Thread by @gauravsabnis

Oh the replies and the QTs on this are fascinating! Already over a quarter million impressions. It's gonna be interesting comparing the results with my "BJP will lose UP" tweets.

https://twitter.com/gauravsabnis/status/1597897741627461634

I was looking up the U.P. tweet numbers and back then I had 23K followers. Now it's 33K. In 9 months. 40% jump, a lot of it thanks to these #qtbait experiments. The graph of follower surges is punctuated by "hot take" tweets. You see my point about social strategy?

Exactly! I'm not even being cagey or obtuse or over the top. I am EXPLICITLY saying hello hello people look at this example of the effectiveness of putting #qtbait out there people feel compelled to disagree with. How easy that game is. My
#EthicalBait.

https://twitter.com/asuph/status/1598162919086510080?t=OIP7O-XXE39ozhq747pAQQ&s=19

I put out a very benign "prediction", just 4 words, about an election a few days before it. Not exactly some aggressive comment. A vanilla prediction.

Look at the scale of the "affective" response, and the intensity of the disdain.

Now imagine doing this specifically for clout

Remember that any time you hate-QT ANY message, you automatically multiply its clout by several factors.

Almost 16K people visited my profile over this 1 banal line. Imagine if I had a sales link in my profile. Or a conspiracy theory. Or even just "Mudi is greatest".

The other learning from this is also the power of just saying the desired out enough times, if enough number of people will do it. I posted it and got almost 4L views. Imagine a thousand people doing this in a coordinated way. That many people see "BJP will lose", it registers.

For almost a decade, "Narendra Modi will become PM" would have drawn scoffing. He was a political pariah for a reason. But dude and his people repeated it almost non-stop from 2011 or so, and in 3 years made it feel inevitable and neverending.

Fascism relies on brainwashing.

Why despite all the evidence to the contrary, people in India genuinely believe "Modi has raised India's stature globally". Because his people just keep repeating it continuously. To the point that the cost of cognitive dissonance gets high enough that it's easier to just believe

Same story with the "If not Modi then who?" line. It's a ridiculous and fallacious question with self-defeating logic in a democracy. The logic pushed by authorisations.

But it's repeated so much that it's taken as a statement of universal agreement & validity.

The average person out there taking care of family and career and others issues does not have a Sabnisian appetite for argumentation and thick skin.

It is natural, in the interest of mental peace, for them to just support Modi or at the very least call him unbeatable.

Every fascist was first seen as a kooky fringe person who has no chance in hell but is entertaining to watch and then, like flipping a button, their argument changes from "just give us a chance" to "if not us then who?". And that helps them prolong their reigns. Just repetition.

In a few hours, it will be 24 hours I tweeted "BJP" will lose Gujarat".

A perfectly mundane statement that in elections next week, the incumbent will lose. Hardly calling the earth flat or claiming Obama is foreign born or qanon shit. I will tweet it again. It'll blow up again.

Constant repetition by Godi media plus IT cell muscle and Sanghis being moderators of a big majority of neighborhood chat groups, alumni groups, & recent LinkedIn strategy, there is now a huge aura of inevitability created around this fancy dress ki dukaan called Modi.

Yes, but when you tell them all this, it's extra cognitive effort to change their mental status quo, a kind of conflict, and a workout for the brain. They WILL zone you out if you're one of just a few voices disagreeing.

Our brains pine status quo

https://twitter.com/GorwayGlobal/status/1598234403649556481?t=Iz2_nLcKb18LdJ40szvZ4g&s=19

Elon Musk has done this for years but esp post pandemic. Keep repeating enough times lies like he's the one who invented the idea of reusing rockets (instead of just being a govt contractor for a long term rocketry project) or single handedly created EV industry, it seeps in.

Of course the biggest proof-of-concept of the continuous dogged repetition made viral was Birtherism. We forget that throughout the 2008 campaign & even the first year of the Obama presidency, no one serious questioned his birth. Not even Hillary or McCain. Cos it was a non issue

Donald Trump plucked that theory from the fringes of the internet in the waning days of his business & reality TV career, and just kept repeating it on and on and on. Just ignoring any logical questions or actual facts. He eventually rode the tactic to a fluke election win.

If you track Trump's public statements from 2006 to 2010, you see that it's NOT like he slowly got disillusioned with Obama. It literally happened overnight. One day he was on TV supporting Obamacare and praising 1st 100 days etc. The next day he was a raging birther.
#kayfabe

I'm just a boy doing a lot of reading and research on history and political marketing, standing in front of non-fascist Twitter, asking you to see the blindingly transparent strategies they use.

This time we even have a secondary tweet to compare this experiment with (if Amit is cool sharing Activity details).

Imagine if between today & the last phase of election, anyone who wants BJP to lose just posts "BJP will lose Gujarat". All of you.

https://twitter.com/asuph/status/1597912149464354816?t=-jV8xfzUQP-o7jYVeiaeLA&s=19

BJP will lose Karnataka.

If a chillar party 33 k account like me, even saying what he is doing, got 4 lakh people to read "BJP will lose Gujarat" & over 25K engagements, just extrapolate how it works if every non sanghi in the country posts this on their family & alumni groups. On LinkedIn. Instagram.

The first step to making something happen is to say it will happen.

Every few hours, if you just post "BJP will lose that Gujarat" and "BJP will lose Karnataka", you will experience the almost feral intensity with which people will scream back at you, for literally just saying a 2 decade plus incumbent will lose a democratic election. 🤷🏽🙄

Oh yes, those of us who look at actual data and trendlines, see the reversals BJP has been seeing. Let's make their decline happen faster by talking about it a LOT. Modi is senior citizen now. He should retire and travel the world, stalk the White House.

https://twitter.com/sbalaji1/status/1598243940808810501?t=-jV8xfzUQP-o7jYVeiaeLA&s=19