I believe this stuff is still very much top down. They manufacture most of the things they call crises, many of which don't even exist anywhere but in the media, and many people simply take them at face value without questioning.

The 'herd dynamics' as you accurately point out make it far easier for them to craft and drive these narratives today since communication and messaging is far-reaching. They put on 'table top' exercises like Event 201 in order to simulate their plans before executing them, so that they can study all the possible outcomes of a crisis and steer them in the intended direction, as well as propose solutions to these made-up issues.

They simulate all of it. The people who orchestrated covid were very much aware of how much fear and panic they could drum up - that was the point. It was a military-grade psychological operation. The actual military and 'nudge' units were and are still involved. They gaslit and continue to gaslight people with bot accounts who attack anyone telling the truth, casting doubt on what is being said by anyone who reads it, when you have responses coming from sock-puppet accounts while real people are censored.

None of it was real - overwhelmed hospitals, people dying in the streets, etc, but they used these as tools in order to attain their goals. Their efforts killed millions of people, and mental broke millions  more. A process of demoralization, as Yuri Bezmenov once spoke about.

The system is designed in such a way that many of the effects are organic, because most people (even in government) are not aware of the bigger picture and they conform to stay elected. Literal useful idiots, and people who are drawn to positions of power tend to skew towards having psychopathic tendencies, making them ideal candidates to execute inhumane actions against their fellow people. Not only under the guise of safety and decency, but also because they simply don't care about others, and are therefore the exact puppets the controllers seek out and elevate into positions of power.

Mike Benz does a lot of good work talking how they orchestrate some of this stuff. Here is an older video of his where he explains the concept of 'capacity building' and 'capacity crippling', which I had not heard of before:

https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1704606709098885629

The genius of these tactics is that once they create an industry out of something, it is very hard to dismantle because they appeal to the humanity of the average person - "think of all the people who won't have jobs, we can't just eliminate an entire sector even if it is all based on lies. But it's not a lie, shut-up or we'll arrest you!"