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If rightwing Twitter could rot your brain, I'd expect Vance to be more affected than Musk.
The drugs aren't helping, but I think the simpler explanation is that Elon has been faking it till he makes it his entire career. Retweeting false information, and coping about Community Notes being gamed isn't actually any different than his MO of making predictions of wild-ass things happening "next year" for years on end, and complaining about the handful of voices calling him out on it a decade later.
Is Vance not pretty heavily rotted from online discourse too? He seems to have gone a deep end in some ways at least.
I saw his interview on Joe Rogan and thought he was someone who could actually be good: a moderating influence on Trump, an adult who can get some things done while being stabilizing in general versus Trump's more insane flips. I really liked his book too, and thought he might have some of the right instincts. I haven't been impressed so far, and his behavior in the Zelensky meeting and in general on social media have been the opposite at least in my perception, it seems to maximize for heat vs light in the real world.
Twitter shitposting seems to be highly contagious in general, with Rubio recently wading in to shout at Poland, which wasn't my idea of diplomacy. Seems like a clown show in general, rather than showing strength as I assume they intend.
I'm really interested in the opinions of others though... what do you all think?
Why do you think this, or Rubio's posting, us caused by Twitter? Was everythibg that made Democrats look bad in your eyes also caused by Twitter?
OP's complaint seems to be about detachment from basic reality, yours is a lot ccloser to just not liking their priorities and policies.
I mean I'm not impressed with Musk, Rubio or Vance on Twitter, and all of them seem a bit deranged on it - they're suffering from brainrot from the medium it seems to me. Though I did include some other points which are more not liking their priorities and policies, some of that also seems to be them playing to the social media crowd - maybe I'm wrong there however.
OP's baseline for "brainrot" is "making a factual statement on how much money you saved the government, and being off by a couple of orders of magnitude", yours is "they're maximizing for heat rather than light". I don't think it's correct to lump these together, and it might even be an instance of generating more heat than light itself.
I worry we're getting lost in defining terms here, possibly my mistake.
Making incorrect statements and sticking by them certainly seems to be one type of brainrot (as per OP), but I think it's fair to broaden it out, and to be clear my definition of brainrot isn't "maximizing for heat", though that's part of it, it's also more generally that many people senior in the US government seem to be basically shitposting on twitter. That seems really odd to me, and I include Vance and Rubio in that shitposting category.
I honestly wanted to discuss with people why that might be the case, and if others agree with the shitposting accusation, but if you don't want to discuss that, that's fair too.
Also, @mixpap.
And I believe that's a bad idea, unless you can come up with a clear definition that all sides agree on from the outset, otherise this will clearly devolve into "everything I don't like is brainrot, and the more I don't like it, the more brainrot it is". I can easily make an argument that the CDC declaring that racism is a public health emergency, or the entirety of the transgender movement is "progressive TikTok brainrot".
I don't think it's necessary to get into a deep analysis of the word brainrot , we know and you know what we are trying to express. A man that that might have been capable in a specific field , now very deluded and problematic in his statements ,getting involved in all kinds of things that don't concern him and lying constantly while doing it. If , as some have suggested , ketamine is the cause of his insanity then ketamine induced brainrot could possibly be a relatively accurate diagnosis? I am only half joking.
A definition of brainrot I found with a google search is “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration”. I would argue that this is exactly what's going on with musk. He is degrading intellectually as a result of online content ( a lot of it being russian propaganda as I have many times underlined ).
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