Political Memes

People had an utter panic attack about this a few months ago. It's just that they post so much stuff that their name becomes recognizable so people freaked out because they noticed some of it, a small percentile really, was critical of Joe Biden. They panicked and tried to ban the user from basically everything they could. Most of them never thought to look and see what you did which is this user basically posts ad nauseam everything they can find. Some of it critical of Biden some of it critical of trump most having nothing to do with politics at all.

I had thought that people calmed down and cooler heads had prevailed. I guess there's some weak-willed people still out there though.

Stop trying to bully me into voting against fascism

no.

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/why-negative-campaigning-works-and-how-fight-it

Ledgerwood and her colleagues have also found that a negative frame is much more persistent, or “stickier,” than a positive one. If you come at an issue negatively, but are later reminded of the policy's positive aspects, you will still think it's a bust. And if you start out thinking favorably about the policy, but are reminded of its downsides, your positive perception will be swept away and a negative one will take its place.
The beauty of negative attacks — from a campaign standpoint — is that they influence everyone. Even a candidate’s supporters will be affected by negative attacks, Ledgerwood and her collaborators have found. Once a negative idea has been planted, it’s very hard to shake.

https://goizueta.emory.edu/research-spotlight/playing-dirty-2020-does-negative-advertising-actually-work-elections

Looking at correlations between the volume of negative ads and the vote shares achieved by U.S. Senate candidates in 2010 and 2012, the researchers found that “while positive political advertising does not affect two-party vote share, negative political advertising has a significant positive effect on two-party vote shares.”

https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/when-campaign-ads-go-low-it-often-works/

“Negative campaigning has been around as long as campaigning,” Lovett says. “It stays around because it works.”

https://www.cnn.com/2012/01/02/opinion/lariscy-negative-ads/index.html

So if we don’t like negative ads and even perhaps suspect they contribute to political malaise, why are they increasingly dominating candidates’ strategies?
The answer is simple: They work. And they work very well. Gingrich’s drop in polls in Iowa last month was no accident – it was choreographed by negative advertising. . . .
. . . Our brains process information both consciously and non-consciously. When we pay attention to a message we are engaged in active message processing. When we are distracted or not paying attention we may nonetheless passively receive information. There is some evidence that negative messages may be more likely than positive ones to passively register. They “stick” for several reasons.
First, one of the most important contributors to their success may be the negativity bias. Negative information is more memorable than positive – just think how clearly you remember an insult.
Second, negative ads are more complex than positive ones. A positive message that talks about the sponsoring candidate’s voting record, for example, is simple and straightforward. Every negative ad has at least an implied comparison. If Mitt Romney is “not a true conservative,” then by implication the candidate sponsoring the ad is saying he or she is a true conservative. This complexity can cause us to process the information more slowly and with somewhat more attentiveness.

What do you say to someone who looks at Trump and Harris, shrugs, and says “They look the same to me”?

What do you say? You say "are you suffering a stroke, would you like me to call you an ambulance?"

Americans aren't being given a real choice here, too bad, but that's how it is. Anyone who is eligible to vote but doesn't realise Trump is a genuine threat to democracy the world over maybe shouldn't be allowed to vote.

If you were caught in someplace where you didn't have access to water, and the only choices were a bottle of piss with blood in it (Trump, in this metaphor) and a warm, stale coke light (Harris, in this metaphor), which one would you choose? Neither of them are particularly enjoyable or healthy in the long run, but if you were in a place which had no access to fresh water (spelling out my metaphor here, but democracy), you would die without consuming liquids. Still, you probably wouldn't choose the pissy blood, because that'd actually be dangerous to drink no matter how dehydrated you were. A warm, stale coke light would still be a functional drink, no matter how much you'd never choose it if you had an option.

See where I'm going?

Chomsky did have a good point once about how there's a difference of the type of lack of democracy that you can see between America and Russia. (I'm Finnish, btw, fuck Putler.) He made the point that Americans tend to like to think they have a choice, whereas Russians are pretty openly certain they don't. As a heavy exaggeration, that is. I don't recall which book it was, but I think it was honestly one of his books from the 70's about linguistics, which made it weird, since it started with a chapter about CIA shenanigans and propaganda.