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Derek Thompson Profile picture
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Feb 7 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
One of the most popular modes of commentary is what you could call DGAF Populist.

DGAF Populists—Rogan, Chappelle, Maher—are anti-PC, anti-GOP, anti-left, anti-neurotic, anti-"woke," pro-"do your thing," economically left, culturally libertarian, and linguistically rude (1/x)
You can point to a thousand differences between Rogan, Chapelle, & Maher but just bear with me on this commonality of style.

The popularity of the DGAF Populist style is really important, because of how it intersects with media economics and media coverage. (2/x)
Aggregator economics push firms like Netflix & Spotify to buy exclusive rights to popular content in a world where a lot of culture is political, where politico-culture analysis is popular, and where DFAF-P is often the most popular flavor (3/x)
But the very same qualities that make the DGAF Populists popular are the qualities that make them a nightmare for publicly traded companies.

Netflix/Spotify are buying a locked-in audience with a side of culture-war migraines (4/x)
Coda: This seems pretty related
Talked about this today on the pod, at 15:00

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More from @DKThomp

Derek Thompson Profile picture
Feb 4
I wrote about why Denmark is done with COVID

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

This week, Denmark led the world in infections per capita. It also suddenly voted to end all restrictions—no mask mandate, no COVID passports. I talked to researcher and govt adviser @M_B_Petersen about why.
When I say Denmark leads the world in COVID cases per capita, I mean, literally—if you don't count the South Pacific archipelago of Palau—it's number one in cases per million people.

But the relationship between cases and ICU admits has been shattered.
There's no mystery here.

Denmark broke the tether between cases and severe outcomes bc it's one of the most vaccinated countries in the world.

- 81% of adults are doubly vaxxed
- 61% have booster shots

Denmark's booster-shots-per-capita is about 2.5X higher than the U.S.
Read 7 tweets
Derek Thompson Profile picture
Jan 31
Every once in a while, an aspiring journalist will ask for writing tips and I make something up on the spot.

So, for today's newsletter, I wrote down all my tips—well, 4 of them; tips are hard!—so I'll always have a cheat sheet if somebody asks again.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
1. Simple is smart.

School rewards people who learn and use big words. But the real superpower is the ability to use simple language to decode important and complicated ideas. Beware the illusion that "complexity = intelligence."
2. Be interesting.

Interesting = novel + important
Read 6 tweets
Derek Thompson Profile picture
Jan 25
New pod w/ @morganhousel on crypto's crash and 3 big stock market myths

open.spotify.com/episode/4hYBOf…

1) Bitcoin is digital gold—a hedge against inflation and equities
2) 10% market corrections are rare phenomena
3) COVID was a boon for pandemic darlings like Peloton and Zoom
1) "Think of Bitcoin like digital gold"

This is almost a double-negative myth. Bitcoin has been an awful hedge; it's down more than the Nasdaq, making it more like a tech stock on steroids.

But as @morganhousel says, gold is historically a terrible inflation hedge, too!
So in a way, you could say that Bitcoin really *is* like digital gold—just not for the reasons that its advocates claim.

Both Bitcoin and gold are volatile assets that people claim as a useful hedge even though their long-term histories suggest the opposite.
Read 6 tweets
Derek Thompson Profile picture
Jan 22
Many thanks to @JimPethokoukis for interviewing me about my abundance agenda

fasterplease.substack.com/p/-doomsday-ec…

If you want a 1-paragraph summary of the abundance agenda and how it makes contact with 2022's problems, here's my best shot —>
This is the original abundance agenda article

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
The abundance agenda is a public policy platform.

But it's also a mentality—experiments over ideology; inventing over venting—that can extend to the private sector.

Take, for example, the blossoming of science-funding experiments in Silicon Valley—>

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Read 4 tweets
Derek Thompson Profile picture
Jan 21
Last week, I asked: What's the most incredible, statistical-outlier accomplishment in U.S. major sports history?

I got several thousand responses. Here are my top 10.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
10. The 2010 San Diego Chargers

As far as I know, only one team in professional sports history has finished 1st in offense, 1st in defense, and also missed the playoffs.
9. Bob Beamon's record-breaking long jump in the 1968 Olympics.

Hard to think of another sports achievement so outlierish that officials had to stop the game to figure out WTF just happened and the player, upon learning of the record, was so shocked that he suffered a seizure
Read 13 tweets
Derek Thompson Profile picture
Jan 21
New pod: @JamesFallows joins the show to talk about the Democrats' very rough week

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/202…

- the deep story of the voting rights bill
- a clinic on US filibuster history
- Biden polling exegesis
- negativity bias vs. agency bias in political media
Our discussion toward the end about news biases was one of the most interesting conversations I've had about political media in a while.

In short:

1. The press has a negativity bias (duh).
2. That's in part bc audiences have a negativity bias.
3. Media also has "agency bias."
News orgs can A/B test headlines with positive and negative frames. I've done it. It's clear that readers click more when the framing is negative. You can see this on Twitter, too.

Our (the media's) negativity bias both drives and reflects your (the audience's) negativity.
Read 5 tweets

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