The reason why trashpreneur #parmesanGirl is going through my followers list, and blocking anyone who follows me, is because of a fundamental lie of disinformation that she has to keep up: the lie of popular support.
Understanding it requires starting with the basics of disinfo.
Given unrecoverable intent, disinfo studies have a kind of lack of basis.
You can get past this pretty easy with data - and I'm a huge fan of data tools, you see me use them all the time.
But there's more to this than, like, counting tweets and scrolling timelines.
There are also basic felicity conditions that underlie speech.
Insofar as disinformation is an *intentional* act, it will tend to break one of these maxims, or some other unenumerated felicity condition.
A structural analysis of disinformation in this manner can actually yield non-trivial results.
It's not, like, pretending you see the order in something; it's testing out explanations and seeing how well they play.
Some explanations work really well and bear out in practice.
In fact, the idea of fundamental maxim-breaks - the idea that there's some basic transgression that disinformation has to enact - extends fairly well into other "fundamental lies" of disinfo.
This is where we get to why #parmesanGirl is so panicky with that block button.
#ParmesanGirl is of a class of trashpreneur that is not ever on Fox News, or for that matter quoted in any "real" news outlets, except as a laughingstock.
All she does is troll.
The instant that her trolling stops being entertaining & smug is the instant her career ends.
This is why #parmesanGirl can't stand having her ratios pointed out to her; it's why she's so easy to provoke.
It's a weakness to exploit.
She has to, because otherwise, people see her for what she is:
Just interchangeable trash that makes convenient noises for fascists.
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There are three parts of an argumentative act in Platonic theory:
- logos, its logical grist
- ethos, the manner in which it's delivered
- pathos, its emotional appeal component
Harris' primary task in her DNC speech was ethos: she had to show she can be Presidential.
(🧵)
So the really interesting thing that's happening here is the "solution" that Harris finds to a frankly ferociously unenviable problem to me, portraying a 'plausible', believable President that you could vote for, while avoiding two very common tropes applied to female speakers.
I've seen female debaters come up with a lot of different solutions for this, in college and in high school; my sister was one of them, so were the kids I worked with in my debate app company.
Kamala Harris is doing something different here than other solutions I've seen.
Used to run a debate startup before I did this political thing for money. The reason why I switched was this advice I got that I'll share with you:
It's all about the community
This is sort of opaque without context so let me provide that -
(🧵)
Back in December of '17 I knew a couple of things the rest of the world didn't know about the special election in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat that had just happened.
In March of '18 the rest of the world found out one of them. archive.is/SXaBD
I also knew the people who did this, though I didn't know what they were doing; just that they were part of a loose network of political operatives working Alabama because it was a flashpoint.
Nearly a year later I found out along with the rest of the world.
The question is, where do we run @ResponsibleFP advertisements using the Make America Joyful Again cat (or just "joy cat") if we're looking to maximize our impact?
Start from paths to victory; there are three paths to victory to look at, two for Harris and one for Trump.
1/5
Path 1 is "blue wall states" plus one part of Nebraska.
Path 2 is, flip a Sun Belt state. If Harris loses one or even multiple Blue Wall states but carries a state like AZ, NC or Nevada (where Sen. Rosen (D, NV) is up by two-digit numbers in polls), she can win.
2/
Trump has somewhat less "optionality" compared to Harris.
His "critical path" looks like he has to carry win two states, Pennsylvania and Georgia, to make 270, while holding every state he has a lead in, and losing the states that are going Harris' way.
It's interesting maybe even useful to go into why MAGAs are so obsessed with that one photo of a crowd in Michigan that they think is photoshopped or AI-generated.
In summary, it's because of the fundamental lie of MAGA's popularity that they have to keep up.
1/4
There are recurrent lies that entities like MAGA, Russia, or Boeing have to keep up - indeed, telling these lies is how they sustain themselves and survive, it's how they exploit the audiences they lie to.
These lies are repeated, basic violations of 'felicity conditions'
2/4
When we talk, so the theory goes, we agree tacitly to conditions, one of which is "do not state that which you know to be untrue or is unsupported by evidence". If I keep breaking that rule, then... why would you listen to me?
I asked a volunteer, someone I only know on the Internet, to make a looping GIF from the components of the image I gave them and go "dealer's choice" on the result
We were sort of debating whether animating the arms was worth it; it turns out, it was.