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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

#81

Post by toomanyducks »

zozbot234 wrote: post #78
_meqs wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is not something I've ever heard before - could you explain further, provide some links maybe?

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

#82

Post by vkou »

hackeraccount wrote: post #33

Eh, the easiest most effective arguments are also the most toxic. The people who disagree with me aren't just wrong but they're disingenuous liars with an agenda so terrible even they won't admit to it. The people who disagree with me don't even understand what they're saying because they're just mindlessly repeating things they have been indoctrinated to believe. Neither of those will convince anyone of anything but…

There's a reason for this.

The reason for it is that you don't win elections by convincing the other side that they are wrong, and they should vote for you.

You win elections by convincing your side to show up.

And the best way to do it is by telling your side that giving the victory to your opponent is voting for a Trump.

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

#83

Post by LeifCarrotson »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #30
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.

>>> political reporting is basically TMZ for boring, ugly people. Can I get that on a TShirt please ? (And yes, was it Nietscheze who says politicians are just sales people for their manifestos?)

Why is it that the political salespeople are boring and ugly? Politics would be even more difficult to approach objectively if the politicians were photogenic, charismatic, attractive, and well-spoken.

Television ads have this figured out, viewers subconsciously want to be the smiling cool guy drinking Advertised Beer (tm) and partying with the wealthy and youthful crowd shown in the ad, but no one wants to hang out in the scenes portrayed on CSPAN.

I'm glad to not need to deal with that level of reality distortion yet, but I don't know why that's the case.

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

#84

Post by jakeva »

azinman2 wrote: post #66
0-_-0 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, let's try this in Google: "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams": About 73,300 results "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez eats": About 109 results "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sleeps": 1 result "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez debates": About 173 results "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposes": About 5,880 results "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discusses": About 1,150 results Damn, you were right! Also surprised that AOC never sleeps.

Unless you paged thru these and manually counted yourself, do not trust Google’s number of returned results. It’s effectively a random number generator. Source: I’ve worked for Google.

Surely it's closer to an estimate than purely random?

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

#85

Post by vkou »

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.

Canada does not have a duopoly[1], and yet, ABC (Anything But Conservative) has been a rallying cry behind a few elections.

The US will probably get better outcomes with a multi-party system, but moving to one will not change the tone of political conversation. (Which is what this thread is about.)

[1] Although it suffers from all the typical FPTP nonsense, where the party that gets 30% of the vote gets 100% of the power.

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

#86

Post by Consultant32452 »

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.

In my opinion long form podcasts are fixing this. The gotcha nonsense on Twitter isn't going away, but at the same time long form discussions about complex topics are growing in popularity. So there is at worst a duality where things are getting worse on one hand and better on the other.

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

#87

Post by azinman2 »

jakeva wrote: post #84
azinman2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you paged thru these and manually counted yourself, do not trust Google’s number of returned results. It’s effectively a random number generator. Source: I’ve worked for Google.

Surely it's closer to an estimate than purely random?

Do not use it for any comparisons. It is not what you think it is. It's largely there to impress you with how big Google is, and at this point, more historical inertia than anything else.

Here's a bit of outside analysis that's fun to read: https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/04/trochee-chart/

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

#88

Post by munificent »

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.

It would be fascinating to do a study where you take politics news articles and replace all names with A, B, C, etc. and likewise any mention of Party. So just policy and blank identifiers. Then see how people respond to the news. Are they more likely to agree with or disagree with policies when they don't know who they're coming from?

I suppose in practice there are enough shibboleths in each political camp that readers will still be able to tell which side is their tribe, but it would be interesting to see.

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

#89

Post by krapp »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #83
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> political reporting is basically TMZ for boring, ugly people. Can I get that on a TShirt please ? (And yes, was it Nietscheze who says politicians are just sales people for their manifestos?)

Why is it that the political salespeople are boring and ugly? Politics would be even more difficult to approach objectively if the politicians were photogenic, charismatic, attractive, and well-spoken. Television ads have this figured out, viewers subconsciously want to be the smiling cool guy drinking Advertised Beer (tm) and partying with the wealthy and youthful crowd shown in the ad, but no one wants to hang out…

Looks helped for JFK and Obama, and might help for AOC in the future.

On the other hand, millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump because his being ugly, irascible, and vulgar made him seem more relatable and sincere... likely as a reaction to a negative impression given by Obama's relative youth and well-spokenness.

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

#90

Post by soperj »

Clubber wrote: post #57
0-_-0 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, let's try this in Google: "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams": About 73,300 results "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez eats": About 109 results "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sleeps": 1 result "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez debates": About 173 results "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposes": About 5,880 results "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discusses": About 1,150 results Damn, you were right! Also surprised that AOC never sleeps.

>Also surprised that AOC never sleeps. Well, she slept once according to your results.

that result was actually referring to her never sleeping.
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