Absofuckinglutely spot the fuck on.
It exasperates me to no end that grown-up people cannot see this kind of thing--Sanders entirely aside; presidential politics aside--for what it is. This PR bullshit fucking works every time. It's why we're finished--we'd rather be children amusing ourselves to death, wallowing in what we know is junk information and junk politics.
We don't give a fuck. Too much fun to gossip your way with zero knowledge through how "likable" each candidate is. These are the people who tell you that they, out there, all make political calls like this. No, "they" all don't: you do.
And people really do see this kind of move. It's not right to say people don't know; they do. They (us; we) purposely consume this garbage to stroke themselves, even though they know, for sure, that they are being manipulated. At one level of the doublethink, that is.
No one who knows me for more than ten minutes hasn't had this PR shit pointed out to them. I know people who work and PR and know this from the inside--and it works on them, too. They want it to--this is so much more comfy and easy than, like, knowledge and thinking.
And a related, wider-ranging set of comments by the always-insightful Michael Brooks:
It exasperates me to no end that grown-up people cannot see this kind of thing--Sanders entirely aside; presidential politics aside--for what it is. This PR bullshit fucking works every time. It's why we're finished--we'd rather be children amusing ourselves to death, wallowing in what we know is junk information and junk politics.
We don't give a fuck. Too much fun to gossip your way with zero knowledge through how "likable" each candidate is. These are the people who tell you that they, out there, all make political calls like this. No, "they" all don't: you do.
And people really do see this kind of move. It's not right to say people don't know; they do. They (us; we) purposely consume this garbage to stroke themselves, even though they know, for sure, that they are being manipulated. At one level of the doublethink, that is.
No one who knows me for more than ten minutes hasn't had this PR shit pointed out to them. I know people who work and PR and know this from the inside--and it works on them, too. They want it to--this is so much more comfy and easy than, like, knowledge and thinking.
And a related, wider-ranging set of comments by the always-insightful Michael Brooks: