Shadowing Practice: Uncovering a conspiracy - Learn English Speaking with Video

The content ecosystem incentivizes engagement, which is maximized when you are not thinking critically, but when you are feeling strong feelings.

If you don't live under a rock, you've probably heard people discuss social media algorithms manipulating us

and pushing conspiratorial thinking on everybody with the result that some people are radicalized.

And often the way it's discussed is with conspiratorial thinking.

They claim that YouTube or Meta or TikTok or even that specific people like Zuckerberg or Luthor are manipulating the youth.

Now, I'm very wary of conspiracy theories because I know where they all end up, but I'm also wary of them on more principled grounds.

I do science, and conspiratorial thinking is an extreme form of the opposite.

But what I want to talk about today is a way

that the radicalization pipeline is real and how we are potentially being manipulated, but there's also kind of no manipulators.

Maybe the real manipulators were the friends we made along the way.

We're self -radicalizing with increasingly extreme language and glorified magic eight balls.

And I'm going to pull back the curtain and show you how I, your trusted science edutainment parasocial zaddy, have been incentivized to radicalize you.

Not for any specific cause either, just whatever flavor of extreme you're most into.

No jokes in the comments about how language zaddy wants to know what you're into.

If you're new to the channel, I'm Dr. Taylor Jones.

I've got a PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.

And on the channel, I discuss everything related to language, linguistics, language learning, and culture.

If you're into those topics, be sure to subscribe and ring the bell for notifications.

This is LanguageJones.

I'm trying to make an intentional practice out of repeating the foundations of the scientific method on the channel because it's important, and it's not taught well, and it's basically the antidote to all of this manipulation.

Linguists do science.

At least most of us.

I guess that's an empirical question.

But at its heart, the scientific method requires two very simple things.

You have to formulate your ideas in a way that can actually be tested somehow.

And this is the hard part.

You have to try to disprove yourself.

I pissed off a lot of lawyers last time.

They left me comments and some emailed me when I said

that lawyers try to prove a position using whatever best supports their argument and ignore the rest.

But good scientists are constantly trying to find more and more inventive ways to testably disprove themselves.

What this means is that the truly great scientist is no fun at parties.

The reason I bring this up is that there's a lot of scientific evidence

that this is not a normal way of thinking.

No shit.

But this is important.

We naturally fall into ways of thinking where we look for connections and we look for meaning, and we're not too picky about actually thinking it through logically or trying to disprove it.

And we love stories.

We love things that make us feel strong emotions, especially if there's a hint of danger.

All of this plays into social media algorithms.

A while back, I was selected for an EduTuber Accelerator.

It's a program to teach educators how to more effectively compete in the algorithmic marketplace

so that we can actually educate a larger audience.

And no, they did not find it funny when I pointed out that edutuber accelerator sounds evocative of a potato cannon.

And one big thing I learned, and this was borne out in the data after implementing it, is that my videos do better when I subtly manipulate your psychology.

If I have high -valence emotional words like, say, revealing or strange, my videos do better than if I just make a title that's what I'm going to talk about.

If I have a nice haircut and a trimmed beard, which I'm realizing I didn't do this time, my videos do better.

Of course, if there's a woman in the thumbnail, the videos do even better, especially if I go with a word that has a dual valence like revealing.

What this means is that due to the attention economy, we are all incentivized to, at a minimum, use more colorful, some would say more extreme language.

I'm doing it here on purpose.

Now, here's where a secret part of the algorithm hidden from your perception could manipulate you.

By the way, did you catch the last sentence?

Anyway, YouTube offers suggestions for content ideation based on what people are engaging with.

Maybe you can already see the problem.

But let's take a real example.

This video was inspired in part

because YouTube provided me with an entire video outline in classic

elementary school five -paragraph essay style about uncovering the linguistic conspiracy of the word normal.

Now, there is no conspiracy.

And the recommended content, such as it was, was basically saying that normal is a mathematical concept and not a social ideal.

But let's look at this outline it provided me and think critically about it.

I want you to pay particular attention to a few kinds of manipulation at play here.

But before we get to that, who wrote this outline?

That's right.

It's a large language model, or LLM, conventionally called AI now.

Is this an intelligent agent thinking about what it says to me or you?

No, it's fucking insane.

It's a text predictor it is a glorified autocomplete and it's trained on well YouTube and YouTube searches, what you all are looking for and what is doing well.

And we have all that psychological bias for high emotional valence and for narrative.

This one was particularly striking to me, however, because of the hallmarks of conspiratorial thinking it had built in consistently throughout.

So I want you to pay attention to a few things.

First, emotionally charged words that create an explosive reaction, something that triggers immediate mental anguish or rage, or less commonly, excitement and joy.

Second, let's think about presuppositions and entailments.

Those are fancy linguistic terms for basically thinking about what has to be true for a word to be used,

or what the speaker has to assume is true and the speaker invites the hearer to implicitly agree with, and what falls out from the word that is used.

And lastly, I want you to think about who the actual agents are, who's doing what.

The doing is very often stated, but the doers are shrouded in mystery and danger, almost like you could project the responsibility onto anybody,

perhaps a very small minority group you don't interact with much.

YouTube starts by helpfully providing the hook that they call intriguing revelation.

Already we have emotionally charged language, and that part was just for me.

The revelation is, quote, forget everything you thought you knew about normal.

This isn't just a word.

It's a powerful tool being used to control narratives and enforce hidden agendas.

We're about to expose the deep -seated implications of this single word and how it's subtly manipulating your world.

Let's think about this.

Forget everything you thought you knew is a very strong opening.

I like it.

There's an implication in saying it's not just a word.

You may have thought it was a mere word, but it's not limited to that harmless domain.

And when we get right into powerful tool and control and enforce hidden agendas, these are words designed to make you feel.

But notice also the passive voice, a powerful tool being used to control narratives. By whom?

The thing is, the LLM doesn't think it's the Freemasons or Mossad or Republicans or Emmanuel Macron or whoever.

It doesn't think anything.

It's just stringing together words based on optimizing some parameter.

In this case, observed metrics of engagement.

But if you already have an idea of who might do something nefarious and untoward, Justin Trudeau, those are already triggered by this language use,

whether consciously or not.

The first real content paragraph continues, quote, the Trojan horse of normal, opening with a relatable scenario,

feeling abnormal or not normal in everyday situations situations.

100

Hooke immediately introduced the idea that normal isn't a natural state, but a manufactured concept.

101

Tease the deeper implications, how this seemingly innocuous word quietly shapes our reality.

102

Again, the implication of seemingly innocuous.

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The historical architecture of normal.

104

Brief historical journey, how normal evolved from a mathematical term to a social construct.

105

Highlight key periods or movements that weaponized the word, e .g eugenics and consumerism.

106

Show examples of how normal was used to marginalize or exclude specific groups historically.

107

I just want to draw out the claim that it's, quote, a manufactured concept.

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Notice, again, a form of the passive here.

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Who manufactured it?

110

Big statistics.

111

And of course, we have Trojan horse, weaponization, eugenics, all sorts of inflammatory language.

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Case studies in normal enforcement.

113

Modern examples of normal being weaponized.

114

Body image standards, career paths, even political discourse.

115

Analyze recent social media trends or news headlines where normal is explicitly

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or implicitly used to shame or pressure expose how corporations and political entities subtly leverage the desire for normalcy.

117

This is where we get into some really interesting territory, since you have all of that inflammatory language, but also a new linguistic priming.

118

And keep in mind, this is generated for content creators to fill in the actual content.

119

But if I see enforcement and weaponize, and then I'm told to link it to political entities, I don't know about you guys,

120

but I only really see one thing referred to in online discourse lately as an entity.

121

That might be all that's necessary for another creator to repeat

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stock talking points created by the KGB in the 1960s to

123

discredit the entity they were afraid was aligning with the U .S.

124

And here's a good place to say that, yes, there are sometimes actual conspiracies and political manipulation,

125

so it's all the more important to think critically about the information that we consume.

126

In the last two parts of the proposed structure, we get into some really interesting territory because the tone shifts to a sort of liberatory politics of freedom and emancipation.

127

It goes on, breaking the chains of normal strategies for identifying when normal is being used manipulatively.

128

Empower viewers with actionable steps to challenge and redefine their own normal.

129

Introduce concepts like neurodiversity, body positivity, and alternative lifestyles as direct counter -narratives.

130

This is where you get high emotional valence still, but about breaking chains, redefining, emancipating, and empowering.

131

And the last is, in my opinion, the most dangerous.

132

It goes reclaiming your reality.

133

emphasize the freedom and power in embracing individuality beyond imposed normalcy.

134

Imposed by whom?

135

Call to action.

136

Encourage viewers to share their own experiences with normal in the comments.

137

Final thought.

138

See how I'm manipulating you?

139

I'm asking you to leave a comment.

140

Final thought.

141

A powerful statement on the importance of linguistic awareness and critical thinking for personal liberation.

142

So reclaiming is a very interesting word and it has the presupposition that your reality has been taken.

143

It's also got a structural presupposition

144

that one can have one's own reality with the entailment that there may be multiple equally valid realities.

145

Now, a couple of things are really important to think about here.

146

First of all, this is inflammatory language, but no actual content.

147

It's up to the content creator to fill it in and different people will do so differently.

148

I've done so in a weird meta way.

149

I would not be surprised in the slightest if this video does better

150

because the algorithm shows it to more people not because of a conspiracy to radicalize, but because it uses all of the keywords that YouTube literally suggested to me,

151

including manipulate a bunch of times, based on what's doing well in other videos.

152

So if I'm a careful, scientifically -minded creator, I might ignore this altogether.

153

But if I'm just trying to stay ahead of a production schedule and I'm more of a just -say -shit creator, then you're going to get my biases, unresearched and not critically evaluated thoughts,

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just punched up in a more amygdala tickling package.

155

And yeah, have I primed violence with punched up and sex with tickled package?

156

Totally.

157

But I'm at least sometimes aware of it and willing to point out the irony and humor of it.

158

The other part that I think is fascinating is that this is not right -wing algorithmic radicalization, and there's a huge blind spot for the academic research there.

159

This, because for some reason all the research presupposes radicalization is a right -wing thing,

160

despite it very obviously being a problem of polarization that affects both poles.

161

I guess the takeaway here is that you should arm yourself with skills against manipulation.

162

Is every colorful use of language manipulative?

163

No, of course not.

164

But it's really helpful to recognize that the content ecosystem incentivizes engagement, which is maximized when you are not thinking critically,

165

but when you are feeling strong feelings.

166

So it's important to ask yourself, is this inflammatory?

167

Why are they trying to make me feel whatever they're trying to make me feel?

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Where are they using weasel words and avoiding actually saying anything outright?

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In my case, it's hard for me to talk about who is manipulating us

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because it's kind of an emergent property of a system that monetizes attention and incentivizes hacking our amygdala.

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So I really don't think there's a nefarious cabal.

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It's more like the whole Michael Crichton view of scientific advances.

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There's unanticipated negative outcomes from emergent properties of systems we implement without fully understanding.

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It's time to go back and read Crichton.

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Or like I said in the beginning, maybe the real manipulators were the friends we made along the way.

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If you like what I'm doing with the channel, you can always support it on YouTube with super thanks or over on Patreon at patreon .com slash languagejones.

177

Please actually do leave me a comment.

178

They are great for the algorithm.

179

What can I say? and subscribe if you haven't already.

180

Until next time, happy learning.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 180 sentences and 2381 words to shadow. The speech runs for 13:19. The speaker talks at a natural 179 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 78% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
manipulate verb	/məˈnɪp.jʊ.leɪt/	To move, arrange or operate something using the hands
creator noun	/kɹiːˈeɪ̯təː/	Something or someone which creates or makes something.
algorithm noun	/ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/	A collection of ordered steps that solve a mathematical problem. A precise step-by-step plan for a computational procedure that possibly begins with an input…
critically adverb	/ˈkɹɪt.ɪ.kə.li/	In a critical manner; with, or in terms of, criticism.
narrative noun	/ˈnæɹ.ə.tɪv/	The systematic recitation of an event or series of events.
conspiracy noun	/kənˈspɪɹəsi/	An agreement or arrangement between multiple parties to do something harmful, immoral or subversive; an instance of collusion.
entity noun	/ˈɛn.tə.ti/ [-tʰi]	That which has a distinct existence as an individual unit, often used for organizations which have no physical form.
manipulation noun	/məˌnɪp.juˈleɪ.ʃən/	The practice of manipulating or the state of being manipulated.
inflammatory adjective	/ɪnˈflæmət(ə)ɹi/	Tending to inflame or provoke somebody.
linguistic adjective	/lɪŋˈɡwɪstɪk/	Of or relating to language.
implication noun	/ˌɪmpləˈkeɪʃən/	The act of implicating.
engagement noun	/ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ.mənt/	An appointment, especially to speak or perform.
outline noun	/ˈaʊtlaɪn/	A line marking the boundary of an object figure.
ignore verb	/ɪɡˈnɔː/	To deliberately not listen or pay attention to.
package noun	/ˈpæk.ɪd͡ʒ/	Something which is packed, a parcel, a box, an envelope.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
point out verb	To identify among a group of similar subjects, or in a scene where the subject might not be readily seen or noticed, with a gesture of the body.
draw out verb	To make (something) last for more time than is necessary; to prolong; to extend.
end up verb	To bring to a conclusion.
go back verb	To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
pull back verb	To retreat.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is maximized · are radicalized · being manipulated
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've probably heard · have been incentivized · has been taken
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	engagement, which is

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 38 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, mathematical /ˌmæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪ.kəl/, altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/, algorithmic /ˌælɡəˈɹɪðmɪk/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: manipulation /məˌnɪp.juˈleɪ.ʃən/, implication /ˌɪmpləˈkeɪʃən/, emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, revelation /ˌɹɛv.əˈleɪ.ʃən/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/
Long words — get the stress right: manipulate /məˈnɪp.jʊ.leɪt/, critically /ˈkɹɪt.ɪ.kə.li/, conspiracy /kənˈspɪɹəsi/, entity /ˈɛn.tə.ti/ [-tʰi], manipulation /məˌnɪp.juˈleɪ.ʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like manipulate, creator, algorithm.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Uncovering a conspiracy - Learn English Speaking with Video

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