In the video linked below, TikTok user @jenesaisjj reminds us that Jim Jones, leader of the Jonestown cult, held what he called “White Night” drills, where his followers were instructed to drink poison-laced Kool Aid, later to feel relieved that it was only a practice. Full video and transcript below, skip to that if you have time constraints.

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On Saturday, January 18th, well before midnight, TikTok started lagging and by 10:45 EST it was displaying a message to say that it was banned. About 14 hours later, TikTok was back, displaying a welcome message giving credit to then-elect-but-not-yet-president Donald Trump for somehow allowing US users back on the platform. The truth is that the app is still banned — you can no longer access it in the app stores, as the laws against it mandates. Unless something happens in the judicial realm to change its banned status or TikTok sells, it will stop working slowly over time, as we expected would be the case. It’s death will be slow but less dramatic than… whatever that sudden death was last weekend.

We are supposed to be grateful to Donald for giving us back our beloved app, the one that we have already forgotten was acting like an abusive boyfriend. We were supposed to go through the traumatizing and mostly unprecedented event of seeing the app disappear right from under our fingers, and then feel the relief of getting it back soon afterwards.1

We are being jerked around, sure. But more important: we are being made to associate fear of the loss of our rights with relief. Second, we are supposed to know, unambiguously and for the first time, that they could pull the plug on our social life-lines, businesses, and information networks on a dime — like technically they could do it, something about which there had been some speculation. The next time they yank away a right, we expect it will not be permanent or that bad.

“Shock and Awe” is a phrase that was used during the second invasion of Iraq to describe the strategy of going in with overwhelming force to quickly and decisively defeat the Iraqi forces. The strategy has come home to roost, with the fast and furious pace of presidential orders that Trump has been signing this week. Even before this, since Project 2025 was unveiled, we have been prepared for very horrible consequences. When the consequences (especially initially and to us personally) are only horrible, we might also feel that relief. We might even tell ourselves it isn’t so bad after all.

So don’t get too comfortable with that feeling of relief. Be suspicious. It is a tool for conditioning your future passivity and compliance. This is applicable well beyond TikTok. Do not obey in advance, there is no way they can do this unless we think it is a forgone conclusion, or not a real threat, and look the other way.

Take control of your instincts and hang on to truth. In this time, listen only to sources that have established their trustworthiness already.

Learn to laugh at the unserious people.

To Be Continued….

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“In November of 1978, more than 900 members of the People's Temple, under the leadership of Jim Jones, consumed Kool Aid laced with cyanide. Now, most people in the United States know this story, or have heard of it. There's a piece of the story I think people may not know. You see, that day in November was not the first time this congregation had consumed a beverage thinking that it was laced with poison.

In fact, for the year preceding that event, there had been a number of drills — although no one knew they were drills except Jim Jones — in which the congregation was led to believe that they were going to partake in drinking Kool Aid laced with poison. This activity, Jim called these White Nights. It served a couple of functions:

The first is that each time Jim Jones would perform a White Night, he got to have an opportunity to observe the response by the congregation. How did people emotionally react? What did they do? To what degree did they react? To what degree did they push back? And as more drills occurred, what did it take in order to move them away from their fear and towards just complying?

Another thing that happened here, and this is really important, and I never hear it talked about is that this activity created a pathway in the brains of the people who are participating. See, each time that they would participate and drink the Kool Aid, they would undoubtedly have some degree of fear, even though they went along.

But then when they discovered it actually wasn't poison, there would be a sense of relief, maybe even joy or internal celebration that whoo, everything is okay. That response mechanism in the brain of sensing fear followed by everything being okay becomes a pathway that makes it increasingly easier to do something that generates a sense of fear because your subconscious mind has tucked away the other response, which is that everything's going to be okay.

Finally, there's one other important thing to note here, which is that these activities of putting people through these drills and then telling them, “Oh, look, I didn't actually do this to you,” kept people in a constant state of not really knowing what to expect next. And being in that state makes people afraid and vulnerable.

And in that state, they will look to someone to give them guidance about what to do and stop listening to their own intuition. Anyway, welcome back from the drill. I just would like to ask you not to get too comfortable, not to feel too much relief, not to forget about what happens eventually when you are agreeable to the poison.

Mind your Kool Aid.”