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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.
Everyone understands sarcasm. Zoomers didn't invent it.
The problem is that Piers Morgan sees himself not just as vastly intellectually superior to Nick Fuentes, but in a completely different league. He underestimated Fuentes so much, he didn't even see the need to listen to him. He thought all he had to do is research, present the evidence, and it would be an automatic win. That's why he didn't even consider the possibility that Fuentes was being sarcastic.
Just consider the moment when Fuentes said the number of Jews that died in the Holocaust could have been 7, 6, 8 million... maybe 100 times more. If Morgan paused for a second to listen to what Fuentes just said, he would realize he was being trolled, but he didn't, because the possibility that he was going to be intellectually outmatched wasn't on his bingo card.
There were around 500k Jewish people in Germany at the time, so how could the number of dead be 600k?
I've seen this happen countless times. For example when Paul Krugman commented on a post by Scott Adams, underestimating Adams' intellect and not even considering the possibility that he was being trolled.
Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer. Zoomers are just taking advantage of the Boomers' overconfidence, and having a laugh about how stupid it makes them look.
I think this is the result of different strategies that Morgan and Fuentes had with this interview. Fuentes came there with his bloodsport debate style, which is about listening to your opponent and constructing arguments. Morgan came there with tabloid style gotcha questions, moralizing and shaming/guilting - complete with random segues and topic switching whenever he thinks that he got what he wanted.
It was also seen specifically with the part you mentioned, when Fuentes obviously sarcastically admitted that he is "Holocaust maximalist". Morgan did not listen to Fuentes in order to form his own counterargument, he jumped into a gotcha of we know how many Jews were slaughtered. It's at least 6 million. Uh, what's interesting to me is that you appear to now concede that. Which may be news to your regular viewers. So again, even if Morgan thought that Fuentes offered a concession, he immediately went on attack satisfied that he proved Fuentes as a liar for his viewers. It is a different style of discussion, not a debate.
In a sense it was a battle of styles with each side utilizing different tactics, it was almost like a parallel streams with little to no substantive engagement from any side.
Yeah, but the problem is that Fuentes' style does require listening, so he was responding to what Morgan actually said. The audience is also listening to both. Morgan is the only one that wasn't.
That's why the little jabs that Fuentes did proved to the audience that Morgan wasn't listening, because he didn't respond or engage, he just continued with his script.
There's a reason why in 2025 people prefer the long-form podcast style: because it's harder to fake.
At the end of the day Fuentes' style feels much more authentic. Nobody likes Morgan's style anymore.
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