>In general, if you are trying to become a presence online you need a great body or a loud mouth. If you’ve got both there could probably be quite a few appearances on the BBC’s Question Time too, although only the loud mouth is truly essential.
>But this is not about sexploitation. Nor is it about all the sub-genres of Twitch streamers and influencers, people who make money talking about football, fashion or gaming. Politics is a far more niche subject, so if you are going to get a good grift going here, you need to do something to grab attention.
>In that respect it’s not dissimilar from the OnlyFans principle. I’m obviously not actually suggesting a literal copy of OnlyFans — there are a lot of weirdos out there, but even so, this analogy only goes so far. What I mean is that to build your following you have to fight for attention, being prepared to be a little bit more outrageous all the time. In the new media there really is no value like shock value. There have always been newspaper columnists or radio pundits working off similar principles, but they at least were restrained by editors.
>There are a few serious people out there using their expertise and intelligence to make a decent living beavering away on erudite and well-informed political Substacks. But you have to have some expertise to draw on, and this requires actual research.
>It is so much easier to pick a very hardline opinion and just keep pushing it. The web is full of conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, race baiting and ever more extreme notions of a global elite-state conspiracy against ordinary people. The trick is to pick your crowd and stick with them.
>You start with a basic template — how the elite is lying to you. And then you just repackage it every day with some facts or a quote you nicked off X.com. You will need enough wit to disguise the fact you are writing the same thing every day, but not that much. And keep it hyperbolic. No one is paying £10 a month for milksop moderation. They want the truth that no one else dares tell them, even if the reason is because that it isn’t actually true.
>There are risks in going too far in your quest for clicks. The American troll Candace Owens is currently heading to court to defend her claim that Brigitte Macron is a man. But perhaps Owens thinks the coverage worth the cost. Attention is the only currency of the outrage economy and she can always relaunch as the woman the global elite tried to silence. There is something similar in parts of the left in the desire to feed your demographic. I don’t want to minimise in any way the Gaza crisis, which for a start is actually real, but is it merely humanitarian empathy which keeps certain bloggers talking about it every day. If human suffering was their prime motivation they’d spare the odd word for Sudan, where the death toll is far higher. But their target audience is only interested in the crimes of the west and its allies. Even so, the left are still amateurs at this. The really talented grifters are all veering to the right (although of course there is a pleasing intersection between hard left and right, Putin apologia, conspiracy theories, a hatred of globalisation and practical economics).
>Fuelling grievance is how you build a brand online. The right are streets ahead and they have Elon to push their wares. You select a core group of angry people and find new ways every day to tell them they are right. You might start off on a real issue, like immigration, but you need to turn it into a conspiracy if you want lift-off. A good post or pod might be about the dodgy stat you’ve just uncovered (found in an ONS press release) which “proves they are lying to you”. In fact, with ChatGPT you probably don’t even have to write it yourself most days. And if you want to step into something really contentious, like how the Duke of Edinburgh murdered Princess Diana or how George W Bush was behind 9/11, you just say you are merely asking questions. Remember, even cranks can afford a subscription. Soon you can turn up to each other’s rallies or podcasts. And don’t worry if you have been publicly shamed or discredited. That’s just the deep state trying to stop you. And anyway, that picture was just an AI fake. Remember, someone’s truth is only a click away. The revolution will not be televised. It will be monetised.
I haven’t read the article, but I’m going to just assume they are proposing that all democrats running for president in 2028 should promise to post their nudes if they win to secure the gooner demographic.
4 Comments
>In general, if you are trying to become a presence online you need a great body or a loud mouth. If you’ve got both there could probably be quite a few appearances on the BBC’s Question Time too, although only the loud mouth is truly essential.
>But this is not about sexploitation. Nor is it about all the sub-genres of Twitch streamers and influencers, people who make money talking about football, fashion or gaming. Politics is a far more niche subject, so if you are going to get a good grift going here, you need to do something to grab attention.
>In that respect it’s not dissimilar from the OnlyFans principle. I’m obviously not actually suggesting a literal copy of OnlyFans — there are a lot of weirdos out there, but even so, this analogy only goes so far. What I mean is that to build your following you have to fight for attention, being prepared to be a little bit more outrageous all the time. In the new media there really is no value like shock value. There have always been newspaper columnists or radio pundits working off similar principles, but they at least were restrained by editors.
>There are a few serious people out there using their expertise and intelligence to make a decent living beavering away on erudite and well-informed political Substacks. But you have to have some expertise to draw on, and this requires actual research.
>It is so much easier to pick a very hardline opinion and just keep pushing it. The web is full of conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, race baiting and ever more extreme notions of a global elite-state conspiracy against ordinary people. The trick is to pick your crowd and stick with them.
>You start with a basic template — how the elite is lying to you. And then you just repackage it every day with some facts or a quote you nicked off X.com. You will need enough wit to disguise the fact you are writing the same thing every day, but not that much. And keep it hyperbolic. No one is paying £10 a month for milksop moderation. They want the truth that no one else dares tell them, even if the reason is because that it isn’t actually true.
>There are risks in going too far in your quest for clicks. The American troll Candace Owens is currently heading to court to defend her claim that Brigitte Macron is a man. But perhaps Owens thinks the coverage worth the cost. Attention is the only currency of the outrage economy and she can always relaunch as the woman the global elite tried to silence. There is something similar in parts of the left in the desire to feed your demographic. I don’t want to minimise in any way the Gaza crisis, which for a start is actually real, but is it merely humanitarian empathy which keeps certain bloggers talking about it every day. If human suffering was their prime motivation they’d spare the odd word for Sudan, where the death toll is far higher. But their target audience is only interested in the crimes of the west and its allies. Even so, the left are still amateurs at this. The really talented grifters are all veering to the right (although of course there is a pleasing intersection between hard left and right, Putin apologia, conspiracy theories, a hatred of globalisation and practical economics).
>Fuelling grievance is how you build a brand online. The right are streets ahead and they have Elon to push their wares. You select a core group of angry people and find new ways every day to tell them they are right. You might start off on a real issue, like immigration, but you need to turn it into a conspiracy if you want lift-off. A good post or pod might be about the dodgy stat you’ve just uncovered (found in an ONS press release) which “proves they are lying to you”. In fact, with ChatGPT you probably don’t even have to write it yourself most days. And if you want to step into something really contentious, like how the Duke of Edinburgh murdered Princess Diana or how George W Bush was behind 9/11, you just say you are merely asking questions. Remember, even cranks can afford a subscription. Soon you can turn up to each other’s rallies or podcasts. And don’t worry if you have been publicly shamed or discredited. That’s just the deep state trying to stop you. And anyway, that picture was just an AI fake. Remember, someone’s truth is only a click away. The revolution will not be televised. It will be monetised.
Sobrino
https://i.redd.it/dhd6claxfovf1.gif
I haven’t read the article, but I’m going to just assume they are proposing that all democrats running for president in 2028 should promise to post their nudes if they win to secure the gooner demographic.