I wish I was that confident. The way I see it, the way social media is just means it’s only more likely to worsen, in my opinion.
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Is anyone familiar with Jubilee Media? They are the people who do the “1 black guy debates 20 Klan members” type debates. Sam Seeder did one a week or so (1 progressive debates 20 Trump supporters) and while it got a lot of attention for the conversation (a guy arguing DEI is bad because it is just a way for government agencies to get tax breaks, a woman asking "what exactly is wrong with xenophobic ethnonationalism?), but I found the aesthetics fascinating. The fascists have gone full soy boy. As little as 2 years ago you would have had 99% of people reflexively assume this effeminate man bun, cardigan wearing barista looking guy was a resistance lib
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The library in Stanstead that straddles the border where Noem pulled her childish stunt is now losing its unique status.
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Interesting context on the moves to send these ICE detainees to El Salvador. Bukele is reported to have agreed to this on the basis of having a small group of MS13 gang members back who are currently in US custody. Why would he be asking for something seemingly so trivial in return? It is suspected that these people have dirt on Bukele’s relationships with the gangs and wants them back under his control so they cannot spill the beans to anyone.
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You mentioned the AfD youth vote in Germany earlier. Actually the ‘far left’ Die Linke (as in left and ‘woke’ asf compared to the likes of Kamala Harris) ‘won’ the 18-24 youth vote in the election ahead of the AfD, apparently largely because of a successful tiktok presence/campaign.
I don’t think the medium (social media) is right-wing by default, or at least it doesn’t have to be.
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I agree with you, I just meant that it’s more that firstly, the far-right have been much more in tune with exploiting this, and that the nature of social media algorithms means that more “boring” content is unlikely to prevail, which makes it harder for mainstream political parties, which by definition, being mainstream, are less exciting than more radical perspectives.
Of course, this is a very simplistic view and I’d love to be proven wrong.
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Yeah, agree with that. Simple, emotional stuff obviously works best in a few second long clips.
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Yeah there is definitely an area of the social media/decentralized information space that is being exploited by bad actors pushing a political agenda, and something at which the right is WAY ahead.
What we have seen over the past 4 years or so though is that their messages have escaped from that space into the general zeitgeist. I mean your normie voter who voted Trump didnt necessarily get red pilled by Ben Shapiro, but they still ended up hearing his arguments second or third hand. To me the question is how this spill over was driven because it the general feeling of anti-incumbency sentiment was fertile ground for it vs how much was because those sorts of emotionally driven arguments are more aligned with what works in that media environment. I’m sure the answer is both, and so it will be interesting to see how this dynamic changes now it is Trump is power and against whom the anti-incumbency sentiment will be directed towards.
I just wish “interesting” wasn’t something that was of such critical importance.
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I saw a graphic the other day showing the size of audience of the leading new media outlets that was color coded by their primary political leaning (even for things like Rogan that claims to be non-political). The two striking observations were
- how much bigger a collective audience the right leaning content had
- how much of the left leaning content was just as antagonistic to the Dems as any of the content coded as RW (e.g. Young Turks, Hasan Piker).
In the recent conversation between Ezra Klein and David Shor referenced a couple of days ago they were discussing some of the seeming contradictions in the Trump constituency - they dont like his policies but support him. They concluded the most politically effective place to be right now is “policy moderate, but angry as hell about it”, which made me laugh, but then cry.
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This is stunningly corrupt.
Trump sanctioned 3 big law firms simply because of their involvement in cases that were focused on his actions. This is illegal, but rather than fight it, the Wiess Law firm has got Trump to exclude them from the EO by, in part, offering $40m in pro bono work for Trump related causes.
This is both an incredible abuse of power and a pathetic capitulations. Thankfully some at least are responding.
https://x.com/AnnaBower/status/1902982563599184282
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Ooofff, it appears that Rachel Cohen has had her preemptive resignation accepted as she has told reporters she can no longer access her work email
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Of all the casualties of a Trump administration, irony wasn’t one that I’d thought about.
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some good news for a change
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Oh great 
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He obviously hasn’t seen a map of the states in the US. Africa, middle east …
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