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Comment by anm89 | Hacker News Reader

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"

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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?

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

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.

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...

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.

> 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

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 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.

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."

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

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