JuanHamm wrote:Bi_3 wrote:JuanHamm wrote:What would you like the Ohio politician with 10k followers to do?
It's not about what an individual does, it's about how we collectively as society react and reward.
Do you think Twitter is a fair reflection of society?
Loosely, no. But I do think Twitter has a disparate impact on the elements of society that shape public perception and acts as a leading engagement indicator to legacy media. The history of Fox News is a good place to start. Fox rode to the top because they were able to create the mass media equivalent of a cigarette using the guise of 'fair and balanced' news to
deliver an addictive drug: anger. And anger feels good. It really does. Nothing feels quite like the righteous anger you get when
they do their evil. The irrational hatred of the other becomes suddenly justified and your struggle validated because you've been right this whole time. And it was easy for Fox when Obama was president because their audience's fears were manifest before them. Got them all health insurance? Fuck that, he's a Kenyan commie. And mad people buy more MyPillows (promo code POSO), so the money went to Fox. Trump gave the left the same opportunity and they took it and flipped the script. Just like everything that Obama did was bad because Obama did it, everything Trump did was bad because it was Trump that did it. People ate that shit up, it drove ads and engagement to the point where the chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee thought he was a hero when he read into the Congressional record an unfounded rumor that Trump had hookers pee on hotel bed in Russia and a video of that event was being used to control him. That fat orange fuck still lives rent free in the heads of CNN/NYT/etc and half the posters here because outrage and the hit we get from it feels so good.
What Twitter has done, and Facebook pioneered before it, was to enable media business people to peak into the minds and lives of their target demos and feed them the exact pitches and sentiments that will maximize engagement and thus maximize profit. And what type of content did Fox prove sells? Outrage. This creates a viscous feedback cycle where audiences must be kept constantly angry and constantly fearful, and for voices on Twitter to be successful they need to feed this. You're gonna be fired from your job as a reporter if nobody reads your articles. Nobody's gonna read your articles unless they get that hit. Tucker Carlson is a great example. Starting out as a reasonable conservative voice, he was a nobody until he learned to capitalize on anger and became... whatever the hell he is now. Present day Jon Stewart (anyone remember the Rally to Restore Sanity? I do, I was there) and Chris Hayes, same thing.
Now it's politicians too. What does Trump offer? Marjorie Green? Boebert? Nothing but anger at the other. AOC? Jayapal? Nothing but anger at the other.
Who cares, it's just Twitter and the party extremes right? It matters because of the perverse incentive that comes along with it, that in order to sell outrage there must be outrage to sell. It multiplies on top of itself. And what stops the outrage market? Actually doing shit to improve peoples lives so they are less angry. But that doesn't sell and it doesn't feel good and it doesn't validate my existence and it's hard work and it's doesn't punish the sinners, so we leave it to others. God, the State, the state,
someone else. We are too busy. We are outraged at them for all those things they did to us! Thus we sit paralyzed, unable to act, only express hatred. Maybe put this week's flag up. And now with the liberal world being dismantled before us, what do we do? Take another hit. So nothing changes.
The right wingers spent years building to the events of the last few weeks. So how do we respond? Send a bunch of morbidly obese bluehairs to a judges house? Click the reteweet button? Or maybe... just maybe.. stop being angry bitches and start helping. Reward and honor those doing the grunt work to help, not those screeching that someone must do something.
"The fatal flaw of all revolutionaries is that they know how to tear things down but don't have a f**king clue about how to build anything."