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Slamming political rivals may be the most effective way to go viral

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Re: Slamming political rivals may be the most effective way to go viral

#71

Post by bigbob2 »

anm89 wrote: post #8

I've noticed this hilarious thing where within the left leaning media sphere, the only verbs that Ocasio-Cortez and to a lesser degree Bernie ever engage in is "slamming". They don't eat, sleep, debate, propose, or discuss. They just slam 24/7. I googled her to verify the spelling on her name and the first headline was: "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams the lack of diversity in an all-white group of lawmakers who draft…

The verbage may have changed but this has been happening for a while and is certainly not limited to Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders.

Article found from simple Google News archive search of "Pelosi" from 2004-2006: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/28/tauzin.pelosi/inde... Same thing but "Bill Frist" instead: https://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/12/edwards.stem.cell...

Sure, "rips" and "knocks" have been replaced with "slams" etc but it's the exact same tactic that has been used for at least a while.

It would be interesting to see how far back this media behavior goes, which outlets are most culpable, and which "side of the aisle" these articles are mainly targeting, because I genuinely don't know.

Re: Slamming political rivals may be the most effective way to go viral

#72

Post by smaddox »

azinman2 wrote: post #61
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they even that anymore? That seems like it would be an improvement. Now it seems like they're just cast members doing product placement for someone else's manifesto.

Not even a manifesto. If you look at people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, their rise is basic upon mutual dislike, and nothing more. Just a willingness to “own” the other side. There is no manifesto (unless you consider god, guns and glory a manifesto), just hatred. And it’s extremely engaging for their respective base. I don’t blame the politicians per se, in some ways it’s democracy at work if that’s what the people…

Or perhaps we need to change our democracy to stop enforcing a duopoly. I firmly believe that widely implementing STAR Voting (https://www.starvoting.us/) would fix a large swath of problems in politics and public policy.

Re: Slamming political rivals may be the most effective way to go viral

#73

Post by azinman2 »

smaddox wrote: post #72
azinman2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even a manifesto. If you look at people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, their rise is basic upon mutual dislike, and nothing more. Just a willingness to “own” the other side. There is no manifesto (unless you consider god, guns and glory a manifesto), just hatred. And it’s extremely engaging for their respective base. I don’t blame the politicians per se, in some ways it’s democracy at work if that’s what the people…

Or perhaps we need to change our democracy to stop enforcing a duopoly. I firmly believe that widely implementing STAR Voting ( https://www.starvoting.us/ ) would fix a large swath of problems in politics and public policy.

Ranked voting also can have unexpected surprises as well. Every system has flaws, and if we open things up even more, I believe we’ll just get a collection of even more radicalized parties who only care about a single issue. At least with two parties there’s inner tension they need to modulate.

Re: Slamming political rivals may be the most effective way to go viral

#74

Post by _meqs »

trentnix wrote: post #28

Well yes, because all political reporting is basically TMZ for boring, ugly people. It molds politics into some fantasy world of rap battles and gang fights rather than a productive discussion about making good policy. And if your first impulse is to think well yeah because the other side blah blah , you're part of the problem too.

Maybe some of this is due to how little variation there is: I've yet to see a politician who isn't neoliberal (though Trump was more than a bit fascist at times). Even 2019-20 Andrew Yang still built his ideas (mainly UBI) off of neoliberalism, and imo, appealed to a ton of more traditional neoliberal values: that UBI is about providing equally and flatly for everyone, not specifically and directly helping the disenfranchised and indirectly aiding worker control of the means of production (how I'd view its effects). And then he abandoned the UBI campaign this year, becoming even more centrist.

Then, if we shift our focus further left, we see Bernie Sanders, who is just not all that socialist because he's really working within the neoliberal framework that his years of politics conditioned him to work in. Further left than that, well, there are no anarchists or communists in politics.

I could make the case that this is here (and bad) bc neoliberalism will slide towards fascism if we give equal weight to everyone's ideas, but that does feel like I'm sinking further into divisions, and it presupposes that my positive opinions about the far left are actually supported by facts, regardless of any ground truth. But really, it wouldn't be an issue if we had more variety in ideology: discussion would be more varied and more thorough, we'd all question our own ideology's assumptions just a bit more, and overall it would be easier to engage in someone else's ideas if you knew they weren't coming from the same baseline as you.

Neoliberalism is not a neutral or balanced ideology: let's have more communists, socialists, anarchists, libertarians, hell, maybe a few fascists or stalinists could do some good.

Re: Slamming political rivals may be the most effective way to go viral

#75

Post by CyanBird »

klyrs wrote: post #53

This story is so meta. Most of the comments here are slamming the press and social media users for slamming politicians for slamming eachother. Slam slam slam. And here I am, slamming the lot of you. Serious question though. Is this merely a neologism used to describe a phenomenon that was old before Cicero lost his head?

> Is this merely a neologism used to describe a phenomenon that was old before Cicero lost his head?

Yep it is

Only now there's reduced geographic friction from it, so the waves can get larger quicker, "social media deterritorializes politics" if you'd like to get pedantic about it

Re: Slamming political rivals may be the most effective way to go viral

#76

Post by CyanBird »

anm89 wrote: post #8

I've noticed this hilarious thing where within the left leaning media sphere, the only verbs that Ocasio-Cortez and to a lesser degree Bernie ever engage in is "slamming". They don't eat, sleep, debate, propose, or discuss. They just slam 24/7. I googled her to verify the spelling on her name and the first headline was: "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams the lack of diversity in an all-white group of lawmakers who draft…

> They don't eat, sleep, debate, propose, or discuss. They just slam 24/7.

Why are you attributing what they say, to what the media says they said?

AOC didn't write that headline, a news editor did, for the explicit purpose of making you put attention to it

Re: Slamming political rivals may be the most effective way to go viral

#78

Post by zozbot234 »

_meqs wrote: post #74
trentnix wrote: post #28

Well yes, because all political reporting is basically TMZ for boring, ugly people. It molds politics into some fantasy world of rap battles and gang fights rather than a productive discussion about making good policy. And if your first impulse is to think well yeah because the other side blah blah , you're part of the problem too.

Maybe some of this is due to how little variation there is: I've yet to see a politician who isn't neoliberal (though Trump was more than a bit fascist at times). Even 2019-20 Andrew Yang still built his ideas (mainly UBI) off of neoliberalism, and imo, appealed to a ton of more traditional neoliberal values: that UBI is about providing equally and flatly for everyone, not specifically and directly helping the disenf…

There's no such thing as neoliberalism. "Neoliberalism" is a fake bogeyman that Latin American populists came up with when they needed something to blame for the failure of their policy choices.

Re: Slamming political rivals may be the most effective way to go viral

#79

Post by zekrioca »

hhs wrote: post #38

The paper is also worth reading. Here's part of the conclusion: "Understanding the factors that make social media posts go “viral” online can help to create better social media environments. While social media platforms are not fully transparent about how their algorithmic ranking system works, Facebook announced in a post titled “Bringing People Closer Together” that it was changing its algorithm ranking system to v…

Remains to be seen what "deeper" means for them. I'd say they reached deep enough.

Re: Slamming political rivals may be the most effective way to go viral

#80

Post by smaddox »

azinman2 wrote: post #73
smaddox wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps we need to change our democracy to stop enforcing a duopoly. I firmly believe that widely implementing STAR Voting ( https://www.starvoting.us/ ) would fix a large swath of problems in politics and public policy.

Ranked voting also can have unexpected surprises as well. Every system has flaws, and if we open things up even more, I believe we’ll just get a collection of even more radicalized parties who only care about a single issue. At least with two parties there’s inner tension they need to modulate.

RCV can have unexpected surprises, but STAR voting resolves all such issues with RCV.
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