Slamming political rivals may be the most effective way to go viral | Hacker News Reader

Slamming political rivals may be the most effective way to go viral

cam.ac.uk

111 pointshhs114 comments

The paper is also worth reading. Here's part of the conclusion:

"Understanding the factors that make social media posts go “viral” online can help to create better social media environments. While social media platforms are not fully transparent about how their algorithmic ranking system works, Facebook announced in a post titled “Bringing People Closer Together” that it was changing its algorithm ranking system to value “deeper” forms of engagement, such as reactions and comments (68). Ironically, posts about the political out-group were particularly effective at generating comments and reactions (particularly the “angry” reaction, the most popular reaction across our studies). In other words, these algorithmic changes made under the guise of bringing people closer together may have helped prioritize posts including out-group animosity." [0]

[0]: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/26/e2024292118

Remains to be seen what "deeper" means for them. I'd say they reached deep enough.

The Toxoplasma Of Rage https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23972391

X can get everyone to agree in principle that Q is bad, but no one will pay any attention to it.

And Y can get everyone to pay attention to Q, but a lot of people who would otherwise oppose it will switch to supporting it just because they’re so mad at the way it’s being publicized.

At least Y got them to pay attention! They’re traveling up an incentive gradient that rewards them for doing so, even if it destroys their credibility.

Eh, the easiest most effective arguments are also the most toxic. The people who disagree with me aren't just wrong but they're disingenuous liars with an agenda so terrible even they won't admit to it. The people who disagree with me don't even understand what they're saying because they're just mindlessly repeating things they have been indoctrinated to believe.

Neither of those will convince anyone of anything but it makes people who already agree really happy and it drives those people who disagree up a wall.

There's a reason for this.

The reason for it is that you don't win elections by convincing the other side that they are wrong, and they should vote for you.

You win elections by convincing your side to show up.

And the best way to do it is by telling your side that giving the victory to your opponent is voting for a Trump.

> you don't win elections by convincing the other side that they are wrong, and they should vote for you.

> You win elections by convincing your side to show up.

Well, in my country and many others, voting is compulsory, so we don't have this problem.

I think I've changed my stance on compulsory voting over the years.

My old view was that voting should be as easy as possible (advance polling days, no advance registration requirement, mail-in ballot options), but at the same time it shouldn't be mandatory. I used to view compulsory voting as an impediment to the democratic process: if you aren't motivated enough to vote, why should you get to weigh in?

These days, I think compulsory voting may have a whole lot of value as an effective countermeasure to polarization. Political campaigns would be forced to shift from whipping up furor among existing supporters to reaching across partisan divides in order to convince independents and persuadable individuals in the other camps to vote for you.

Have there been any studies done in this regard?

In the US*. People flow betweem parties much more in Europe.

> The reason for it is that you don't win elections by convincing the other side that they are wrong, and they should vote for you.

> You win elections by convincing your side to show up.

And the other side not to, either voluntarily or by targeted voter suppression and disenfranchisement. At least, that’s all true in the US, but its mostly artifacts of a strongly-structurally-reinforced two-party system.

In multiparty democracy, positive turnout tactics over persuasion is less effective because the activation energy to move to another party is smaller because you don’t just have polar opposites, and negative turnout tactics are less effective because you’ve got more targets to suppress. So persuasion is more important.

We see the same patterns in multiparty democracy. It could simply be behavior drawn from US influence, but I doubt it. What the article did not mention (but maybe the study did?) is that under brain scanners, few things trigger pleasure as much as imagining justified violence. It is also very addictive in term of neurochemistry.

In multiparty democracies, the one thing that can however temporary reduce the problem is the consequences of minority government. If enough parties refuses to talk to each other, and always vote against the others, you end up with a situation where the majority will votes no to everything. This does not work, so people then start to prioritize cooperation for a while.

"Justified violence" I hadn't read that but I've always thought that there's nothing sweeter then righteous anger. The voice in the back of your head is silenced and you can finally do exactly what you've wanted because ... why?

That has been my saving grace in moments like that I think. I tend to hesitate for just a bit before acting and while that's just as often a bad thing in moments like that it's just enough time for that voice to whisper "How will this look? What would you think about what you want to do right now if someone else did it? Will this action change anything that's happened?"

> Unless social media companies start penalising polarising content and rewarding more constructive posts,

Twitter and Facebook are not shy about having a hand in the conversation. If anything they reward polarizing content, and they've shown interest in censoring wrongthink, but do they have any interest in turning down the temperature?

> these platforms will continue to be swamped by political animosity that risks spilling into real-world turmoil.

It's more than a risk, it's been spilling into real-world turmoil for years.

I think it is interesting that high temperature plus censoring wrongthink makes two minute's hate. Calling things Orwellian is something of a cliche, but it is occasionally appropriate.

a subset of journalists seem to continually forget that media is still real, social media perhaps even more so

nobody else seems to have this delusion, except cops responsible for investigating threats and harassment campaigns against individuals.

When I was younger I got a bit notable online by doing just this. You can pick up thousands of followers on twitter in a couple weeks by just picking hot topics and big targets, and publicly dunking on them.

Ive grown out of the behavior but its definitely left me very cynical about politics.

Well yes, because all political reporting is basically TMZ for boring, ugly people. It molds politics into some fantasy world of rap battles and gang fights rather than a productive discussion about making good policy.

And if your first impulse is to think well yeah because the other side blah blah, you're part of the problem too.

>>> political reporting is basically TMZ for boring, ugly people.

Can I get that on a TShirt please ?

(And yes, was it Nietscheze who says politicians are just sales people for their manifestos?)

Are they even that anymore? That seems like it would be an improvement. Now it seems like they're just cast members doing product placement for someone else's manifesto.

Not even a manifesto. If you look at people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, their rise is basic upon mutual dislike, and nothing more. Just a willingness to “own” the other side. There is no manifesto (unless you consider god, guns and glory a manifesto), just hatred. And it’s extremely engaging for their respective base. I don’t blame the politicians per se, in some ways it’s democracy at work if that’s what the people want. We need to change what people fundamentally want to not be based upon us vs them mentality.

Or perhaps we need to change our democracy to stop enforcing a duopoly. I firmly believe that widely implementing STAR Voting (https://www.starvoting.us/) would fix a large swath of problems in politics and public policy.

Ranked voting also can have unexpected surprises as well. Every system has flaws, and if we open things up even more, I believe we’ll just get a collection of even more radicalized parties who only care about a single issue. At least with two parties there’s inner tension they need to modulate.

RCV can have unexpected surprises, but STAR voting resolves all such issues with RCV.

As far as I know, STAR voting is a form of RCV. However, the Fairvote organization has advertised RCV with instant runoff voting as the counting method as being RCV.

Technically speaking, STAR voting is a form of cardinal voting, while ranked-choice encompasses the various ordinal methods.

The distinction here is that in STAR voting, I could rank two candidates equally to show that I have no preference between them. Also, I don't have to rank the candidates in order: I could give my first-place a score of 5, my second place a score of 2, and my third place a score of 0. If I scored my second place candidate as 3, this ballot could result in a different outcome.

Thanks for the correction! The whole voting system and counting methods is a deeper dive than what I first imagined.

There is no 'best' voting system, only different trade-offs.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...

Arrow's impossibility theorem does not apply to STAR voting. STAR voting is strictly more expressive than Ordinal Voting systems (i.e. RCV), while simultaneously being simpler to implement (and explain/understand). STAR voting also provides other benefits over RCV, such as being district summarizable.

STAR is not easier to implement than ordinal voting methods in general, it may be easier to implement than IRV [0] in particular. Likewise, while IRV is not district summarizable, some ordinal methods are.

And outside of specialized circumstances that don’t apply to usual candidate elections, the additional information on STAR ballots compared to unforced preference ordinal ballots is noise of no consistent meaning.

Also, Arrows impossibility theorem applies to any balloting system that expresses ranked preferences and produces a ranked result, whether or not it provides additional information or compresses the available rankings for either the inputs or the result (typically, it applies to single winner election results which compress the results the same way FPTP ballots compress ballots—one first place and everyone else tied for not-first-place.)

[0] “RCV” is a name used by advocates to conflate IRV with ordinal methods generally, and accepted by some opponents of ordinal methods to conceal that their arguments apply only to IRV and not the broader class.

> STAR is not easier to implement than ordinal voting methods in general, it may be easier to implement than IRV [0] in particular. Likewise, while IRV is not district summarizable, some ordinal methods are.

Could you provide an example? Thanks in advance.

> Arrows impossibility theorem applies to any balloting system that expresses ranked preferences and produces a ranked result

My understanding is that Arrow's impossibility theorem does not apply to STAR or any other Cardinal Voting system. Is that incorrect?

I don’t have to know how STAR voting works to know that Gibbard’s 1978 theorem applies.

The only game-forms which are straightforward (meaning, one’s best strategy in what option to choose not depending on how one expects others to choose, or on others’ preferences) are the probability mixtures of “do whatever voter X said to”, “between option A and option B, determine how many voters expressed a preference for A over B and how many for B over A, and if the proportion preferring A is more than p%, pick A, otherwise B”, and “pick outcome C”, with the mixes being any mix of those over any combinations of A,B,C, and X.

(So for example, you could flip a coin, and if heads, select a random pair of candidates, and the winner is whichever of the two got more pair wise votes, if tails, select a random voter and go with who they said was their top pick, and if the coin lands on its edge pick Neil deGras Tyson. This would count as “straightforward” because in choosing how you want to vote, it doesn’t matter at all how anyone else is voting.)

(Another example is if there are just 2 candidates period. This is also “straightforward”)

Outside of such probability mixtures, there can always be situations where your estimate of how other people will vote would influence the most effective way for you to vote in order to best improve your expected outcomes according to your preferences.

Outside of such “straightforward” game-forms, there can’t be a function from (your preferences (like, vNM utility, not just a ranking) between the different outcomes) to (a dominant strategy for you).

Whatever STAR is, it doesn’t change this fact.

No, it doesn't, but optimal voting under STAR is less dependent on other voters than in both Plurality and RCV systems. Under STAR voting, it would be far, far more practical to vote your conscience irrespective of how others are voting. This would encourage the middle majority to actually vote.

When further combined with other reforms, such as multi-member districts, this could completely transform the political landscape.

Canada does not have a duopoly[1], and yet, ABC (Anything But Conservative) has been a rallying cry behind a few elections.

The US will probably get better outcomes with a multi-party system, but moving to one will not change the tone of political conversation. (Which is what this thread is about.)

[1] Although it suffers from all the typical FPTP nonsense, where the party that gets 30% of the vote gets 100% of the power.

> The US will probably get better outcomes with a multi-party system, but moving to one will not change the tone of political conversation. (Which is what this thread is about.)

I believe it could and would. There will always be extremists, but the current outsized focus on them is driven, in part, by their effectiveness in our two-party Plurality Voting system. In a system where the best compromise candidate is regularly elected, I believe the public discourse would differ.

But - isn't it a manifesto of sorts. I mean it's nice to see a fully costed budget broken down into multiple categories, but let's be fair, that's just to get past the gatekeepers of yore (NYT, The Times, BBC).

Turning up without the numbers adding up was just an easy way to get pasted by the interviewer.

Now there is no interviewer - so the manifesto is what it always really was - an attempt to connect to the voter on a level of identity, common understanding and culture. It's why it is flat out amazing any single human being can get 70 million votes in the US (or even more amazing 300m in India)

How many hats does such a person have to wear? How many promises does someone need to connect.

I mean Brad Pitt is gorgeous and just has to say five scripted lines and he could not get 300 million women to vote for him.

The idea that democracy has scale this far with just a personality cult as its main adjudicator is incredible

The number of living humans who can make that many people think"yeah"'is tiny !

One day we will go beyond our initial ape reactions

Well there are problems where not only no one agrees on the paths ahead, but there is no guarantee any of the paths you take will lead anywhere useful.

These kinds of problems there is always going to be manipulation. Especially if the stakes are high. As long as the chimps aren't assassinating each other its all par for the course. I am just glad there are people willing to play such a game when things are ambiguous. Cause I usually just run for the hills when things get political :)

Why is it that the political salespeople are boring and ugly? Politics would be even more difficult to approach objectively if the politicians were photogenic, charismatic, attractive, and well-spoken.

Television ads have this figured out, viewers subconsciously want to be the smiling cool guy drinking Advertised Beer (tm) and partying with the wealthy and youthful crowd shown in the ad, but no one wants to hang out in the scenes portrayed on CSPAN.

I'm glad to not need to deal with that level of reality distortion yet, but I don't know why that's the case.

Looks helped for JFK and Obama, and might help for AOC in the future.

On the other hand, millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump because his being ugly, irascible, and vulgar made him seem more relatable and sincere... likely as a reaction to a negative impression given by Obama's relative youth and well-spokenness.

> yes, was it Nietscheze who says politicians are just sales people for their manifestos?

I strongled doubted it was Nietzsche, so I googled the phrase "politicians are just sales people for their manifestos" (in quotes), and there was one result—your comment. It's yours!

Dimwit: politics is like a gang fight

Midwit: politics is actually about making good decisions for society

Topwit: politics is like a gang fight

Maybe some of this is due to how little variation there is: I've yet to see a politician who isn't neoliberal (though Trump was more than a bit fascist at times). Even 2019-20 Andrew Yang still built his ideas (mainly UBI) off of neoliberalism, and imo, appealed to a ton of more traditional neoliberal values: that UBI is about providing equally and flatly for everyone, not specifically and directly helping the disenfranchised and indirectly aiding worker control of the means of production (how I'd view its effects). And then he abandoned the UBI campaign this year, becoming even more centrist.

Then, if we shift our focus further left, we see Bernie Sanders, who is just not all that socialist because he's really working within the neoliberal framework that his years of politics conditioned him to work in. Further left than that, well, there are no anarchists or communists in politics.

I could make the case that this is here (and bad) bc neoliberalism will slide towards fascism if we give equal weight to everyone's ideas, but that does feel like I'm sinking further into divisions, and it presupposes that my positive opinions about the far left are actually supported by facts, regardless of any ground truth. But really, it wouldn't be an issue if we had more variety in ideology: discussion would be more varied and more thorough, we'd all question our own ideology's assumptions just a bit more, and overall it would be easier to engage in someone else's ideas if you knew they weren't coming from the same baseline as you.

Neoliberalism is not a neutral or balanced ideology: let's have more communists, socialists, anarchists, libertarians, hell, maybe a few fascists or stalinists could do some good.

There's no such thing as neoliberalism. "Neoliberalism" is a fake bogeyman that Latin American populists came up with when they needed something to blame for the failure of their policy choices.

That is not something I've ever heard before - could you explain further, provide some links maybe?

Self described neoliberals will be surprised when they learn neoliberalism isn't real.

In my opinion long form podcasts are fixing this. The gotcha nonsense on Twitter isn't going away, but at the same time long form discussions about complex topics are growing in popularity. So there is at worst a duality where things are getting worse on one hand and better on the other.

It would be fascinating to do a study where you take politics news articles and replace all names with A, B, C, etc. and likewise any mention of Party. So just policy and blank identifiers. Then see how people respond to the news. Are they more likely to agree with or disagree with policies when they don't know who they're coming from?

I suppose in practice there are enough shibboleths in each political camp that readers will still be able to tell which side is their tribe, but it would be interesting to see.

>It molds politics into some fantasy world of rap battles and gang fights

Politics is a world of rap battles and gang fights. It's war by other means. That's the fundamental essence of anything political. The boring, ugly people are the wonks who actually think politics is about 'good policy consensus' and have been spending a little too much time on Laputa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa#Inhabitants

Basically, politics: https://youtu.be/NUC2EQvdzmY

us good, them bad

This story is so meta. Most of the comments here are slamming the press and social media users for slamming politicians for slamming eachother. Slam slam slam. And here I am, slamming the lot of you.

Serious question though. Is this merely a neologism used to describe a phenomenon that was old before Cicero lost his head?

> Is this merely a neologism used to describe a phenomenon that was old before Cicero lost his head?

Yep it is

Only now there's reduced geographic friction from it, so the waves can get larger quicker, "social media deterritorializes politics" if you'd like to get pedantic about it

> Serious question though. Is this merely a neologism used to describe a phenomenon that was old before Cicero lost his head?

While there may be nothing new under the sun, there is still plenty of room for the relative prevalence of slamming vs engaging to change in American political communiques, and for the press' coverage of slamming to change as well.

You haven't noticed some changes in politics in the West in the last 10 years? The rise of polarization and conspiracy theories is very well documented.

People just regurgitate their sides last night narrative presented to them on their favourite news network. the commitment to truth has been lost. Its all about framing now.

"How can not everyone know the obvious truth I just learned about 5 minutes ago reading an opinion piece!?"

> People just regurgitate their sides last night narrative

In my experience, this is one of those tropes. Yes, people will harmonize on their explanations and positions on certain debates. That's human nature. Watch a family describe one of its members and you'll see the same phenomenon.

If you go out and talk to voters about what matters to them, however, one tends to find a diversity of topics.

It's hard to believe that the voters I talk to face-to-face are the same human being, the same society and community, posting online.

We perhaps need to bring offline behavior norms into the online world.

IMO, framing things as "truth" or "falsehood" is part of the problem. Each side dismisses the other side as just not knowing the right facts (or denying the facts), as if everyone would agree if they just knew the right facts. The media dug in on this very hard after the 2016 with the "fake news" and "fact-checking" crusades.

Reality is a lot more complicated. Even if we agreed on the facts, we don't agree on conclusions based on those facts. Or even what the right result should be. For example, there is a big factual dispute over whether the border is having a "crisis." But the earnest dispute is really just whether the US should allow illegal immigrants to come here or not.

I think the biggest problem is we avoid grappling with our fundamental disagreements and we don't honestly engage with what the other side is arguing. Both sides have basically labeled opinions they disagree with as, at best uniformed/ignorant, and at worst, evil (racist, communist, bigoted, depraved). Nobody is really trying to convince the other side. They are just trying to whip up a frenzy on their side and shame the other side into shutting up.

I've voted for both parties in the past (W Bush & Obama), but I don't think I could have a real political discussion with someone I meet at party without being attacked personally and viciously. And I know I can't post political views on social media without some psychopath trying to get me fired.

Everyone is addicted to anger.

>Everyone is addicted to anger.

Is exactly what a person addicted to anger would say. No, believe it or not, everybody is not addicted to anger - but those who are sure as hell like to perpetuate the idea of it and spread their toxicity

I've noticed this hilarious thing where within the left leaning media sphere, the only verbs that Ocasio-Cortez and to a lesser degree Bernie ever engage in is "slamming".

They don't eat, sleep, debate, propose, or discuss. They just slam 24/7.

I googled her to verify the spelling on her name and the first headline was:

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams the lack of diversity in an all-white group of lawmakers who drafted a bipartisan infrastructure deal"

Unlike, of course, the people slamming AOC for views. Ironically, illustrated by this comment.

The funny thing is I've recently noticed the exact same phenomenon on conservative media. A few days ago there were 4 posts at the top of r/conservative about liberals being 'slammed' for something or the other (for the record I am an independent and watch that subreddit to better understand the issues that interest conservatives).

Here's some recent 'slams' on that subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/search/?q=slam&sort=re...

I'm sure there was a research report somewhere that showed .021% more engagement with 'Slams' headlines than competitive verbs or something.

Headline writers run in packs, just like CEOs.

I think it's sadly more about A/B testing run amok. Engagement rules, not sentiment.

That's kinda also the reverse as well. AOC ran a well-ran campaign to win her place at the table in congress.

Republicans slamming her day-in and day-out made her a household name.

Like, AOC should be, (with no disrespect) basically a nobody in politics, she is a 1.2 term representative. But republicans wanted a villain and boy did they make one.

Beyond that, I kinda also think a critical bit in this is to understand that the headlines are not realistically a way to judge the actions of a politician because the politician is not the one actually writing them. Her job is to do her job and feed the marketing team the needed clips within. For the most part her daily life is reading memos and bills and voting. The PR team works like a marketing organization and they want to win in the same way AMD and Intel want to win, it's that simple. Hit the right notes while doing your job of working on the busywork of the job. It's mostly how Trump won 2016. Politics is marketing-based, not results-based.

I think this shows that going viral works the other way, too. Virality plus the adage that "any publicity is good publicity" can make this kind of a stunt backfire when there's an election at stake.

> Republicans slamming her day-in and day-out made her a household name.

No, she became a household name due to her ability to produce viral content (she's an influencer-politician) and the progressive media being in love with her.

Some time after that, yes, the Republicans realized they'd rather run against AOC and "the squad" than Joe Biden so they did their best to pretend that was the case.

> Like, AOC should be, (with no disrespect) basically a nobody in politics, she is a 1.2 term representative. But republicans wanted a villain and boy did they make one

It’s mutually beneficial for them both, in the same way that rappers spend so much time beefing with each other. Controversy drives popularity, especially when each side’s followers made up their minds long ago about which side they’re on.

AOC hasn't been in the arena long but she defeated one of those petrified 10-term bozos at the top of the party hierarchy, which is a notable event.

The thing that is weird about her is that she can be hyperbolic when making personal appearances but she's one of the few in Congress who take their jobs seriously when in committee. She's not as prepared as Katie Porter, but she usually does the work she's being asked to do by her constituents instead of simply grandstanding during working hours.

/r/murderedbyAOC is a subreddit with seemingly limitless content. I for one believe that slamming people is her shtick. She is blue team Trump

Half of the posts on that sub are neither from AOC nor "murders". Just another political spam subreddit outraging its way to the front page.

I've said this a few times, cause I find it interesting.

That subreddit is literally filled with one person's posts. It feels like a blatant pr/propaganda/the positive version of the former two campaign that constantly worms its way to the top of reddit.

Here's the cited tweet:

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1408124343700369411

I don't think "slammed" is too harsh of a description.

After her critique about the Senators drafting this bill all being white:

> This is not to say that any/all bipartisan deals are bad but it’s to ask people to actually read what’s inside them instead of assume bipartisan=good

But surely, as a member of Congress, she has access to the details of this deal, and can opine on it specifically? Instead of opining on bipartisan deals as an abstraction?

Wouldn't her constituents rather know, specifically, if this deal will help them or not and whether she would vote for it, and why?

An equivalent in Poland is "masakrować" (to massacre) - but this was popularized by followers of Janusz Korwin-Mikke (far-right).

So both sides can be full of shit - and public discourse suffers.

https://natemat.pl/103155,korwin-masakruje-czyli-o-polityczn...

Not to "both sides" it, but... well, both sides do this in their reporting. Sometimes they also "own" or "destroy" someone. I don't think it's partisan. That kind of language gets clicks, so everyone's optimized for it.

I'm not so sure about it not being partisan. When I think of "own" in this context, it's mostly in relation to "owning the libs." I'm not sure if this particular usage is used mostly by left-leaning pols ironically, or right-leaning pols unironically, however.

At least as far back as the Jon Stewart era of the Daily Show, there was nothing ironic about it. I believe "destroy" was the preferred nomenclature back then.

It started out used seriously on right-wing YouTube and forums, but it probably is the case that right-wing use of it is now self-consciously imitating the parodic use of it by the left, so by now it's irony all the way down.

[EDIT] downvoters: is this wrong? My perception was that "own" was originally (in a political context—its roots are in gaming, of course) used as a fairly ordinary headline/title intensifier to get more clicks, mostly on the right (for that particular word—everyone plays with language to get more clicks, of course), that parodic use on the left followed, and I'm guessing that its continued use on the right is with some awareness of the way it's been mocked on the left, so has likely changed the intent with which it's employed.

Hmm, let's try this in Google:

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams": About 73,300 results

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez eats": About 109 results

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sleeps": 1 result

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez debates": About 173 results

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposes": About 5,880 results

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discusses": About 1,150 results

Damn, you were right! Also surprised that AOC never sleeps.

>Also surprised that AOC never sleeps.

Well, she slept once according to your results.

that result was actually referring to her never sleeping.

Unless you paged thru these and manually counted yourself, do not trust Google’s number of returned results. It’s effectively a random number generator.

Source: I’ve worked for Google.

Surely it's closer to an estimate than purely random?

Do not use it for any comparisons. It is not what you think it is. It's largely there to impress you with how big Google is, and at this point, more historical inertia than anything else.

Here's a bit of outside analysis that's fun to read: https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/04/trochee-chart/

Of course it is not very rigorous but those results seem to indicate a pattern to the contrary.

ha, amazing

Not specific to one faction. It's a local maximum, so all sides will adopt this strategy unless the environment or rules change.

My 2¢ on why "slam" specifically:

1. It's a super short word, which matters in headlines and tweets. I think this is also why headlines will "quote" a word or two (the quotes are magic symbol to ward against libel).

2. Our monkey brains are aroused by violence and tribal warfare, even when that violence is described second-hand and is figurative.

Aggressive verbs are certainly inflammatory, and certainly increases clicks and engagement (at the cost of societal cohesion and individual contentment).

Mark my words—future headlines will be even more outrageous as we become inured to (and accepting of) the current patterns:

    "AOC Jr 'eviscerates' Will Clinton over proposed lunar sale to China."
    "Don Trump VI 'rapes' UN Fusion Program's budget to pay for July 4 parade."

CNN is particularly guilty of this. Every other headline on their site is politician slams rival politician. Reporter slams rival reporter, etc.

I noticed it a while ago with this particular verb too. And ever since, it made me simply have an aversion to articles with these titles, and the news sources that use them.

I wonder if there is a point of diminishing returns - engagement goes down on clickbait titles.

Probably not since they are still doing it.

Headlines generally are offenders here. Always using verbs that belong more to WWF wrestling that to politics.

The verbage may have changed but this has been happening for a while and is certainly not limited to Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders.

Article found from simple Google News archive search of "Pelosi" from 2004-2006: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/28/tauzin.pelosi/inde... Same thing but "Bill Frist" instead: https://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/12/edwards.stem.cell...

Sure, "rips" and "knocks" have been replaced with "slams" etc but it's the exact same tactic that has been used for at least a while.

It would be interesting to see how far back this media behavior goes, which outlets are most culpable, and which "side of the aisle" these articles are mainly targeting, because I genuinely don't know.

> They don't eat, sleep, debate, propose, or discuss. They just slam 24/7.

Why are you attributing what they say, to what the media says they said?

AOC didn't write that headline, a news editor did, for the explicit purpose of making you put attention to it

Hot-damn, you just put your finger on why the whole thing is such a turn-off. It's just a big, lame, shallow show. Bags of hot air blowing at each other, for the clickbait value. And whether it's a media outlet characterizing something as "slamming" for the clicks, or the person speaking in a "slammy" way for the same reason, hardly makes a difference. The former dutifully serves the latter and the latter feeds the former. They're both just manipulating you. Or maybe, at best, someone through their Twitter account might be trying to display "who they are" (LOL!) by virtue of what they oppose, which seems like it would never work, and it doesn't. Not for that purpose. Look at the big picture and it's incredibly sad. Though almost laughably so if you zoom far enough out.

Alternative title: Political pr firms appear to be the most effective at astroturfing online virality.

Where was this trend started? In my mind it was Nigel Farage in Europe that successfully exploited this strategy first, but most of these trends tend to come from the US. Who started this in the US?

There’s a lot of commentary here on news reporting and social media but I really don’t think that this is a problem unique to our time. The end effect of virality is herd mentality, which then creates populism past a certain threshold, and we’ve certainly had populist leaders in history before.

> populism

I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Foxnews are experts at this language. Their front page is full of “slams”, “rips”, “fires back”, “scold” or “hits”. If this is your main news source it will make you think that the world is just one big conflict.

Sometimes I wish they just disabled the share button.

Just like ESPN highlight reels raise the visibility of athletes. Bread and circus alive and well.

Of course. Virality is a mob action… you always get a visceral reaction from the mob being against something.

If you’re running for local office, what gets more attention when you troll social media?

Talking about policy to improve storm sewers or claiming that your opponent is a communist who wants to kill children? What gets more attention?

In my hometown, a guy got on the non-partisan school board on a platform of being pro-gun, and against his “woke” opponent, who was accused of hating veterans.

It doesn't strike me as particularly new, politicians in days of yore were pretty durned hard on each other. and usually better read than the current crop.

My favorite variation of all this is the micro variety.

. Find a social media maven with a zillion followers

. Say something horrid to them

. Get them to respond

. Huzzah! Instant fame or at least a few followers for yourself.

. Wash rinse repeat.

It seems a nice piece of research with a not very surprising result

On mobile that is the most intense cookie consent I’ve ever seen.

Yeah, feels we're screwed at the moment.

I subscribe to both DNC and RNC mailing lists and it's typical to see things like "Trump Rally BACKFIRES" and "The Radical Left is trying to destroy America". I try to laugh it off thinking people can't be dumb enough to buy into this, but then I'm gripped by the terrifying reality that actually yes, they are.

Dunking on opponents really wouldn't be all that bad if there was some actual debate progressing, where ideas could be tested and improved, but that seems to have stagnated to a large degree.

The use of slang like dunking, slamming, murdering, and so on by adults in a professional arena is embarrassing.

We are not a serious country any more.

I don't think you would be able to find a single time period in the history of this country where yellow political journalism was not wildly popular.

Unless it's a literal arena.

I just had a vision of a dystopian(?) future where politicians unable to reach a compromise are forced to fight in the thunderdome, but they were still a bunch of old pasty white guys.

I suspect that there are varying amounts of return on effort, and that their strategists have learned that in a two party ONLY system, with low voter turnout regularly, that just agitating those already on your side to do something, in any way that happens, is more return on effort than convincing people or other variations.

There are feedback effects within their decision making that dampen and then eliminate new ideas, which reinforces "return to the party line" and opposite of "take our group in a new direction with this idea" ; anti-evolution basically..

> and that their strategists have learned that in a two party ONLY system, with low voter turnout regularly, that just agitating those already on your side to do something, in any way that happens, is more return on effort than convincing people or other variations.

That's totally the case. I've read article after article for the past few years about the "disappearing center" and how elections are now won by getting your side to show up at the polls.

Shocking discovery. Really. What's next? Sarcasm is the most effective way to be funny? You heard it here first!

The democratic system shows its true nature when the media becomes democratic as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com