6 ms·

I think he is far too unlikeable for this to work, on top of being up against Trump. But sure, it would be very interesting for him to try.

seanmcdirmid 10y ago
Trump was far too unlikeable also, but look what happened. There is no rule book anymore.
- marchenko 10y ago
  Trump was unlikeable to a lot of people, but was up against an opponent with a long history of being completely unacceptable to a lot of people.Trump also picked messages that resonated with a core group of enthusiastic supporters, ginned up constant free press coverage, and is quite charismatic. The rule book has not really changed, except that the power of traditional media gatekeepers has diminished. I cannot imagine who would be excited by Zuckerberg.
  - erelde 10y ago
    I wouldn't be excited by Zuckerberg, nor do I want him to have any political office. But at least I'd know that political office doesn't have an idiot sitting in it. If that's any consolation.
    - Inconel 10y ago
      Sadly, I don't really think that intelligence is necessarily a hedge against bad governance or poor ethics. I certainly dislike the every man populist anti-intellectualism I see in US politics, particularly on the Republican side, but there have been plenty of politicians with very impressive academic resumes who I've been equally disappointed in.
      - erelde 10y ago
        What I meant by "If that's any consolation" was: At least if I know someone (imo) intelligent is in charge, even if they do (imo) bad things, I can tell myself that they do it for a reason, have thought about it and came to a different conclusion than me, which is "fine", I can deal with that. Maybe even discuss with them about it. On the other hand... Stupid doesn't think, has no reasoning behind its action and can't be reasoned with.
        marchenko 10y ago
        In a democracy, a stupid self-interested politician is often a better choice than an intelligent ideologue. To the extent that I've been able to discern any personality at all from Zuckerberg, his positions appear to be negative verging on malevolent (e.g. privacy).
    - tempodox 10y ago
      By dismissing The Troll as an idiot, you're falling for his manipulative strategy.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    Trump was more unlikeable than his opponent, he was just liked by the right amount of people in the right states.
- tmuir 10y ago
  Trump had several things going for him: 1. He is independently wealthy, and has no public office experience whatsoever. Thus, the normal pressures that cause every other candidate to end their campaign when sufficient controversy arises had no effect on Trump. He had no political career or general reputation to ruin, and he has fuck you money. 2. Unlike Trump, countless other presidential candidates have ended their campaigns in controversy. Thus, there was a mountain of precedence to inform the media that the each week's controversy would be the one that ended his campaign. The result was that every media organization that reported on these events racked up a 13 month streak of being wrong. Its trivial to point this out as a witch hunt after enough time, and at the same time, conflate them with fake news. 3. No matter where you come down on his tactics, its fairly noncontroversial to say that Trump is a master of negotiation. As evidenced by his continually evolving policy prescriptions, he is adept at reading his audience (supporters and detractors), and putting forward messaging that both pleases his supporters, and displeases his detractors. This has multiple positive feedback effects because the pleased take pleasure in witnessing the displeasure of the displeased. The continued pleasure of the pleased is a source of continued displeasure for the displeased as well. 4. Trump makes a lot of obvious generalizations about the world at large: The media sensationalizes, terrorism is problematic, illegal immigration creates a glut of low wage workers, America was a great nation in the past, lobbyists have largely captured congress, the middle class is shrinking, etc. It's trivially simple to control for the variable of Trump, and observe that these phenomena all persist, and have for years. However, there is a psychological element to the consistency of being "right". If you are directly affected by a shrinking middle class, and have to compete with the glut of low wage workers, and see terrorism as a spontaneous event driven completely by religion, and see our government as a corrupt body that breaks everything it touches, you are highly predisposed to attribute unique wisdom to someone who is merely pointing out conventional wisdom. If you already view someone as an expert on subjects of interest to you, you are additionally predisposed to believe in their abilities to fix all of these ailments, without qualification, previous experience, or even the agreement of a single true expert in relevant fields.
  - makomk 10y ago
    Regarding 2, the other advantage Trump had was that some of the big claims about him were plain and simply untrue. For example, the Slate story about his supposed secret communications channel with Russia - it was an outsourced bulk email provider for his hotels, every single piece of evidence was exactly what you'd expect from such a server, and a number of major news outlets had declined to run the story for that reason. But it just took one publication willing to ignore the issues and run it for the story to spread like wildfire on social media, just like fake news, even being repeated by Hillary Clinton's Twitter account which received a huge number of retweets for it. One of her staff members even attacked the FBI for not investigating it, and once the NYT revealed they had investigated and concluded it was a junk email server, her supporters took this as proof the FBI were conspiring with Trump. The comments section on any vaguely related article were filled with people insisting on this right up until the election. Think about that - we had a situation where people believed the FBI was conspiring with Russia and a presidential candidate because the FBI refused to see junk emails as proof of secret communications between the two. We're seeing something similar with the latest Trump story, which is also based on a document that's been doing the rounds in media circles for months but was too dubious to report[1], and is being widely and uncritically spread on social media by people who often openly don't care whether what they're claiming is true or not. [1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-t...

seanmcdirmid 10y ago

Trump was far too unlikeable also, but look what happened. There is no rule book anymore.

marchenko 10y ago
Trump was unlikeable to a lot of people, but was up against an opponent with a long history of being completely unacceptable to a lot of people.Trump also picked messages that resonated with a core group of enthusiastic supporters, ginned up constant free press coverage, and is quite charismatic. The rule book has not really changed, except that the power of traditional media gatekeepers has diminished. I cannot imagine who would be excited by Zuckerberg.
- erelde 10y ago
  I wouldn't be excited by Zuckerberg, nor do I want him to have any political office. But at least I'd know that political office doesn't have an idiot sitting in it. If that's any consolation.
  - Inconel 10y ago
    Sadly, I don't really think that intelligence is necessarily a hedge against bad governance or poor ethics. I certainly dislike the every man populist anti-intellectualism I see in US politics, particularly on the Republican side, but there have been plenty of politicians with very impressive academic resumes who I've been equally disappointed in.
    - erelde 10y ago
      What I meant by "If that's any consolation" was: At least if I know someone (imo) intelligent is in charge, even if they do (imo) bad things, I can tell myself that they do it for a reason, have thought about it and came to a different conclusion than me, which is "fine", I can deal with that. Maybe even discuss with them about it. On the other hand... Stupid doesn't think, has no reasoning behind its action and can't be reasoned with.
      - marchenko 10y ago
        In a democracy, a stupid self-interested politician is often a better choice than an intelligent ideologue. To the extent that I've been able to discern any personality at all from Zuckerberg, his positions appear to be negative verging on malevolent (e.g. privacy).
  - tempodox 10y ago
    By dismissing The Troll as an idiot, you're falling for his manipulative strategy.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  Trump was more unlikeable than his opponent, he was just liked by the right amount of people in the right states.
tmuir 10y ago
Trump had several things going for him: 1. He is independently wealthy, and has no public office experience whatsoever. Thus, the normal pressures that cause every other candidate to end their campaign when sufficient controversy arises had no effect on Trump. He had no political career or general reputation to ruin, and he has fuck you money. 2. Unlike Trump, countless other presidential candidates have ended their campaigns in controversy. Thus, there was a mountain of precedence to inform the media that the each week's controversy would be the one that ended his campaign. The result was that every media organization that reported on these events racked up a 13 month streak of being wrong. Its trivial to point this out as a witch hunt after enough time, and at the same time, conflate them with fake news. 3. No matter where you come down on his tactics, its fairly noncontroversial to say that Trump is a master of negotiation. As evidenced by his continually evolving policy prescriptions, he is adept at reading his audience (supporters and detractors), and putting forward messaging that both pleases his supporters, and displeases his detractors. This has multiple positive feedback effects because the pleased take pleasure in witnessing the displeasure of the displeased. The continued pleasure of the pleased is a source of continued displeasure for the displeased as well. 4. Trump makes a lot of obvious generalizations about the world at large: The media sensationalizes, terrorism is problematic, illegal immigration creates a glut of low wage workers, America was a great nation in the past, lobbyists have largely captured congress, the middle class is shrinking, etc. It's trivially simple to control for the variable of Trump, and observe that these phenomena all persist, and have for years. However, there is a psychological element to the consistency of being "right". If you are directly affected by a shrinking middle class, and have to compete with the glut of low wage workers, and see terrorism as a spontaneous event driven completely by religion, and see our government as a corrupt body that breaks everything it touches, you are highly predisposed to attribute unique wisdom to someone who is merely pointing out conventional wisdom. If you already view someone as an expert on subjects of interest to you, you are additionally predisposed to believe in their abilities to fix all of these ailments, without qualification, previous experience, or even the agreement of a single true expert in relevant fields.
- makomk 10y ago
  Regarding 2, the other advantage Trump had was that some of the big claims about him were plain and simply untrue. For example, the Slate story about his supposed secret communications channel with Russia - it was an outsourced bulk email provider for his hotels, every single piece of evidence was exactly what you'd expect from such a server, and a number of major news outlets had declined to run the story for that reason. But it just took one publication willing to ignore the issues and run it for the story to spread like wildfire on social media, just like fake news, even being repeated by Hillary Clinton's Twitter account which received a huge number of retweets for it. One of her staff members even attacked the FBI for not investigating it, and once the NYT revealed they had investigated and concluded it was a junk email server, her supporters took this as proof the FBI were conspiring with Trump. The comments section on any vaguely related article were filled with people insisting on this right up until the election. Think about that - we had a situation where people believed the FBI was conspiring with Russia and a presidential candidate because the FBI refused to see junk emails as proof of secret communications between the two. We're seeing something similar with the latest Trump story, which is also based on a document that's been doing the rounds in media circles for months but was too dubious to report[1], and is being widely and uncritically spread on social media by people who often openly don't care whether what they're claiming is true or not. [1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-t...