I’ll start off by pointing out that last 3 primaries have been some kind of funny business.
- 2016: Bernie snuffed by Hillary with shady tactics that lead to the D losing to Trump (lol).
- 2020: Everyone drops like flies to support Biden (sus, but allegedly because Trump and Covid were bad).
- 2024: Biden waits until the last second to announce dropping, there seems to be momentum to skip the Primary and go with Kamala Harris.
Assuming everything I’ve stated is accurate-enough, do you think the average person is likely to feel like this isn’t Democracy? Or will this be business as usual for the US? Will the absence of censorship on tiktok be likely change anything?
For this reason, until there is a primary that Kamala wins, I want every mention of Kamala Harris to be prefixed with a formal title like Kamala Harris, the appointed, the unelected, in a similar vein as Mother of Dragons, Daenerys Targaryen.
This right here. Bullying and browbeating has its place in larger discourse but in my opinion, and based on my own experience, you have more success changing people’s minds when you learn them down the path to feel like they figured it out for themselves.
Bullying, like posting, is for the audience. If done right (and that’s a real easy line to cross) it can sway people listening in, but it’s effects on the subject are all over the place.
If you’re actually trying to change the mind of the person you’re talking to, they first have to respect you, and even then anything beyond friendly cajoling is more likely to backfire than succeed.
The problem is bullying is fun and feels good, and the biggest proponents of it will angrily dismiss any criticism of it as a tactic.
I dunno i think bullying has its place! If someone’s just parroting and they get hot with a response outside of their expectation it could knock some shit loose.
You’ll never see bullying work in the moment but if someone’s primed to open their mind anyway i don’t think bullying is bad, just overused (cuz yes it does feel good)
Of course we might be operating on different definitions of bullying. Im thinking “derisive/dismissive comments mocking a commenter’s point, with a direct correlation to the amount of hubris with which point was delivered”
Yeah?
Yeah, that all seems spot on, especially with that fairly tame version of bullying. It can cause people to reflect later on, I just think it’s easy to go so hard people just say “fuck that person” and write it off entirely. May even cause them to dig in further.