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Notes -
The Nick Fuentes interview with Piers Morgan was a good demonstration of how boomers do not understand Gen Z rhetorical tactics at all. One example is the “agree-and-amplify” strategy.
This strategy came from The Red Pill/PUA community. The idea is that girls will try to throw you off your game by making some unfounded criticism, to test how secure/powerful you are as a man. It’s called a “shit test.”
The “agree-and-amplify” strategy says the best approach is to do exact that. Example: Girl says “Wow that’s a big truck, are compensating for something?”
Loser response (no getting laid): “No, my penis is slightly above average! I just like trucks!”
Agree-and-amplify: “Hahah yeah, micropene. 1 inch. It’ll have you screaming tho.”
The latter projects confidence, she knows your joking of if she believes you, you can neg her about it. She made it sexual and gave you an opening. Etc. All in good fun.
Fuentes did the same thing repeatedly, and Morgan just does not grasp it at all.
For example, paraphrasing:
Morgan: “Are you racist?”
Loser response: No, I have friends who are black! I just think [crime statistics]!
Morgan: Sounds like you’re racist.
Game, set, march. Better is the Fuentes agree-and-amplify:
Fuentes : “Haha yeah. I don’t want any black people around”
Morgan: [clutches pearls]
Fuentes: I have black friends though. They are also concerned about [crime statistics]
Morgan: But you said you were racist!
It makes it feel like Morgan is not in on the joke. It denies his moral frame that any hint of racism = bad. He needs to come up with a more concrete argument. When he instead tries fails to re-establish the frame through repetition, it doesn’t land.
I was reminded in a way of the classic Charlie Kirk owning libs on campus. The key is that the libs did not really come into the bait understanding Kirk’s beliefs or tactics, but Kirk understood theirs inside and out. This let Kirk win easily every time.
Morgan is a wiley veteran and won some parts of the interview. But overall he did not know how to handle Nick’s tactics at all.
In the end, it is turning into a debacle for Piers Morgan. As the dust settles, he comes across as the evil defender of a decrepit regime going after some dude’s dad. He was forced to pretend to not understand basic statistics, causing him to appear either stupid or malicious, depending on your gullibility. In many ways, he was the perfect heel employing dirty tactics to get an edge.
And to make matters worse, his decision to focus on the Catholic Nick’s virginity has backfired horribly, with everyone learning about his wife cheating on him with everyone from internet randos to the literal pool boy. How true are these accusations? I honestly don’t know, but they are already cemented into the hivemind’s collective beliefs.
I could really never stand the rambling nature of Nick’s show and never watched more than five minutes, but I agree with most of what he said on Tucker and Piers. On my scorecard, total groyper victory. Curious if others agree.
I’ve always thought of this in terms of the “yes Chad” jpg meme. There’s no caricature or attack that can’t be defeated by more or less saying “yes”.
“You’re a communist who hates America!”
“Yes”
“You’re a holocaust denier who thinks the Jews are running the world”
“Yes”
Etc. etc. It works because we’ve lost consensus about what things we’re supposed to believe as a nation.
Better yet, 'Bring the movies'.
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I don’t think it works because of that, since if anything there I’d say it works because of the consensus that communists and antisemites are bad. It works because it shows social dominance and control of the interaction by calling out bad faith intercolution in an unaffected, playful way, tossing down a reverse uno card to parry and deal 2X damage.
It can also be applied more broadly to deal with rhetorical tricks or attempted gotchas in general, not just American culture war topics (hence the possible origin from dealing with women’s shit-tests). For example, loaded questions:
“Have you stopped beating your wife?”
“No, it’d be cruel to deprive her of the violence she craves.”
I suspect its origins are far older than PUA knowhow, though, even if PUA put a name to it and helped popularize it.
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