The migration seems to have gone well, new site is great, everyone? loves it, the bots are here, the debate threads had good turnout, have some patrons, but, I still don’t know if we’re closer to knowing whether this place will be branded as:
a) a fair but sharply, bitingly anti right wing bs site
b) the vaguer, here to elevate political discourse regardless of ideology
c) some 538-esque analytical angle in that we have people who know how to gamble
For example, trying to decide on a banner for twitter, I spun up a few stopgap ideas:
Oh, I didn’t state my opinion, if it were up to me I would lean into some form of a, but I have no problem with b or c. I would support saying that b or c, even if out-voted, should have some blocking/veto threshold of like 33% or whatever.
I would be in favor of letting our branding be more subtle and not be overly shouty about it, but not try to hide who we are either. I also suspect that the forum is going to define its own identity independently of what we might want to force on it.
Its going to be mostly US politics discussed but since its not just Americans here the background should probably not have anything overtly American so its more welcoming to all.
As one of the non Americans here I don’t mind an American theme. Main reason I continued on 2p2 after I quit poker and then followed everyone here is commentary on American politics. I would suggest to brand the site as neutral on the political spectrum even though it will probably end up being left wing dunking on right wingers. It also makes it easier to brand and promote the site which we need to do to keep it going. The declaration theme is the one I would choose.
Was just thinking if the ones itt were going to be the twitter background or something it might be better to pick something neutral to draw from a wider audience. Guess with a thread like the UK thread people would know and if it does not bother anyone already here. Ok.
Then i vote for a dont tread on me theme and make a trap. I kid mostly…it would be fun to try and get in on the grift by baiting somehow though. Think of all that ad money.
Perhaps a fair but bitingly anti-far-right, anti-BS, for the people site?
I don’t particularly like any of the banners, I think something a little more generic, or maybe we rotate it based on current issues? Maybe something tied into The New Colossus would be good right now?
Rotation is becoming pretty popular but it would be a bit hard to pull off, for me anyway, my design skills are pretty limited. We could come up with a bunch of pictures we like I suppose and then slot them in when something is dominating the headlines, but that will always have to be someone’s chore, most things you want aren’t free to use, etc.
The first one is exactly what I was thinking, except with the more famous passage. But I like it. The Statue of Liberty one looks great, too… And the random fish are oddly relaxing and peaceful.
On the topic of branding and what the site becomes, I look forward very much to having an outward-facing section to express myself on days like today on a platform on which we can reach a lot of people… I have thousands of words in me that I’d like to put on paper (well, digital screen) right now about what happened in El Paso and what it means, what we should be thinking/doing as a country, what Democrats should be thinking/doing, what average people should be thinking/doing, etc. I don’t want to just be a part of conversations, I want to try to shape conversations.
I think we have people in our community uniquely skilled to do that and to provide statistical analysis of polling/election data, among other things - I hope all of that is involved in what we become and what we’re branded as.
I like that, going to bed but let’s keep this going, and anybody with artistic skills or opinions are welcome to join in. Everything I link here so far is low effort brain storming, feel free to poop on it.
In line with this, think the essence of this place is somewhere between options B and C and could be boiled down to the classic, “cite or ban.” Or put another way, to hell with common sense solutions and focus on evidence based ones instead.
I really don’t like the pinned tweet. It makes us look like deranged idiots imo. In my ideal world this would be viewed as a place for serious discussion and again the pinned tweet doesn’t carry that inference.
