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Astroturfing

That grassroots movement you just joined might have been planted by a marketing team.

Astroturfing is the creation of fake grassroots support. It looks like ordinary people rising up, speaking out, or rallying around a cause. But behind the signs, the hashtags, and the outraged comments, there's a budget. A PR firm. A political operation. The "grass" is artificial — hence the name.

This takes many forms. Fake online reviews that make a product look beloved. Social media accounts that don't belong to real people but flood comment sections with coordinated opinions. "Concerned citizens" at town halls who were bussed in by an interest group. Petitions with manufactured signatures. The mechanics vary, but the goal is always the same: make a manufactured position look organic and popular.

It works because we are social creatures. When you see many people expressing the same opinion, you instinctively give it more weight. That's reasonable — usually. But astroturfing exploits that instinct. It hacks your sense of consensus.

The tell is uniformity. Real grassroots movements are messy — different people with different words expressing different aspects of a shared concern. Astroturfed campaigns are suspiciously consistent. Same talking points. Same phrasing. Same timing. When a thousand voices say exactly the same thing, ask who wrote the script.

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