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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

#101

Post by Sanzig »

yesenadam wrote: post #96
vkou wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Well, in my country and many others, voting is compulsory, so we don't have this problem.

I think I've changed my stance on compulsory voting over the years.

My old view was that voting should be as easy as possible (advance polling days, no advance registration requirement, mail-in ballot options), but at the same time it shouldn't be mandatory. I used to view compulsory voting as an impediment to the democratic process: if you aren't motivated enough to vote, why should you get to weigh in?

These days, I think compulsory voting may have a whole lot of value as an effective countermeasure to polarization. Political campaigns would be forced to shift from whipping up furor among existing supporters to reaching across partisan divides in order to convince independents and persuadable individuals in the other camps to vote for you.

Have there been any studies done in this regard?

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

#104

Post by lifeisstillgood »

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…

But - isn't it a manifesto of sorts. I mean it's nice to see a fully costed budget broken down into multiple categories, but let's be fair, that's just to get past the gatekeepers of yore (NYT, The Times, BBC).

Turning up without the numbers adding up was just an easy way to get pasted by the interviewer.

Now there is no interviewer - so the manifesto is what it always really was - an attempt to connect to the voter on a level of identity, common understanding and culture. It's why it is flat out amazing any single human being can get 70 million votes in the US (or even more amazing 300m in India)

How many hats does such a person have to wear? How many promises does someone need to connect.

I mean Brad Pitt is gorgeous and just has to say five scripted lines and he could not get 300 million women to vote for him.

The idea that democracy has scale this far with just a personality cult as its main adjudicator is incredible

The number of living humans who can make that many people think"yeah"'is tiny !

One day we will go beyond our initial ape reactions

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

#105

Post by voting749227383 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #91
smaddox wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As far as I know, STAR voting is a form of RCV. However, the Fairvote organization has advertised RCV with instant runoff voting as the counting method as being RCV.

Technically speaking, STAR voting is a form of cardinal voting, while ranked-choice encompasses the various ordinal methods.

The distinction here is that in STAR voting, I could rank two candidates equally to show that I have no preference between them. Also, I don't have to rank the candidates in order: I could give my first-place a score of 5, my second place a score of 2, and my third place a score of 0. If I scored my second place candidate as 3, this ballot could result in a different outcome.

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

#106

Post by lotsofpulp »

voting749227383 wrote: post #105
lotsofpulp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, STAR voting is a form of RCV. However, the Fairvote organization has advertised RCV with instant runoff voting as the counting method as being RCV.

Technically speaking, STAR voting is a form of cardinal voting, while ranked-choice encompasses the various ordinal methods. The distinction here is that in STAR voting, I could rank two candidates equally to show that I have no preference between them. Also, I don't have to rank the candidates in order: I could give my first-place a score of 5, my second place a score of 2, and my third place a score of 0. If I scor…

Thanks for the correction! The whole voting system and counting methods is a deeper dive than what I first imagined.

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

#107

Post by s5300 »

rhino369 wrote: post #23
dukeofdoom wrote: post #2

People just regurgitate their sides last night narrative presented to them on their favourite news network. the commitment to truth has been lost. Its all about framing now.

IMO, framing things as "truth" or "falsehood" is part of the problem. Each side dismisses the other side as just not knowing the right facts (or denying the facts), as if everyone would agree if they just knew the right facts. The media dug in on this very hard after the 2016 with the "fake news" and "fact-checking" crusades. Reality is a lot more complicated. Even if we agreed on the facts, we don't agree on conclus…

>Everyone is addicted to anger.

Is exactly what a person addicted to anger would say. No, believe it or not, everybody is not addicted to anger - but those who are sure as hell like to perpetuate the idea of it and spread their toxicity

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

#108

Post by 1270018080 »

toomanyducks wrote: post #81
zozbot234 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Self described neoliberals will be surprised when they learn neoliberalism isn't real.

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

#109

Post by kansface »

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?

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

While there may be nothing new under the sun, there is still plenty of room for the relative prevalence of slamming vs engaging to change in American political communiques, and for the press' coverage of slamming to change as well.

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

#110

Post by rdiddly »

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…

Hot-damn, you just put your finger on why the whole thing is such a turn-off. It's just a big, lame, shallow show. Bags of hot air blowing at each other, for the clickbait value. And whether it's a media outlet characterizing something as "slamming" for the clicks, or the person speaking in a "slammy" way for the same reason, hardly makes a difference. The former dutifully serves the latter and the latter feeds the former. They're both just manipulating you. Or maybe, at best, someone through their Twitter account might be trying to display "who they are" (LOL!) by virtue of what they oppose, which seems like it would never work, and it doesn't. Not for that purpose. Look at the big picture and it's incredibly sad. Though almost laughably so if you zoom far enough out.
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