Thread | Brutkey

emptywheel
@emptywheel.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy

This whole column, about Dem lack of an online mob to make this go viral, is what I try to explain to people who order MoCs to message better. On the right, viral messaging arises from randos and gets PUSHED UP to electeds.

www.politico.com/news/magazin...

The right understands that virality is as much of a barometer for success as whether an argument is seen as persuasive. Conservatives use the internet as a testing ground for what has heat, and they work it up the ladder. Organic media wags the dog. Campaigns simply add kerosene to what people are already telling them they find resonant. In a world where voters don’t trust institutions, messaging that feels native to their own conversations will be significantly more effective than what’s being pushed to them in ads.

emptywheel
@emptywheel.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy

And this: Dems were hugely successful last year defining Project 2025 (starting, again, from random people w/TikTok followings or celebrities, not the campaign).

I'd say they're successful now, on Epstein, in part bc the QAnon right helped to jumpstart it. But still...

We’ve also seen that this kind of thinking can work when Democrats do it. Last year, both the Democratic presidential campaign and the broader progressive movement took Project 2025 from a viral curiosity and turned it into one of the Trump campaign’s worst negatives. And right now, the party is effectively seizing on the Jeffrey Epstein saga, despite some initial hemming and hawing. Until recently, I ran into no shortage of people in D.C. who said Democrats should move on from the so-called Epstein files to “economic issues” — not recognizing that Epstein is an economic issue. It’s about elites doing terrible things and protecting themselves, a metanarrative that appeals to Americans’ sense that the system isn’t working for them. Social media messaging is as much about implication as it is the blunt statement of fact.

emptywheel
@emptywheel.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy

Anyway, that's why I'm an impatient asshole w/people lecturing all day, "Democrats and by that I mean electeds not me need to do messaging better this way," bc the way to make that happen is to ... do it. Or magnify other people doing it.