People are truly too dumb to handle the level of discourse needed to self-govern. They’re susceptible to vibe shifts because they cannot think for themselves.
Case in point. My PAC is doing some text campaigns to get out the vote for a few of our local candidates. The initial text goes something like this:
“Candidate XYZ is running for ABC Board because she wants to give everyone a puppy and put vending machines in every hallway. Can we count on your vote for Candidate XYZ? Paid for by My Awesome PAC. STOP to opt out.”
I have gotten a not insignificant number of replies that say “PAC.STOP”
I only started to pay attention to him some months ago. He seems observant and sharp but here it seems like he’s trying to reinvent something a lot of work has already been done on. (That work itself seems vague and hand-wavy to me but I don’t really know anything.)
It’s all driven by the media/social media environment.
Media is powerful but isn’t enough by itself to explain why a cascade occurs. There’s no guarantee that if there’s a story in NYT about egg prices the whole world will go ape-shit over eggs even though we know a cascade like that did in fact happen. If it can’t explain why it happens in particular cases I’m not that impressed by the idea.
Maybe there’s a threshold initial attention required. Maybe feedback and resonance. I can start to see how you can build a model so I assume people have done that. Maybe you can get some insight about the real world from the exercise but idk.
Republicans have taken over the narratives and have prompted the Dems to return to their natural state of tacking right to appeal to non existent undecided moderates
The vibes were good when Kamala seemed different (I mean, we know she’s not, but it was vibes) and now it’s revealed that it’s the same bullshit they’ve been failing to sell for years
The only thing keeping them afloat is how much Trump sucks, and that might not even be enough at this rate
They can and do think for themselves when they have to. Usually they don’t have to and they’re right not to. Unfortunately they’re not good at recognizing the occasional times they should be paying attention and thinking hard. And vibes are seductive.
Maybe a line break before “STOP to opt out” would cut down the bad replies.
this is what trump is trying to make happen with the “you send your little boy to kindergarden and he comes home with a vagina” story but this shit isn’t sticking. They’ve used up all the sort of belieable stories and they now have to use dumber and dumber shit that basically came out of the dumbest regions of the Q-verse. It’s like when a star runs out of hydrogen and has to start burning heavier elements.
Alternative when you get a result like that is to make an educated guess as to whether the current sample is “correct” or the previous sample was “correct.” Some pollsters do that, presumably using “conventional wisdom,” but as we all know that is sometimes wrong…. because weird stuff sometimes happens.
I did a ton of text banking in 2020. Tried to do it this time but could not find any easy way to join those efforts, even after asking when I was texted by a text banker. Harold.gif
I do feel like the campaign is less organized this cycle. It’s understandable given how things shook out, but in 2020 there was a Biden app where you could find info about events, volunteer opportunities, etc. There’s nothing like that this time and it takes more work to find out how to get involved.
Good post and this rings true for me unfortunately. Maybe it also has to do with Walz’s debate performance making Vance look almost normal. Like you say it’s the same shit as always. We had that brief moment that this looked like it could be different. And maybe it still can. It’s just starting to feel like probably not.
Also betting markets have shifted noticeably to Trump(not just polymarket). So this isn’t just the terminally online making this observation. People are making the same observation and betting on it. Normie books like Bovada now have Trump the favorite when Kamala had been a slight favorite for over a month prior.