The world made sense in 1988. Magazines, shoulder pads, and airplane seats were thick; so was the bipartisan consensus around shafting Communists and deploying more mega-tonnage. [[Official American aesthetics projected a different level of confidence and consensus]]. And 23 minutes of nightly national broadcast news was enough to make sense of the world each day. Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and their kind might not have played everything straight; but they sold it straight down the barrel of the camera. If it bled it still led; but the blood itself stayed off air. Remember [Larry King](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfX9S-wG7I4)? He was tabloid-y, because he’d ask about a politician’s extramarital affairs. But hey, that was cable.  Political advertising was the more salacious space; within boundaries. Putting dark ominous music with a 'scary' voiceover; or other less [savory tactics](https://www.c-span.org/clip/vignette/user-clip-willie-horton-88-ad/4544782); were genuinely provocative.  ![[BushDukakis.png]] ([Side point: How about this for validating an ad strategy after action.](https://wisconsinexaminer.com/briefs/kelly-campaign-runs-shot-for-shot-remake-of-racist-willie-horton-ad/)) Then, later in the 90's, Rupert Murdoch saw an opportunity and put an advertising man in charge of Fox News. [[Roger Ailes]] brought the principles learned as a GOP ad maker and [Rush Limbaugh's producer](https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-roger-ailes-rush-limbaugh-19931018-story.html#:~:text=Read%20the%20article%20originally%20published%20on%20Oct.,month%20of%20CNBC%2C%20NBC's%20business%2Dand%2Dtalk%20cable%20channel](https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-roger-ailes-rush-limbaugh-19931018-story.html#:~:text=Read%20the%20article%20originally%20published%20on%20Oct.,month%20of%20CNBC%2C%20NBC's%20business%2Dand%2Dtalk%20cable%20channel).) to television news. Some simple heuristics:  - The hair, the makeup and the length of the skirts at the end of a table mattered. It’s a visual medium - why was it always old white guys facing front?  - If it didn’t scare grandma or piss grandpa off; don't air it. Conservatives will fix attention much more firmly on cultural battles than on strictly political ones. - Marginal tax rates are boring. Mocking liberal pieties is fun. Fox News has been wildly profitable since. ### What sells better than rage? Rage+Envy+Proximity Mark Zuckerberg found his way to the same insights for a different era. What sells better than rage? [Envy](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/).  Social media platforms [made a technical decision a decade or so ago that the posts - or the _types_ of posts - everyone is clicking and sharing are more valuable than a predictable stream of cute pictures from people you actually know.](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/blogs/web-1-0-web-2-0-and-web-3-0-with-their-difference/) Platforms did this because web technology allowed it, and because it was very good business. More clicks, more comments, more ad insertions; more inventory, more sales, higher prices, more volume. Porro, porro. Algorithmic curation (instead of a linear feed of known or chosen content) surfaces that which raises cortisol levels. This is a definitional feature of platforms which rely on distributed algorithms, not a bug. It's a digital simulacrum of the gapers block on the interstate. A machine built to input revealed human preferences and purify them at the speed of electrons is going to output that which appeals to our base instincts. (h/t: [[Cal Newport]]). [Revealed human preference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin), shorn of a civilizational veneer, [is rarely pretty. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect) So today, intra-device, users see their high school girlfriend playing with her dog, and how her new liberal husband on the city council is destroying their city, and how liberals are destroying America, all in succession, with three swipes of the thumb; as a substitute for the morning news. That media diet will numb you to revelatory information about the outside world. [We also aren’t built to see blood and guts and violence in real time juxtaposed against images of people who matter to us; and then go back to cookie recipes, then back to outrage, and stay sane.](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/graphic-video-of-kirk-shooting-was-everywhere-online-showing-how-medias-role-has-changed) Jolt cortisol over and over and over, even through the simulacrum of a screen... normal good things will seem boring, and normal bad things will seem worth fighting about. #### That's all to say: Politics isn’t downstream of culture anymore, if it ever was. The relationship is no longer linear. [[Electoral Politics in a Dopamine culture|Culture flooded the landscape of politics when digital media broke the dam]].  Candidates might be scrupulous about what they say, how they present themselves to the world and in their communities. Algorithms, rage merchants, and Russian bot traffic farms feel no such guilt.  So politicians have more incentive to say dumb things and chase clicks. (Or their 22 year old comms director can tell them how many more constituents love them, on a daily basis). This, it need not be said, is [already having disastrous repercussions](https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3882724-the-performative-politics-of-marjorie-taylor-greene/) for the Republic.  #### So if all media is personal device-based, subject to algorithmic curation, and ads are the tame stuff... will they keep working? Our gut reaction is no, they won’t. Trouble is: they always have. Money finds cracks, and ads still drive economic behavior. Media platforms will stay commercial. Politics will fit itself in somehow.  ##### The better answer is this: _probably; if ads can remain sufficiently interruptive of attention._  Firstly, they can't [[Botslop Claims a Victim|look like botslop]]. In a world where almost all relationships are digitally mediated (sadly); being 'authentic' through that screen might be close enough for a candidate or leader of a cause to form a para-social relationship with followers. [[Voters don't read]]. Just look cool and goofy like [[Recruiting... or Casting| Zohran]]. ###### Also, ads will work if they continue to reach audiences *contextually ready to receive information*. An X ad is different than an ad running adjacent to sports or the evening news. It has to keep up with the platform in terms of relevance, and visual appeal. It must [[Our Eight Rules of Ad Making|get the thumb to stop]]. So it should probably be more [[Our pornified political culture|pornographic]] to be effective. Or genuinely funny.  But it should also be clear. And about one thing. And able to be consumed visually (without sound) while remaining clear.  We remember things we hear repeated. And ads can buy repetition. More channels, theoretically, makes buying a higher frequency to a particular audience less expensive. (that, btw, is the best use of [[Targeting isn't Cool|targeting]]) Getting all that right is harder, not easier.  #### Will this rage-bait competition break the principle of unified branding? Politicians already[ code switch](https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/22/politics/video/tim-walz-football-coach-pep-talk-dnc-chicago-digvid) [all the time](https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/10/01/vance-walz-vp-debate-tonight/vances-past-trump-comments-00182072) - but when might they start consciously doing it **visually** and **consistently**, with paid intention? That is, say: - One brand for the rage-bait adjacent [[attention economy]]; the people who swim in political culture. (ie, crazy; on algorithmically curated platforms.) - Another for the "get politics out of my face" crowd; the people who avoid political culture online, but might still vote. (ie, normal) Billboards are great. What about when most of them don't have to be static? [[On Political Botslop#^fc3430|And AI tools can fit a logo to the modeling data in near real time?]] How long until we get political advertising on college football stadiums? And if we do, couldn't we simply generate a football style brand for someone on the ballot that November?  Put a gun in one logo for algorithmic ads served on platforms; and a beloved mascot in another; served to alumni on gameday?  You can cheat IP restrictions very closely with emerging design tools. It's going to make fonts and design principles more important, not less.  And will we stop [[On Political Botslop#^d3dbe4|packing ads]] with so many attempts at persuasion or new information, and simply focus on being noticed? We'll need to. A brand will need [[total extensibility to be effective]] in the nooks and crannies of expanding media spaces.