opposed to news. Real life is usually mundane, bureaucratic, and messy. Psychological operations, conversely, are designed to be emotionally sticky; they require high drama and stark contrasts to ensure the message travels fast and bypasses your critical analysis. If the story feels perfectly engineered to make you angry, it probably was.

The Nayirah Testimony (1990)

Before the Gulf War, a 15-year-old girl named “Nayirah” gave a tearful testimony before the U.S. Congress, claiming she watched Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators and leave them to die on the cold floor. It was a story designed to trigger maximum biological outrage. It was also a lie. Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., her acting was coached by the PR firm Hill & Knowlton, and the “incubator babies” story was total fabrication. It was a script, not a witness account.

2. The Timing is Suspect

Why is this happening now? What other current events could it be connected to? How do they intersect? These are the first questions you must ask when you suspect manipulation. Often, a story is injected into the news cycle specifically to distract from a less favorable story or to manufacture consent for a policy that is about to be introduced. If the timing feels too convenient, it isn’t a coincidence.

The Rescue of Jessica Lynch (2003)

Credit: The National Museum of The Air Force

Early in the Iraq invasion, the U.S. advance had stalled, and morale was dipping. Suddenly, the media was flooded with the “daring rescue” of Private Jessica Lynch. Reports claimed she went down firing her weapon until she ran out of ammo and was tortured in an Iraqi hospital. Later, it was revealed she never fired a shot due to a weapon jam, the Iraqi doctors had treated her kindly, and the “commando raid” to save her was launched against a hospital that the Iraqi military had already abandoned. The operation was timed and filmed specifically to boost flagging war support.

3. The People Involved Have Questionable Backgrounds

Watch out for figureheads, spokespeople, or key actors with dubious histories. Are they ex-pimps, ex-drug dealers, confirmed government informants, intelligence agents, or hyper-partisan influencers? When the messengers have a history of being compromised or incentivized to deceive, the message itself is compromised.

“Curveball” (2001–2003)

The primary source for the claim that Iraq had mobile biological weapons labs was an Iraqi defector codenamed “Curveball” (Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi). Despite German intelligence warning that he was an alcoholic and a known fabricator, his “intel” was fast-tracked to the highest levels of the U.S. government because he told them exactly what they wanted to hear. He wasn’t a credible source; he was a useful asset with a background of deceit.

4. It is Not A One-Off Event

We tend to perceive these operations as “one and done” events—a single shocking story. However, according to the Army Psy-Op manual, success relies on a “continuous message presence.” A true operation isn’t just a spark; it’s a steady drumbeat. If you see the same specific narrative being pushed across multiple unrelated platforms simultaneously, you are watching a coordinated campaign, not organic discourse.

Operation Earnest Voice (2011)

This is a revealed U.S. military campaign that used “sock puppet” accounts—fake online personas—to spread pro-American propaganda on social media sites in the Middle East. It wasn’t one post; it was thousands of comments, forum posts, and interactions designed to look like a groundswell of organic public opinion. It was a digital “continuous message presence” engineered to drown out dissent.

5. The Sources Lack Credibility

Twitter is not a source. Wikipedia is not a source. These are platforms where anyone can say anything at any time, with minimal verification. Taken on its own, a rumor derived from social media isn’t necessarily proof of a psy-op. However, when you combine a lack of credible sourcing with suspect timing, exaggerated actors, and questionable figureheads, the pieces start falling into place. That is when healthy skepticism must turn into active disbelief.

“End Wokeness”

The X (formerly Twitter) account “End Wokeness” boasts millions of followers and high-level engagement from platform owners, yet it operates under total anonymity. It functions as a classic “aggregator”, posting decontextualized video clips designed to elicit an immediate, visceral rage response without providing background or nuance.

While the account presents itself as a grassroots vigilantism effort, substantial evidence and digital forensics link the account to Jack Posobiec—a political operative and former U.S. Navy intelligence officer with a documented history of running disinformation campaigns. This is a textbook example of Gray Propaganda: the source is not correctly identified (it looks like a concerned citizen, but is likely a professional operative), and the intent is to manipulate public perception through emotional contagion rather than inform. When a “random” account has the strategic discipline of an intelligence operation, it usually is one.

The ultimate objective of these operations is not just to fool you, but to exhaust you. The idea is to flood the zone with so much noise and manufactured outrage that you surrender your critical faculties and just accept give in the narrative by default. Stay sharp, stay skeptical, and remember: if it feels designed to trigger you, yep, it’s a psy-op.

Note: Hard Briefs will continue next week with a longer than usual brief.