I love self harm so I went to the site to check what they think of Trump v DeSantis.
Note: Do not go to the site. It is (obviously) a fascist, racist, sexist, and transphobic shithole.
While there are some Trump supporters, the vast majority seem to support DeSantis and say he appears strong and Trump weak. None are saying they’ll back him over Trump (obviously) but it’s clear that even the most hardened Trump supporters are fans of DeSantis.
Trump might end up losing, folks.
I still doubt how much the internet is to blame for Trump winning. The average person who votes has never heard of reddit or memes or whatever, the average person has maybe a passing familiarity with internet culture and discussions and that's one of the reasons why Qanon caught on like wildfire. Because people with only a passing familiarity suddenly broke their minds on a deluge of information they had no ability to process or sort and deliberately mainlined only the most wacky ideas that fed into their worst biases.
At most you could say Facebook is the litmus test for how people behave online, because that's where most people are and they're behaving like themselves.
Trump's probably going to win the nomination, but the rule of funny is still in effect. I'm still counting on something hilarious happening that none of us expects, like Bloomberg suddenly shooting up in the polls, or Biden dying a week before the election and the Democrats suddenly all nominating Tim Kaine and pretending that was the plan all along.
More than once, Cable News aired Trump's empty podium rather than the dems and Bernie. But it was totally the russians and social media that got him elected.
yeah I'm much more comfortable blaming traditional print and TV media for Trump, those still have a massive influence on voters. I think a lot of folk don't understand just how many elderly people exist, and those elderly people still overwhelmingly get their information from TV. American politics is dominated by the interests of rich elderly people, by and large.
There are 56 million Americans over the age of 70. That number alone is 1/3 of the voters in 2016.
The internet played a large part as well, i don't think we should overlook the impact social media had on Trump getting elected. The dude basically harnessed meme energy, Donald Trump was a very rich man who had very deep ties in the entertainment industry. He arguably had a better understanding of the internet than Obama and while it may not have been the deciding factor in him getting elected, it certainly helped.
but a lot of that was just leveraging the internet to be shown on TV. every explosive tweet put him back on CNN and then Fox responded, slowly filtering through their subsidiaries and local news stations if it was big enough.
:100-com: It’s fascinating to look back at clips from the Republican primary around then, and how much was covered by CNN, ABC et al as being “Trump’s top zingers” etc. When he was bullying Jeb and Ted Cruz, he was absolutely ratings dynamite.
I don’t see Trump having the same debate performances in him now (how dull was he against Biden?), and I certainly don’t see the MSM giving him such insane exposure.
Man, the Biden or Mayor Pete vs DeSantis debates are going to be lobotomizingly bad
Never forget that the Democrats ordered the media to cover Trump. The media could have refused. But they obeyed.
Sickening.
Pied Piper Strategy :hillgasm:
I blame Her for it all.
I thought there was a consensus that Hillary was a terrible candidate even by lib standards, the ones that weren't boomers or straight up delusional neolibs all agreed.
Heck they went for Biden because everyone else was a clown and/or a sellout. Biden of course is also another clown but at least you can pretend he got the political experience etc...
Trump won based on who knows how many "not Hillary" votes.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were polling around 35% favorability each in 2016.
Some of the most unliked presidential candidates in the history of modern American politics.
For comparison, most winning candidates poll 45%+ favorability in normal times.
This corroborates the theory yes? For someone with Hillary's background to be on the same level as a guy previously only known for scamming people on a TV show of questionable popularity. I'd say for a Democrat that is definitely scrapping the bottom of the barrel?
I'm agreeing with you.
Literally anyone else in the (D) primary would've won besides Clinton.
Especially Marianne Williamson
she ran in 2020 not 2016
The other real option was Bernie Sanders, a social democrat, and that is too EXTREME for the dems. :agony-shivering:
I think the internet can do literally everything the tv could do. And it can do it better.
you're correct, but there's a lopsided concentration of capital and political authority vested in very elderly people who have very little inclination in keeping up with twitter memes and would instead rather listen to Hannity and Tucker Carlson
Carlson regularly has an audience of 4.5 million+ tune into every show he does. Just for comparison, the most watched Twitch stream of all time peaked at 3.3 million. I remember reading a stat once (don't remember where) that if you regularly have just 20 viewers in a stream you're doing, you're in the top 1%. TV still has a very concentrated rapt audience, whereas the internet has far less focus.
I think moistcritical said something like that. I'd buy it, given how most people just watch a handful of streamers but there are literally millions of them.
And here I was thinking that COVID-19 killed most of the elderly Republicans
The memes have zero influence on old people. Old people get inundated with spam emails and news suggestions that are nominally curated to spiral them into lala-land. It's the same phenomenon as letting youtube play and eventually you get right-wing suggestions. Its that, but the suggestions are made to old people in a different manner that is uniquely accessible to them.
Hillary Clinton was also a terrible candidate.
I'm also convinced that things like google and Facebook cater themselves specifically to certain interests and are pretty good at figuring out who the user is from very little input. A few years ago I was trying to tell my parents about a tragic earthquake that just happened in southern Mexico, but all their search results were showing cruise line dates or ways to buy timeshares. I had to scroll to the 4th page of results to see any earthquake news. Whereas for me the results were the first line. My parents barely even use the internet.
Everyone's slowly drifting into little hedonistic pleasure domes designed specifically to confuse you and extract money
This is absolutely how it works.