FUD
- MAin page: Cycle FOMO-FUD
FUD – is an abbreviation for ” Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt.” It means created situation when rumors or unconfirmed news about a particular cryptocurrency have affect on its course. Fud is a tactical informational impact, in order to stimulate panic, doom, which in turn leads to mass discharges or as it is commonly called – drains of assets.
While the phrase dates to at least the early 20th century, the present common usage of disinformation related to software, hardware and technology industries generally appeared in the 1970s to describe disinformation in the computer hardware industry, and has since been used more broadly.
Definition
The term appeared as far back as the 1920s. A similar formulation “doubts fears and uncertainties” reaches back to 1965. By 1975, the term was appearing abbreviated as FUD in marketing and sales contexts: and in public relations. The term FUD is also alternatively rendered as “Fear Uncertainty and Disinformation”.
One of the messages dealt with is FUD—the fear, uncertainty and doubt on the part of customer and sales person alike that stifles the approach and greeting.
FUD was first used with its common current technology-related meaning by Gene Amdahl in 1975, after he left IBM to found his own company, Amdahl Corp.: “FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products.”[7] The term has also been attributed to veteran Morgan Stanley computer analyst Ulrich Weil. This usage of FUD to describe disinformation in the computer hardware industry is said to have led to subsequent popularization of the term.[8]
As Eric S. Raymond wrote:
The idea, of course, was to persuade buyers to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors’ equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors’ equipment or software. After 1991, the term has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.
By spreading questionable information about the drawbacks of less well known products, an established company can discourage decision-makers from choosing those products over its own, regardless of the relative technical merits. This is a recognized phenomenon, epitomized by the traditional axiom of purchasing agents that “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM equipment”. The aim is to have IT departments buy software they know to be technically inferior because upper management is more likely to recognize the brand.