4 ms·

Could you clarify?

by masterphilo 6y ago

Could you clarify?

mgamache 6y ago
He's 100% MAGA. I don't care, but I am sure that's what the parent is referring to.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  MAGA = Make America Great Again ?
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  I don’t think he is pro Trump, just a standard misanthrope. He predicted the Trump victory in 2016, and mostly pointed out the weakness of the herd to manipulation and is mostly sticking with his sentiment this time around as well (although I don’t know if he adjusted given recent events). For example, he pointed out that a lot of this country is truly prejudiced and the Democrats are bungling their messaging by positioning themselves around defunding the police and protests, which illicit primal fears amongst a large voting block. Trump can manipulate these emotions easily, so beware of these dynamics.
  - dudyddhhdg 6y ago
    I feel like manipulation is distracting terminology here because it implies that the point of Trump's messaging is to fool his supporters. I'm not saying none of that is happening too but the point has always been to persuade the audience (fooling them being coincidental). I think it's more useful to frame the matter from this perspective because otherwise it's easy to fall into the trap of believing that some people are immune to this sort of messaging when really they're just not the target audience. From this angle the democrats bungling their optics was inevitable because up till now a lot of their party rhetoric had focused on ideas like "resisting", fighting discrimination, and fighting authorianism (presumably because they felt those messages would resonate emotionally the most). That's all fine if course, but it was strategically fine because it wasn't a big risk to moderate (largest group) voters. This backfired when the Floyd protests happened because suddenly you had blue city mayors trying not to look like hypocrites and so they started tolerating arson, murder, and looting while at the same time attacking the people who get paid to stop arson, murder, and looting (which scares the moderates). Short of PizzaGate being real I don't think I could have picked a worse development for the democrats than the Floyd protests if I tried.
aaron695 6y ago
Basically Scott Adams talks about the world as it is, unlike HN where you can only talk within a narrow groupthink. So no one liked it when Scott Adams called Trump in 2016. It was against the rules, and worse he got it right, so under groupthink that makes him partially responsible. Under all the attacks he seems to have gone fk it and started actively fighting the opposite. But he's pretty meta, he's always talking about propaganda, and to me he seems to be trying it out on his twitter. He has a lot of titbits of really interesting stuff at times and a few misses. If you don't groupthink these days and are somewhat smart you'll get a lot of hits.

Could you clarify?

mgamache 6y ago

He's 100% MAGA. I don't care, but I am sure that's what the parent is referring to.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
MAGA = Make America Great Again ?
runawaybottle 6y ago
I don’t think he is pro Trump, just a standard misanthrope. He predicted the Trump victory in 2016, and mostly pointed out the weakness of the herd to manipulation and is mostly sticking with his sentiment this time around as well (although I don’t know if he adjusted given recent events). For example, he pointed out that a lot of this country is truly prejudiced and the Democrats are bungling their messaging by positioning themselves around defunding the police and protests, which illicit primal fears amongst a large voting block. Trump can manipulate these emotions easily, so beware of these dynamics.
- dudyddhhdg 6y ago
  I feel like manipulation is distracting terminology here because it implies that the point of Trump's messaging is to fool his supporters. I'm not saying none of that is happening too but the point has always been to persuade the audience (fooling them being coincidental). I think it's more useful to frame the matter from this perspective because otherwise it's easy to fall into the trap of believing that some people are immune to this sort of messaging when really they're just not the target audience. From this angle the democrats bungling their optics was inevitable because up till now a lot of their party rhetoric had focused on ideas like "resisting", fighting discrimination, and fighting authorianism (presumably because they felt those messages would resonate emotionally the most). That's all fine if course, but it was strategically fine because it wasn't a big risk to moderate (largest group) voters. This backfired when the Floyd protests happened because suddenly you had blue city mayors trying not to look like hypocrites and so they started tolerating arson, murder, and looting while at the same time attacking the people who get paid to stop arson, murder, and looting (which scares the moderates). Short of PizzaGate being real I don't think I could have picked a worse development for the democrats than the Floyd protests if I tried.

aaron695 6y ago

Basically Scott Adams talks about the world as it is, unlike HN where you can only talk within a narrow groupthink. So no one liked it when Scott Adams called Trump in 2016. It was against the rules, and worse he got it right, so under groupthink that makes him partially responsible. Under all the attacks he seems to have gone fk it and started actively fighting the opposite. But he's pretty meta, he's always talking about propaganda, and to me he seems to be trying it out on his twitter. He has a lot of titbits of really interesting stuff at times and a few misses. If you don't groupthink these days and are somewhat smart you'll get a lot of hits.