People’s exposure is increasing over time
Individually, sure, but not in aggregate. That’s my point. You’re ignoring how there are always new people who have not yet become politically informed.
My point is that the conservative is feigning that they have liberal views as a way to justify conservative views, this is a common occurrence.
Right, but what I’m asking you is why you think that’s a “common occurrence” when you’ve neither observed it nor had it reported to you by conservatives.
The population is, as society develops and becomes increasingly social and interconnected, we are forced to become more aware simply through sheer osmosis.
I’m sure this is something you’re assuming to be true, but again it doesn’t work like this. I mean, sure, individual people get older at the rate of one year of age per year. But the age of the population doesn’t necessarily increase or decrease, unless there’s an imbalance in the rate of deaths and the rate of births.
A good example is when “centrists” were against BLM and supported ALM, they claimed they were centrists in order to shield themselves from even worse backlash.
This an example of exactly what I’m talking about, though. You’re talking about a person that has liberal-coded views on some issues and conservative-coded views on others (BLM/social unrest.)
This is increasingly disappearing. More people are getting more involved politically
Sure, but more people are born every day (and people die every day, too.) Individual people probably increase in political sophistication over time but that doesn’t mean the population does, at all.
Centrism, the idea of accepting both sides as valid and coming to a consensus, is typically a position held by conservatives that do not wish to out themselves as such in the company of liberals.
Has a single person who identifies as a “centrist” told you they feel that way? No? Then why are you so quick to believe it?
Russia is a shithole because it threw out all of its Jews. Too bad, they all moved to Brooklyn; our gain and your loss.
That’s not what a centrist is, lol. People tend to have similar stances on seemingly unrelated topics because the underlying knowledge and values required to coherently support one view can be applied to others.
Sure, that’s what you’d expect, reasonably - everybody you talk to is really online and politically informed, so their political views highly correlate.
But most people aren’t politically informed, so their political views don’t correlate. People in “the center” don’t hold the median view on every issue; they tend to hold an eclectic mix of right and left wing views. Against climate change and against abortion, etc.
That’s the cartoon, but it’s not accurate. A centrist is just someone whose positions aren’t strongly correlated with each other the way they tend to be on both the left and the right. Like there’s a reason I can accurately guess your position on abortion and climate change if I know whether you live closer to a Cracker Barrel or a Whole Foods; a centrist is just one of the people whose position on abortion isn’t strongly correlated with their position on climate change.
Yup! If you fled Ukraine rather than defending it, you’re a coward. Hope that helps!
One of the things I think is really unusual about Twitter is how bifurcated the user base used to be. I don’t think we understood exactly how until the verification thing.
On the one side, you’ve got people like me, the regular Twitter users; I followed a mix of people I knew professionally, people who were media figures, and then just random-ass accounts who were doing tweets I liked. I don’t pay for Blue, I don’t really care who’s “verified”, since that just meant “I work for a blog or a corporation” and advertising content is irritating and I avoid it if I can. Overall when Musk took over it didn’t change my experience at all, except that all of the media accounts I followed started complaining nonstop and it just got tedious and now I follow a lot fewer of them. One thing that’s changed is that “For You” is a lot better than “Following” since Musk re-did the algorithm (used to be the other way) and now I’m on the “For You” tab about 100% of the time. It’s more fun and more interesting.
On the other side you’ve got media Twitter users. The people for whom verification was a free perk of the job, people for whom the algorithm just showed them their peers affirming their content rather than any critical perspective, and who really have experienced a sea change in their Twitter experience. But largely what they’re complaining about is that their Twitter experience is now more like how mine always was. I think this is what people are talking about when they say “TPOT”, or “This Part of Twitter.”
So I guess what I’m getting at is that there used to be two Twitter “brands”; there was the one I knew, which hasn’t changed and probably won’t; and there was the one you knew if you were employed in the media in some capacity, where that experience probably has substantially degraded since now they’re forced to have interactions outside of TPOT. I think when people in the media say “Musk ruined Twitter”, or “X destroyed the Twitter brand”, that’s what they’re talking about because Twitter as they knew it is gone.
But for most people, people like me, Twitter is the same as its ever been. Little mini-posts from people who have interesting things to say.
You think I was rude, but that’s just because I’m objecting to the Gish Gallop of idiocy you’re bringing to this. If you’d stuck to one point and tried to argue it in good faith, that would have been something.
I think the point you are missing in both cases is that the so-called customer is not who they are advertising to. In Coca-Cola’s case, they are advertising to investors.
You just keep saying different things and then acting like that’s what you’ve been saying “the whole time”, but this is literally the first time you’ve introduced “investors” into it.
But that’s also nonsense. Coca-Cola doesn’t need to buy ads during the Superbowl to talk to their investors; they already have a mailing address for literally every Coca-Cola shareholder. Every publicly-traded company does. When Coca-Cola wants to tell you, the shareholder, something, they just host a phone call and, like, tell you with their mouths. They do this once a quarter, in fact, if not more frequently.
Aren’t you embarrassed about being wrong all the time?
My point, which I though was obvious, was why does Coca-Cola advertise their main product that they never change except for one ill-advised try in the 1980s?
So that they can sell you all of the 20-odd other flavors, based on your favorable impressions of the Coca-Cola brand as a whole. Have you just not been fucking listening at all?
They don’t have any new products to sell you
What? No, Coca-cola has new products every fucking year. Several times a year. Literally two months ago they launched “Coca-Cola Y3000 Zero Sugar”, a flavor supposedly created by “AI”. And just knowing that Coca-Cola launched it, you probably have an idea what it tastes like. That’s what branding does. But Twitter doesn’t do any of that, because again, they don’t launch new products. They have one product and they’ll always have one product.
They do it so that you’ll carry over your positive impressions with the products you’ve used, to the new products they want to sell you. You like the Apple Mac, so you think you’ll like the Apple iPhone.
But Twitter just has the one product and it’ll always have just the one product. They’re not making a second product, ever. There’s nothing to transfer a favorable impression to. So what’s the “value” of Twitter as a brand, distinct from Twitter as an app? All Twitter is is an app.
Now all of that value truly is gone. Sucks to be my kids I guess.
Why do you think it sucks to be your kids? They inherit a free fancy house and any of your securities that weren’t sold to pay the note.
I mean, it sucks for them that their cool dad is dead, but maybe they take comfort in the fact that you went out doing what you loved (raw dog nutting into bitches.)
But it only moves the problem.
Yes, it moves the problem until after you’re dead, and it moves the problem into the future when the value of your securities will have substantially grown, thereby reducing the real cost of your house. Both of those things are good!
If I borrow against the securities, I get cash. I use that cash. I now have zero cash (again).
You have zero cash plus a property asset. The value of that asset will grow as well. Both the asset and your securities are, in fact, growing in value at an interest rate that’s greater than the interest you’re paying on the loan.
So you’re getting free money. It doesn’t come from nowhere, of course; it comes from the future people who buy your securities. They essentially paid you in the past to buy a house, and they’ll be paid to have done so by people who need to enter the securities market later on (by buying securities.)
Who will pay the debt when I die?
Your estate, via the value of the securities at sale, whose value will have increased in the intervening time. What do you think is the downside, here?
If you’re only going to live another 10 or 20 years but you have $1M stashed… do you take the $1M now and buy a fancy house? Or do you keep that $1M going for the… checks math … few tens of thousands of dollars it’ll earn in yearly dividends?
Borrow against the value of the securities, obviously, like people with actual money do.
Sometimes it’s so obvious that only poors use the internet.
The American consumer is the worst-behaved, most deranged, most thievery-prone they’ve ever been in history. “The customer is always right” thinking is endemic. Roving bands of Karens are straight-up assaulting workers. People want everything for free and figure “gratis” means “loot an entire two-armed carry.” Not to even get started on the fucking shoplifting!
When people abuse a privilege, you take the privilege away, from everyone. It’s pretty simple. If you want a retail experience where you feel privileged and taken care of then you need to be going to places that have some kind of mechanism to keep the hoi polloi away. A membership fee, an unusual location, some kind of barrier to entry.
Yes, but you’re wrong. In aggregate political sophistication isn’t increasing. That’s my point.
There are no “mountains of evidence to the contrary.”
“Everybody who disagrees with me is lying” is a view that’s not particularly sophisticated.
Right, but who is even one person who is doing this?