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naraburns  nihil supernum  6mo ago (text post)   27965 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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What are some other factors that could explain Trump’s victory, besides “Kamala is unlikable”? It sucks that we can’t determine how Trump won as the pollsters are too inaccurate, but we can still make guesses.

I think that the rise in scrolling-based media (tik tok, reels) has made non-political social media content significantly more addicting than the political media of the 10s and news in general. This reduces the number of people engaging in online political content, and reduces the political engagement of those whose political information came via online spectacles. For a variety of reasons I think that Democrats have relied on more “addictive internet content” to recruit votes, as for instance the BLM / brutality / racism motif of Obama-Hillary-Biden campaigns. George Floyd can’t compete with Moo Deng. Consider that Northwestern study which found that BLM shifted swing state votes more than concern about the economy. If Dems rely on socially contagious hype more than Republicans then they need to fundamentally rethink their strategy in a post-2020 social media environment.

I agree with @Dean about "Democratic over-reliance on media shaping", but want to take it in a different direction. I don't have the numbers to hand (EDIT: I do now), but I saw an exit poll showing a staggeringly-huge swing among the under-30s - Gen Z, who are extremely online. And what happened online in the past four years? Elon Musk bought Twitter, which shattered SJ's consensus-astroturfing operation; up until then, they'd been seeing a false SJ consensus created by banning everyone who spoke out, but now they see something closer to reality. And I think that gave... call it "social permission" to not vote Democrat; SJ can no longer gaslight them into thinking that voting Republican is lonely dissent.

they'd been seeing a false SJ consensus created by banning everyone who spoke out, but now they see something closer to reality

This statement seems crazy to me. If there was an SJW consensus prior to Elon, all the same mechanisms and all the same incentives exist to create an equally false right-wing consensus. If your response is going to be, "well, my side is actually right!" then you're isomorphic to an SJW.

If your response is going to be, "well, my side is actually right!" then you're isomorphic to an SJW.

Regardless of what Musk does or does not do with Twitter, he cannot create a false consensus by himself, because he doesn't own Alphabet (including Google Search and YouTube), Meta (including Facebook and Instagram), Reddit, or Hollywood (or TikTok, but lol TikTok's a Chinese op and will push whatever's most destructive). Most of these people consume at least one of those.

My point is that having all of the major platforms do the same censorship (and Hollywood and the most-respected legacy media push the same line) creates a false consensus effect.

I understand your point better now-- you're talking about global (across the internet) rather than local (on twitter) consensus. I still disagree with it, but that's because I don't think a consensus ever existed. facebook and whatsapp have been notorious for right-wing behavior for a while, and of course reddit and twitter got trump elected in 2016. Andrew Tate and the manosphere have been popular on youtube for quite a while too.

or TikTok, but lol TikTok's a Chinese op and will push whatever's most destructive

This is true.

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