It’s probably related to the phenomenon called “gish gallop”. It’s when someone outputs a ton of falsehoods and other junk very frequently, and other more rational individuals have to refute all those claims and pseudo arguments, look up sources, look up what’s true and what’s false, and so on.
There’s an asymmetry in effort - it’s much easier and way faster for the trolls to spit out junk, falsehoods, misleading content, misleading memes, false claims, and so on, than it is to refute those and gather facts, and to do that, you also have to be very careful to make it accurate or else the listeners might go “boo that’s wrong as well, they both suck!”
And then there’s the phenomenon that even bad advertisement is advertisement. Someone whose name keeps coming up, such as Trump, because that name is constantly all over the news, each and every day, must be very important since the name is repeated so much. This automatically “elevates” that person in the minds of some voters, even though the reason for his constant mention is purely negative. So the more reports about Trump’s weird ramblings, the more he is automatically advertised.
I think it’s like a combination of such unfortunate phenomenons. The result is that real politicians have to be accurate, careful, constantly maintain a professional attitude, and carefully counter Trump’s weird claims, while Trump can just continue to spit out hostile nonsense all the time, which is so much easier.
I’m not sure what can be done against such strategies other than education and media literacy, which is probably becoming weaker over time in society. You don’t vote for proven anti-constitutional fascists, ever. If you do, you’ll always be much worse off than if you hadn’t. Even when the alternatives might also not look great overall… it should be your moral duty to always vote for the least-worst option, which means NOT Trump.
~1930ish Germany made such mistakes. Don’t repeat them. You’re now at ~100 years later and are supposed to learn from grave historic mistakes. So please show that you are actually wiser than the people ~100 years ago and don’t vote for proven fascists.
I’ve had to deal with people who are very vocally pro Trump lately and talk about him like he’s an unfairly persecuted hero. I’m long past the point of trying to reason and simply dismiss them for being fools. There’s no way they’ll change their minds after all these years of seeing him do awful things and ignoring it.
I don’t know if there’s a word for this, but when someone fails constantly, successes are noteworthy. When someone succeeds constantly, failures are noteworthy.
Edit: I wanted to add that it’s weird that the result is one side is judged on their best and the other is judged on their worst… and centrists are still 50/50 on them.
It’s probably related to the phenomenon called “gish gallop”. It’s when someone outputs a ton of falsehoods and other junk very frequently, and other more rational individuals have to refute all those claims and pseudo arguments, look up sources, look up what’s true and what’s false, and so on. There’s an asymmetry in effort - it’s much easier and way faster for the trolls to spit out junk, falsehoods, misleading content, misleading memes, false claims, and so on, than it is to refute those and gather facts, and to do that, you also have to be very careful to make it accurate or else the listeners might go “boo that’s wrong as well, they both suck!”
And then there’s the phenomenon that even bad advertisement is advertisement. Someone whose name keeps coming up, such as Trump, because that name is constantly all over the news, each and every day, must be very important since the name is repeated so much. This automatically “elevates” that person in the minds of some voters, even though the reason for his constant mention is purely negative. So the more reports about Trump’s weird ramblings, the more he is automatically advertised.
I think it’s like a combination of such unfortunate phenomenons. The result is that real politicians have to be accurate, careful, constantly maintain a professional attitude, and carefully counter Trump’s weird claims, while Trump can just continue to spit out hostile nonsense all the time, which is so much easier.
I’m not sure what can be done against such strategies other than education and media literacy, which is probably becoming weaker over time in society. You don’t vote for proven anti-constitutional fascists, ever. If you do, you’ll always be much worse off than if you hadn’t. Even when the alternatives might also not look great overall… it should be your moral duty to always vote for the least-worst option, which means NOT Trump.
~1930ish Germany made such mistakes. Don’t repeat them. You’re now at ~100 years later and are supposed to learn from grave historic mistakes. So please show that you are actually wiser than the people ~100 years ago and don’t vote for proven fascists.
I’ve had to deal with people who are very vocally pro Trump lately and talk about him like he’s an unfairly persecuted hero. I’m long past the point of trying to reason and simply dismiss them for being fools. There’s no way they’ll change their minds after all these years of seeing him do awful things and ignoring it.
I don’t know if there’s a word for this, but when someone fails constantly, successes are noteworthy. When someone succeeds constantly, failures are noteworthy.
Edit: I wanted to add that it’s weird that the result is one side is judged on their best and the other is judged on their worst… and centrists are still 50/50 on them.