Thread by @AlexandraErin

A really great thing to do with political ads that strike you as deeply wrong is not retweet them, reply to them, send them to your friends, post them to the group chat, or otherwise extend their reach.

"But Alexandra," you might be thinking, "nobody in my group chat would vote for or donate to a bigoted Republican jerk, so what's wrong with sharing this ad to laugh at him?"

Let me grant that you're right about that.

Also let me explain you a thing called legs.

Before we said things went viral, we'd say they have legs. This story's got legs. This product's got legs. This is an idea with legs.

What are legs? They're one of the things (besides money) it takes to get along. Things with legs go places.

The reason that a lie can get around the world before truth has finished putting on its boots is that the lie -- not every lie, but some lies -- has long legs.

And part of that is that the truth is mostly repeated by people who believe it, while lies can get spread by everyone.

So you post the video in your group chat with your five closet friends who you know won't fall for the schtick. And some of them share it in another group chat with people you maybe don't know, or don't know so well, and so on.

I have been working as an online content creator since before "going viral" was a thing, and my model has almost always been to produce content that can be freely shared and enjoyed, with optional payment channels for those who want to support.

And in this endeavor, I have depended on producing things with legs, which I said above are a thing other than money that it can take to get along. If you don't have money or you need to conserve it, getting extra legs along the way is like free money.

Legs, like time, is money.

The rise of algorithmic social media has made it harder for me to predict or track what's going to have legs or to measure the effects of them, but I have years of experience watching how things spread and leapfrog from people who won't be my patron to people who will be.

I assure you that Jack Offurtively, Republican Candidate, doesn't care that you're sharing his ad to make fun of him... or if he does, his media team doesn't, because you are an updraft which the paper airplane they sent out into the world can use to soar higher and farther.

Movement is the name of the game. It doesn't matter much what direction the content is moving in, because each time it moves on is another chance to move on in multiple other directions. The more movement you get, the more likely your content is to reach a receptive audience.

That might be when the person you shared it with posts it to Facebook with an eyeroll emoji, or it might be when Aunt Karen that no one has the heart to kick out of the family group chat three or four shares down the line sees it and thinks, "Finally someone says it out loud!"

And in addition to movement, engagement is another name of the game, in the algorithmic age. Every interaction with a tweet that contains an embedded video on this birb site increases the visibility of that tweet, as weighted by the algorithm.

And I know I am no saint, no paragon of perfection, and no moral authority when it comes to not elevating things I would rather see die unmourned in a corner by interacting with them. The psychological incentives for righteously indignant interaction are real.

So I am not trying to lay down the law here (what authority would I have to do so?) and I'm not going to say "never reply in anger" or "never dunk" or whatever, but when it comes to political advertising, the stakes are both high and real.

And the ones that seem to you to be the most ridiculous and/or the most infuriating, the ones that most cry out for a derisive remark or a fierce rebuke... I mean, you know there's a good chance that someone was paid good money to figure out how to make you feel that way, right?

So please, this never-ending and eternal election season, do not share Republican campaign ads. You know I believe that mostly the Sith deal predominantly but not exclusively in absolutes, but this time I will say: not for any reason, not with any audience.

And nobody's paying me the big bucks to consult on this stuff, so if you get any value out of my perspective here, please feel free to drop something in my tip jar.

Do not reward the stuff you want to see less of. Reward what you want to see more of.

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