Gaslighting and the Importance of the First Story
Introduction
Dr. Karen Mitchell has recently published a PhD about what she calls Persistent Predatory Personalities, which simplifies the previous classifications of dark personalities such as psychopaths, narcissists, machiavellian etc into one group, and shows the attributes and tactics of these people, Attributes and Tactics of Dark Personalities / Persistent Predatory Personalities, [fb324].
The more people that are warned about the techniques that predatory personalities / dark personalities use, the better prepared we are to resist them. Whether this is an individual survivor with their abuser or on a mass scale with governments and the public.
A particularly effective tactic used in propaganda and manipulation by predatory personalities / dark personalities or psychopaths, narcissists and sadists, is when they exploit the use of the “Primacy Effect” which uses the power of the first impression.
The first narrative is the one that people most remember and have the most affinity with. If a dark personality is the first to offer a narrative, then people use this as a basis for their understanding of the issue, even if it might be completely false.
This article by Maike Gosch sums it up well.
The Primacy Effect – or the Power of the First Story by Maike Gosch [6]
We quickly adopt the first information we receive as our own and later are reluctant or unwilling to question it because they represent our mental and psychological “guardrails” for understanding a situation.
These first assumptions become our premises and thus are “invisible” to us and guide our perception without us being even aware of it. People therefore often react emotionally and “defensively” when these basic assumptions are later questioned, because they gave them emotional security at the beginning, and they do not perceive them as imposed from outside. What this means is: Whoever tells the first story “wins.” The sooner after the event and the more widely it can be spread, the stronger this effect of “first makes right” works.
A particularly effective tactic used in propaganda is the exploitation of the “Primacy Effect,” i.e., the exploitation of the power of the first impression. This psychological phenomenon describes the tendency of people to value the first information they receive about a topic or situation much highly more than information that they receive later on.
When little is known about a situation, one can very effectively and almost imperceptibly steer the perception of recipients by planting some narrative “stakes” right from the start and anchoring a few fixed basic assumptions before people are even aware that their perception is already being controlled.
The Primacy Effect is particularly strong immediately after traumatic events, such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters, actual or alleged massacres, or when people are confronted with a new, threatening and emotionally disturbing situation, leaving them confused, shocked, full of fear, and thus neuropsychologically in a state where critical and rational thinking is almost suspended for a short time and they most need and want orientation.
Since the Primacy Effect is amplified by a shock event, these events are sometimes even artificially created. In other cases, the natural occurrence of such a shock event is exploited to spread a certain narrative and then initiate, otherwise unacceptable measures based on this narrative — or, in the words of Obama’s Chief of Staff, Emanuel Rahm: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
If the shock event is planned, this narrative can even be prepared in advance and pulled out of the drawer immediately. If the shock event occurs “naturally,” time is of the essence and there is usually a flurry of activity with the help of communication professionals to exploit the crisis as comprehensively as possible for one’s own goals. The important thing is that only minutes after the shock event enters public consciousness or even directly with the news about it, one’s own narrative is communicated as uniformly as possible by all actors and the media and as widely as possible to create an all-encompassing narrative “blanket” over the situation.
This method can be used, for example, in war propaganda, to accuse the other side of a war crime and, thus, motivate one’s own population for entry into war or further arms deliveries. Or domestically, to push through unpopular legislative proposals that significantly restrict civil rights in the (alleged or actual) fight against crime, terrorism, disinformation, or radical forces within.
The article goes on to give a couple of examples when this was used a mass scale - 911 and the Reichstag fire of 1933 in Berlin, see Propaganda The Primacy Effect – or the Power of the First Story [6].
It can happen on an individual scale as well. Whilst there is no time for it in this article, a future article will look into an example on an individual perpetrator scale. A dark personality will invent the first framing of a narrative that they want to use. Perhaps to friends or family they may invent and gaslight that you are mentally ill or have been behaving strangely. They create the first narrative that others hear.
The article gives a checklist of elements that should raise suspicions about a narrative on the mass media scale, I include it as some of these can be adapted into an individual scale, when a dark personality is framing the narrative for the first time about a victim.
The story about the course of events seems to be established almost immediately after the incident.
Blame is assigned hastily.
The story is told in a highly emotional manner.
No doubts about the first (necessarily still) hypothesis seem allowed, or they are immediately dismissed as "conspiracy theories."
The media coverage is conspicuously uniform, down to specific words and phrasings. The statements sound like those of politicians or corporate spokespersons following a PR "script."
The "narrative" is conspicuously simple and has a "Hollywood-esque" structure.
New terms are created that did not exist before. These are repeatedly used (such as "War on Terror," "Axis of Evil," "Zeitenwende").
Legislative proposals or other regulations/measures are presented immediately afterward, which must have required some preparation and were obviously already "in the drawer" before the event.
I hope this gives an indication of how dark personalities may work using the “primacy of the first story”. The intention is to gaslight and propagandise. Watch out for it so that you may be alerted to signs of a predator and so that you may avoid their control and manipulation.
It has been stated previously that only 1% of the population were these dark personalities - such as psychopaths, narcissists, machiavellians and sadists. However it is now thought to be nearer to 10%, with the difference being due to these personalities being in positions of influence skewing the figures in a number of ways.
Previous foxblog Posts on Similar Topics
Watch Out for Romeo Spies [111]
Romeo Spies 2 - Human Intelligence Operatives Techniques [112]
Romeo Spies 3 Sexpionage [113]
Romeo Spies 4 The Spy Who Loved Me Video [114]
AI Tweet Generators and AI Social Media Posts [115]
Romeo Spy 5 [116]
Dark Psychology and Manipulation [117]
BITE Model of Authoritarian Control [118]
Persistent Predatory Personalities PPPs [119]
Attributes and Tactics of Dark Personalities / Persistent Predatory Personalities [fb324]
Chatting to Psychopaths [fb32513]
Gaslight Movie 1940 [120]
Also it might be worth check out this post, which may be helpful 2024 Sept 3 foxblog3 Survivors - Discrepancies, Contradictions, Inconsistencies and Loose Ends Part 1 [121].
Links
[6] Propaganda The Primacy Effect – or the Power of the First Story https://propagandainfocus.com/propaganda-for-beginners-part-1-the-primacy-effect/ #propaganda
[7] The Four Stratagems of Influence in the “Age of Propaganda” https://samples.freshessays.com/the-four-stratagems-of-influence-in-the-age-of-propaganda.html
[8] When Narcissists Claim to be Victims of Narcissists – Who is the Narcissist? https://anupturnedsoul.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/when-narcissists-claim-to-be-victims-of-narcissists-who-is-the-narcissist/
[9] 2025 Jan 31 foxblog3 Gaslight Movie 1940 https://foxyfox.substack.com/p/gaslighting #gaslight #gaslighting
Also see psycho https://foxyfox.substack.com/publish/post/148340271
[10] The power of first impressions https://www.nudgingfinancialbehaviour.com/primacy-and-recency-effects/
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These dark personalities *definitely* have an aspect of being under heavy demonic influence! For one of countless examples: When someone gaslights you in person, as with thought-terminating spells, which always lack self-awareness on the end of the person employing said tactics, it's like they're pleasing some kind of dark force (Satan, ultimately)...even if they don't know it themselves.
Then, if you do fight back against the spell by providing them with an unexpected response or reaction, their personality changes, and they begin acting all normal and down to earth again. They immediately resort to emulating someone that has a normal, empathetic personality rather than continue gaslighting. It's like something is controlling them; not to shift *any* of the blame off of them of course, but that's my point - they're possessed.
Did you cover trauma-based mind control, too? It's easy to notice that like, 99% of people aren't just gaslit into oblivion - they're also permanently traumatized, so they deal with it by *forgetting* everything they see and hear.
Even people who know a breaking news story is fabricated and scripted, *can't* deal with that reality, so they don't remember anything which is good in theory, but has the consequence of not learning from history. So, they never really adjust to everything being fake, because they forgot the conclusion they arrived at last time. I would call that an obvious coping mechanism to fight trauma. Being lied to and knowing it is extremely traumatizing, people just don't like admitting to that.