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Tom's avatar

I get the cringe from Mr. Beast's politics posting, and as an actual political philosophy it's obviously vacuous, but I feel like as rhetoric it's more solid than people want to give him credit for. I think there's a real longing out there for people who promise to do exactly what Mr. Beast is saying.

We're used to that kind of rhetoric coming from like, CEOs or other "very serious" business leaders and they never get any traction with it. But I think that's because they lack a proper platform or independent base of political support. The biggest YouTuber in the world is operating in a very different context and has a lot more relevant expertise.

Does that mean Mr. Beast is destined to be president? No, definitely not. But especially if existing parties continue to struggle to put up good candidates, I don't think we should rule out the idea that in a decade or two, charismatic YouTubers with nonsense political views might become a serious force.

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A Special Presentation's avatar

The read on the wrecker Wikipedia editor was fascinating. One thing that I've observed over time about the social dynamics of the internet is that that technology, not even starting with message boards (more with Usenet and to an extent, sci-fi conferences) gave poorly adjusted, persistent, and neurotic people a much greater voice in social situations than they were otherwise granted. In other words, a lot of people without a whole lot to do except attack their perceived enemies. (The other obvious factor is that from early on, sci-fi was a refuge for people with socially deviant sexual preferences and kinks and that kind of SHINES through the mid-twentieth century history of the genre).

Cheaper means of distributing information are going to give the upper hand to people who are just willing to post, post, and post. Never stop posting, that's the rule. Facts, truth, and tact don't matter - only posting. We saw this when the printing press was invented too.

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