I think the democratic brand is really hard to sync with the sort of populism that makes Trump and co. so effective at infotainment. By presenting themselves as the reasonable party, while Trump and Republicans are the post-truth party, any sort of populism that gains clicks will end up making them look incompetent.
When Trump says "They're eating the cats and dogs" and liberals freak out, people see him doing a bit of trolling. If Kamala or Biden said something equally at odds with truth, it would be a sign they were incompetent or senile. It's the difference between Joe Rogen agreeing with an ancient aliens theory and your college professor doing the same. There's just no way their brand can compete on the same playing field of social media populism.
I think this is right. More generally, I think the average person doesn't *actually* want accurate news. Revealed preference shows that people gravitate towards entertainment (daily show on the left, infowars on the right) much more than they gravitate towards accuracy. I mean, some number of people do care about the accuracy, but I think that's not modal.
Idk how you fix this problem. I don't want the dem party to change their brand and become a party of bullshit just to counter all the other bullshit. I'd rather somehow pull the GOP back out from its current swamp. But electoral optimization pressures are what they are, I don't see a clean way to get the GOP out of their epistemic hole or prevent a media death spiral in general
Get ready for me being in my feelings, quick 200 words off the dome:
Good post, but I can't look past being back into The Trump Country-Country part of the Country from time to time for family and wilderness reasons, and the fact that there is a reason that almost everyone who can get the fuck out does: These people are by and large stupid and totally uninterested in anything they don't already know/doesn't directly effect them. They've been thoroughly sorted; Some go to the city, the remainder who want the country living experience but have options go to Lake Payette or some such to eat farm to table and drink artisan lattes, everyone else stays in their cardboards depression houses and slowly die alone, wondering why Paul never comes back to visit.
People rhapsodizing about country living and real american values and hospitality and all that are believing hard in the Noble Savage, anyone who actually has to live with these people quickly realizes there's nothing Noble about them.
You absolutely would still be at least pretty close to who you are right now because you had the capacity to sit down and hammer out a long post with complete sentences and shit, you would have gotten the fuck out of Nowheresville to Somewhere Township.
This is a pure feelings post, and is probably unfair, but then I have to talk to these people again and it all comes rushing back.
That said I think this is a good even handed approximation of the situation, I'm just too mad about it to not vent my spleen where nobody is gonna see it.
> People rhapsodizing about country living and real american values and hospitality and all that are believing hard in the Noble Savage, anyone who actually has to live with these people quickly realizes there's nothing Noble about them.
Damn 😂😂😂
Appreciate you sharing, well written even for a feelings post.
I'm curious about the sorting effect, especially as it relates to information streams. Is there some reason that wanting to live in your hometown also means you're less likely to want/discern/have higher quality sources of information? The death of local newspapers undoubtedly hits rural areas more than metropolitan ones -- the NYT is a national news paper but its also effectively new york local news. Is there something else?
There also probably was a few local radio stations, and local tv stations, that while likely based in the regional metro, still payed attention to news in the surrounding hinterlands (but no longer, at least outside of severe weather events).
An additional change is the demise of the local. The UK did a study of why the popular perception of violent crime was rising in a time when it was actually substantially falling. The explanation from interviewing people is the local newspapers disappeared, and when they read the national news there was always violence somewhere. Humans are famously unable to estimate risks. We are now open to the whole world, but every story feels local.
I think the democratic brand is really hard to sync with the sort of populism that makes Trump and co. so effective at infotainment. By presenting themselves as the reasonable party, while Trump and Republicans are the post-truth party, any sort of populism that gains clicks will end up making them look incompetent.
When Trump says "They're eating the cats and dogs" and liberals freak out, people see him doing a bit of trolling. If Kamala or Biden said something equally at odds with truth, it would be a sign they were incompetent or senile. It's the difference between Joe Rogen agreeing with an ancient aliens theory and your college professor doing the same. There's just no way their brand can compete on the same playing field of social media populism.
I think this is right. More generally, I think the average person doesn't *actually* want accurate news. Revealed preference shows that people gravitate towards entertainment (daily show on the left, infowars on the right) much more than they gravitate towards accuracy. I mean, some number of people do care about the accuracy, but I think that's not modal.
Idk how you fix this problem. I don't want the dem party to change their brand and become a party of bullshit just to counter all the other bullshit. I'd rather somehow pull the GOP back out from its current swamp. But electoral optimization pressures are what they are, I don't see a clean way to get the GOP out of their epistemic hole or prevent a media death spiral in general
Get ready for me being in my feelings, quick 200 words off the dome:
Good post, but I can't look past being back into The Trump Country-Country part of the Country from time to time for family and wilderness reasons, and the fact that there is a reason that almost everyone who can get the fuck out does: These people are by and large stupid and totally uninterested in anything they don't already know/doesn't directly effect them. They've been thoroughly sorted; Some go to the city, the remainder who want the country living experience but have options go to Lake Payette or some such to eat farm to table and drink artisan lattes, everyone else stays in their cardboards depression houses and slowly die alone, wondering why Paul never comes back to visit.
People rhapsodizing about country living and real american values and hospitality and all that are believing hard in the Noble Savage, anyone who actually has to live with these people quickly realizes there's nothing Noble about them.
You absolutely would still be at least pretty close to who you are right now because you had the capacity to sit down and hammer out a long post with complete sentences and shit, you would have gotten the fuck out of Nowheresville to Somewhere Township.
This is a pure feelings post, and is probably unfair, but then I have to talk to these people again and it all comes rushing back.
That said I think this is a good even handed approximation of the situation, I'm just too mad about it to not vent my spleen where nobody is gonna see it.
> People rhapsodizing about country living and real american values and hospitality and all that are believing hard in the Noble Savage, anyone who actually has to live with these people quickly realizes there's nothing Noble about them.
Damn 😂😂😂
Appreciate you sharing, well written even for a feelings post.
I'm curious about the sorting effect, especially as it relates to information streams. Is there some reason that wanting to live in your hometown also means you're less likely to want/discern/have higher quality sources of information? The death of local newspapers undoubtedly hits rural areas more than metropolitan ones -- the NYT is a national news paper but its also effectively new york local news. Is there something else?
There also probably was a few local radio stations, and local tv stations, that while likely based in the regional metro, still payed attention to news in the surrounding hinterlands (but no longer, at least outside of severe weather events).
An additional change is the demise of the local. The UK did a study of why the popular perception of violent crime was rising in a time when it was actually substantially falling. The explanation from interviewing people is the local newspapers disappeared, and when they read the national news there was always violence somewhere. Humans are famously unable to estimate risks. We are now open to the whole world, but every story feels local.
> Humans are famously unable to estimate risks. We are now open to the whole world, but every story feels local.
Combined with
- optimization for engagement
- people who are mad engage a lot more
and you have a perfect storm of people believing everything is shit all the time