3 ms·

Perhaps the easier explanation is not "dumb" but that MAGA crowd is just older and thus richer so better monetizable by definition.

DroneBetter 6mo ago
yes, that is pretty much what he disclosed in the article > He turned to Google’s Gemini AI for advice and decided to create a “hot girl” crafted specifically for the “MAGA/conservative niche,” after the software told him that “the conservative audience (especially older men in the US) often has higher disposable income and is more loyal,” according to Wired.
- bobthepanda 6mo ago
  It is kind of crazy that growing up I recall hearing a lot of “be careful don’t trust the internet” and then now that same generation of people is falling for all manner of scams and fake news peddlers online.
  - hydrogen7800 6mo ago
    Apologies if it seems I'm just stoking a stereotype, but this comes from personal experience with family. For a demographic who generally are proud to be "old school", "not computer people", skeptical, distrustful of technology, self-reliant, and at least paid lip service to those ideals when raising their children, they sure do love being lied to and manipulated by the very enemies they claimed to be resistant to.
  - toyg 6mo ago
    "Just because newspapers print something, it doesn't mean it's true!" <proceeds to believe everything 'printed' on the internet>
  - dfxm12 6mo ago
    I also recall hearing, "do as I say, not as I do" a lot as well. If these folks really did change to be more susceptible to scams though, I hope for my own sake that this is less a function of aging and more a function of being fed a steady diet of conservative propaganda. I can avoid the latter...
- MBCook 6mo ago
  That only says those that fall for it might pay more. It doesn’t explain why so many more fall for it.
  - palmotea 6mo ago
    > It doesn’t explain why so many more fall for it. It's pretty easy: he started out trying to create a "hot girl" influencer, then refined that. It could be his starting point was biased towards filling a certain type of conservative fantasy, but wasn't as easily adaptable to progressives. For instance: it could be that lonely straight progressive men are more neurotic about their sexuality, and thus less-likely to respond positively to a bikini model picture, even if the "model" is flattering their political ideology. Also there's been a demographic divergence, and young women are much more liberal than men, which means there's less of a supply of "hot girl" conservatives and more unfulfilled demand for them. I suspect the progressive version of this is something a lot less discoverable by a random slop-making foreign man.
    - java-man 6mo ago
      "Progressive fantasy" would be AOC and Bernie, and we already have that in real life.
      - palmotea 6mo ago
        > "Progressive fantasy" would be AOC and Bernie, and we already have that in real life. That's not the kind of fantasy I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind of fantasy person that could cause a progressive to feel some pull towards a para-social relationship. That kind of thing was obviously at play with this character. I don't think you're going to get that from a politician.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
presbyterian 6mo ago
I think both can be true.
pjc50 6mo ago
Like the Nigerian Prince emails, by selecting MAGA he's pre-selecting people who want to be lied to and have an easily-pressable set of ideological buttons. (before someone asks what the left equivalent is, bluesky has a plague of accounts claiming to be Palestinian refugees and asking for money)
jayd16 6mo ago
They're more male, but I would also file that under "easier to dupe" with this sort of content.
scrollop 6mo ago
Who are you trying to convince? /r/conservative?
smallmancontrov 6mo ago
No, the same pattern showed up during the 2016 election when direct monetization wasn't the goal. The Russians were throwing bipartisan spaghetti at the wall, their biggest hit in MAGA land was "Pope Endorses Donald Trump," which went mega-viral, while their biggest hit with the Dems was "Elizabeth Warren Endorses Bernie Sanders," which was a comparative flop.
anovikov 6mo ago
I'd go on to say, that when we are looking at a large group of people, "dumb" and "rich" not just usually coincide, but are the same thing. If someone is smart enough you won't make money off them, if someone is poor enough you won't, either. So if we look at people as sources of money, dumb and rich are interchangeable and in large groups, difficult to distinguish. Also, because different groups of people are different by net worth and IQ, we will start (unknowingly) selecting them for either dumb, rich, or both. Hence the myth that "Americans are dumb" - they of course aren't, it's just that in almost every other country people rich enough to make enough money off them are the elite and thus too smart to profit off them, and only in America, because the country is rich, even dumb people frequently have cash worth bothering. Germans may not be any smarter than Americans, but poorer - thus appear smarter as a group.

DroneBetter 6mo ago

yes, that is pretty much what he disclosed in the article > He turned to Google’s Gemini AI for advice and decided to create a “hot girl” crafted specifically for the “MAGA/conservative niche,” after the software told him that “the conservative audience (especially older men in the US) often has higher disposable income and is more loyal,” according to Wired.

bobthepanda 6mo ago
It is kind of crazy that growing up I recall hearing a lot of “be careful don’t trust the internet” and then now that same generation of people is falling for all manner of scams and fake news peddlers online.
- hydrogen7800 6mo ago
  Apologies if it seems I'm just stoking a stereotype, but this comes from personal experience with family. For a demographic who generally are proud to be "old school", "not computer people", skeptical, distrustful of technology, self-reliant, and at least paid lip service to those ideals when raising their children, they sure do love being lied to and manipulated by the very enemies they claimed to be resistant to.
- toyg 6mo ago
  "Just because newspapers print something, it doesn't mean it's true!" <proceeds to believe everything 'printed' on the internet>
- dfxm12 6mo ago
  I also recall hearing, "do as I say, not as I do" a lot as well. If these folks really did change to be more susceptible to scams though, I hope for my own sake that this is less a function of aging and more a function of being fed a steady diet of conservative propaganda. I can avoid the latter...
MBCook 6mo ago
That only says those that fall for it might pay more. It doesn’t explain why so many more fall for it.
- palmotea 6mo ago
  > It doesn’t explain why so many more fall for it. It's pretty easy: he started out trying to create a "hot girl" influencer, then refined that. It could be his starting point was biased towards filling a certain type of conservative fantasy, but wasn't as easily adaptable to progressives. For instance: it could be that lonely straight progressive men are more neurotic about their sexuality, and thus less-likely to respond positively to a bikini model picture, even if the "model" is flattering their political ideology. Also there's been a demographic divergence, and young women are much more liberal than men, which means there's less of a supply of "hot girl" conservatives and more unfulfilled demand for them. I suspect the progressive version of this is something a lot less discoverable by a random slop-making foreign man.
  - java-man 6mo ago
    "Progressive fantasy" would be AOC and Bernie, and we already have that in real life.
    - palmotea 6mo ago
      > "Progressive fantasy" would be AOC and Bernie, and we already have that in real life. That's not the kind of fantasy I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind of fantasy person that could cause a progressive to feel some pull towards a para-social relationship. That kind of thing was obviously at play with this character. I don't think you're going to get that from a politician.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

presbyterian 6mo ago

I think both can be true.

pjc50 6mo ago

Like the Nigerian Prince emails, by selecting MAGA he's pre-selecting people who want to be lied to and have an easily-pressable set of ideological buttons. (before someone asks what the left equivalent is, bluesky has a plague of accounts claiming to be Palestinian refugees and asking for money)

jayd16 6mo ago

They're more male, but I would also file that under "easier to dupe" with this sort of content.

scrollop 6mo ago

Who are you trying to convince? /r/conservative?

smallmancontrov 6mo ago

No, the same pattern showed up during the 2016 election when direct monetization wasn't the goal. The Russians were throwing bipartisan spaghetti at the wall, their biggest hit in MAGA land was "Pope Endorses Donald Trump," which went mega-viral, while their biggest hit with the Dems was "Elizabeth Warren Endorses Bernie Sanders," which was a comparative flop.

anovikov 6mo ago

I'd go on to say, that when we are looking at a large group of people, "dumb" and "rich" not just usually coincide, but are the same thing. If someone is smart enough you won't make money off them, if someone is poor enough you won't, either. So if we look at people as sources of money, dumb and rich are interchangeable and in large groups, difficult to distinguish. Also, because different groups of people are different by net worth and IQ, we will start (unknowingly) selecting them for either dumb, rich, or both. Hence the myth that "Americans are dumb" - they of course aren't, it's just that in almost every other country people rich enough to make enough money off them are the elite and thus too smart to profit off them, and only in America, because the country is rich, even dumb people frequently have cash worth bothering. Germans may not be any smarter than Americans, but poorer - thus appear smarter as a group.