New Study Explains Why Trump's 'Sad' Tweets Are So Effective (theverge.com) 272
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: During his campaign and presidency, Donald Trump has used Twitter to circumvent traditional media broadcasters and speak directly to the masses. He is particularly known for one specific tweet construction: he sets up a situation that he feels should inspire anger or outrage, then punctuates it with "Sad!" New research from New York University suggests a reason why this style is so effective: a tweet containing moral and emotional language spreads farther among people with similar political persuasion. The study offered up "duty" as an example of a purely moral word, "fear" as a purely emotional one, and "hate" as word that combined the two categories. The research found that the use of purely moral or purely emotional language had a limited impact on the spread of a tweet, but the "presence of moral-emotional words in messages increased their diffusion by a factor of 20% for each additional word." The impact of this language cut both ways. Tweets with moral-emotional words spread further among those with a similar political outlook, and they spread less with those who held opposing views, according to the research published in the journal PNAS. The study looked at 563,312 tweets on the topics of gun control, same-sex marriage, and climate change, and rated their impact by the number of retweets each one received.
President Bartlett could have told you about this (Score:5, Insightful)
He already knew about the Ten-word answer over a decade ago. And none of the words should have more than three syllables.
A short pithy rejoinder will accomplish more than a Platonic dialogue, no matter how well composed it might happen to be.
In fact, the only thing more powerful would be an acronym or emoji.
Re:President Bartlett could have told you about th (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, the only thing more powerful would be an acronym or emoji.
So you're saying the most viral possible right-wing tweet would be:
SJWs :-( Sad!
Study? (Score:3)
Yep - it's a theory (Score:3, Interesting)
Does not sound like much of a study. More like a bit of a theory.
Yep. Researchers find a trend in the data, then rationalize an explanation and present it as "theory".
I'll propose an alternate explanation for the data.
People are tired of being told what to think, the outlets have been telling people what to think in the strongest possible terms, and as a result the strength of the words has declined.
Calling someone a liar, fascist, racist, islamophobe, Hitler, Cthulhu, and everything else was so completely over the top(*) that many people simply got used to the terms, th
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Clearly, he's nuanced when he wants to be. That's meta-nuancing.
Re:Yep - it's a theory (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing to debate - he's a serial liar:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top-stories&_r=0&utm_source=TractionNext&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Worm-Subscribe-270617
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You should stop acting like such a yuge jyna.
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Researchers find a trend in the data, then rationalize an explanation and present it as "theory". I'll propose an alternate explanation for the data.
You're doing this backwards. You start with a hypothesis, then you conduct your experiment. The order is very important. Making a baseless assumption about how the researchers did it is bad enough, but then you just turn around and do the same thing yourself. If you're going to slander these people then you could at least make an effort to set a good example.
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People are tired of being told what to think, the outlets have been telling people what to think in the strongest possible terms, and as a result the strength of the words has declined.
I think there is a gap between what people are being told in the media and what they experience on the ground in their every day lives and this gap has reached ridiculous proportions.
Trump's genius, if you want to call it that, seems to be providing a message that aligns with people's actual experiences. They think Trump is more honest.
Now, none of this is to say that people's experiences are necessarily accurate or that Trump doesn't spin lies, either (the wall, his so-called healthcare plan, etc), but I
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In other news.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The vast majority of the population are semi-brainless machines whose hearts and minds are manipulated from simple word-commands from authority
Dark but true, deal with it
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I bet was the word "job" that won him the presidency.
It's too bad that hillary used too few of those and too much of "alt-right".
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Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" comes to mind.
It's interesting, how close we've come.
Re: In other news.... (Score:2)
Sad? (Score:5, Funny)
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/. has devolved into mostly partisan bickering. Sad!
Slashdot has always had partisan bickering.
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No we haven't. Fucking troll.
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You must be new around here.
Re: Sad? (Score:2)
Re: Sad? (Score:2)
"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Sad!" (Score:5, Funny)
"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Sad!" - CmdrTrumpo
When has mockery not been effective (Score:3)
"Sad" is a gentle but really provoking form of mocking that seems especially able to get people to react...
The only say it is "effective" for supporters, but they are ignoring a message also being "effective" if it makes a target group very angry.
It has allowed Trump to greatly distract the press and other opponents from mountain effective opposition, because they spent a great deal of time in a state of rage, where they are unable to make rational choices and are therefore rendered mostly powerless.
It's also an effective style because it's really easy for others to pick up and use as well, with increases the power of the term...
FTFY (Score:2, Insightful)
During his campaign and presidency, Donald Trump has used Twitter to circumvent traditional media broadcasters and speak directly to the masses without any kind of feedback.
In short he knows the shit he is shovelling doesn't hold up to questioning, so he avoids all those pesky hard questions. He does this through twitter, surrogates, and Fox News, and probably other ways. Hell he is currently cutting video from daily briefings and even cutting making them live. Basically that is an indirect way to preven
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Sad.
The Genius of Trump’s Tweets (Score:5, Insightful)
An other article from today calls Trump a genius.
https://townhall.com/columnist... [townhall.com]
"He is able to speak directly to the American people without going through the biased mainstream media filter. The media doesn’t get to ask him slanted questions or pick and choose parts of his press releases to publish. Instead, Trump gets immense control over every single sentence he issues, which are then read by millions of Americans. "
Regardless whether you love or hate the man, you do have to admit it is an effective way to deal with unfriendly media.
Re:The Genius of Trump’s Tweets (Score:5, Insightful)
If the media have been unfriendly to Trump then they must be really really stupid, because they gave him billions of dollars worth of free coverage during the campaign.
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I'm not sure what your point is. But, yes, the media is unfriendly towards Trump.
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You know how ads work right? That isn't the TV network attacking Trump, someone bought the air time.
It's not all free (Score:2)
By his past actions with other political leaders he's not likely to have done it for free and will come and collect.
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Many major news networks gave him a lot of coverage, not just Fox. CNN in particular covered him extensively.
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Genius is a strong word, by which I mean an incorrect one. But it is a clever strategy, which he stumbled upon quite conveniently. If he were the first big personality to discover Twitter, that would have been one thing. This is another thing.
Probably an actual genius (Score:3)
Genius is a strong word, by which I mean an incorrect one. But it is a clever strategy, which he stumbled upon quite conveniently. If he were the first big personality to discover Twitter, that would have been one thing. This is another thing.
Genius is probably accurate.
No one knows with any certainty, but there were studies during the election about who was smarter. Trump came out somewhere North of 150 in estimated intelligence, as did Hillary Clinton. Both candidates were rated at roughly the same level based on their achievements, scholarship, and writing ability (Trump has a Bachelor of Science).
Calling him any sort of stupid is belied by the fact that he is a self-made billionaire, successful reality TV star, and the current president of t
Re:Probably an actual genius (Score:4, Insightful)
Calling him any sort of stupid is belied by the fact that he is a self-made billionaire, successful reality TV star
A self-reported billionaire, who started up with a "small loan" from his father, that has a track record of enriching himself by not upholding his part of contracts and screwing over his contractors. For the second part of your statement, do you also consider the Kardashians to be Mensa-grade?
Re:The Genius of Trump’s Tweets (Score:4, Insightful)
But it is a clever strategy
It's also an amoral strategy..
which he stumbled upon quite conveniently
Manipulating the feeble-minded has always been his business model; it's no accident he uses tricks like these.
Just look at his university and other businesses. He even owned a casino at one point.
mostly unintentional (Score:2, Informative)
As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.
On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House
will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.
~H.L. Mencken
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*sigh*
Your Trump-bashing is laudable, but could you at least get the quote correct?
"All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
~H.L. Mencken
You should probably also admit that Mencken was deeply predjudiced, even for his time.
"I admit freely enough that, by careful breeding, supervision of environment and education, extending over many generations, it might be possible to make an appreciable improvement in the stock of the American negro, for example, but I must maintain that this enterprise would be a ridiculous waste of energy, for there is a high-caste white stock ready at hand, and it is inconceivable that the negro stock, however carefully it might be nurtured, could ever even remotely approach it. The educated negro of today is a failure, not because he meets insuperable difficulties in life, but because he is a negro. He is, in brief, a low-caste man, to the manner born, and he will remain inert and inefficient until fifty generations of him have lived in civilization. And even then, the superior white race will be fifty generations ahead of him."
~H.L. Mencken
Re: mostly unintentional (Score:2)
Why? It's completely irrelevant to the point.
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Isn't a funny that Assange got called an attention seeking media whore by about half of the people here for doing something similar a couple of times instead of nearly every single day.
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The media is failing out democracies. A similar thing happened in the UK recently. The media largely ignored Jeremy Corbyn until they were forced to pay attention when an election was called. From that moment on he became wildly popular and make up a 25 point deficit in the polls.
The person they were listening to, Theresa May, turned out to be some kind of robot that was only pre-programmed with a few simple phrases and she quickly became unpopular and disliked once people were able to see that. Previously
Trump's effective (Score:4)
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because he's the only populist. Everyone else is either like the Republicans and busy telling us why we can't have nice things (austerity) or the Dems and just shouting about how bad the other side is because they're in deep with the same mega corps that bought off the Right. There's an itty bitty tinsy tiny group that rally around Bernie Sanders and that's about it. So when Trump started saying things like healthcare for all and good jobs and education folks rallied around him because, hey, whatdayagot to lose?
Trump is not a populist. He is a con man, pure and simple. I'm not sure he cares about much but winning, not even what he wins. Bernie had a fair amount of support. Trump is technically correct in that he didn't really quite get a completely fair shot, but then Trump said that, not to be fair, but to attack Hillary and all the rest. As far as Trump's healthcare for all and what do you have to lose, well 22 million people could find out soon.
Simply put, the republicans demonized Obamacare beyond all rea
Re:Trump's effective (Score:4, Informative)
Under Obamacare my premiums have gone through the roof. Two years ago, if I would have been able to afford it, my premiums would have been $257/month with a $3500 deductible. That is basically $6600/yr. On top of that my medications would have cost me another $500/month over and above the copays and what the insurance would cover. That is $12,600/yr on less than $25,000/yr income. I'm disabled if you want to know the reason for the low income.
This year, if I had actually puchased a plan my monthly payment would have been $450/month, with a $6000/yr deductible. Add to that the costs of my medications over and above the copays and insurance coverage of $600/month and it comes to a right tidy percentage of our yearly income. Our yearly costs would have been a minimum of $18,600. That doesn't cost any possible hospitalization costs or what I have to pay for specialists visits which have a copay of $100/visit. I'm supposed to buy that on a total income of less than $30000/yr. In fact, the government will fine me for not having spent 62% of our total income on health insurance premiums, deductibles, and copays.
Let's look at single payer insurance. California has 39 million residents. They figured single payer costs of $400 billion/yr. That is twice California's current total yearly revenue.
Let's just say Caliifornia has 40 milllion residents to make a nice round number. And let's figure that the US has 320 million citizens. One is over estimated slightly and the other under estimated slightly. That makes the California population 1/8 of the US population. That means that a conservative estimate of single payer insurance costs for the entire us to $3.2 trillion dollars. That's approximately 75% of current total federal government spending.
Since the federal government already borrows $4 out of ever $10 it spends just where do you see the money to pay for a single payer system coming from? And just how sustainable are the federal government's current spending habits, let alone with a 75% increase in federal spending?
Also, do you understand that the current published federal debt of around $20 trillion is peanuts compared to what it owes in unfunded liabilities such as pension plans, future payments for current entitlement programs, etc...? In 2010 our unfunded liabilities were around $120-$140 trillion. Meaning if the feds had cut spending enough to begin paying that down at $1 trillion/yr it would have taken us well over a century to pay our debts? Our current unfunded liabilities have been estimated in the $200 trillion range. In other words paying them off with a federal budget that is $1 trillion in the black ever year would take us two centuries to pay the debt.
The US is flat out bankrupt.
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less than $25,000/yr income. I'm disabled if you want to know the reason for the low income.
$25k/yr is around the median personal income (double it for the average two-person household to get the median household income of around $50k), so if you're pulling that all by yourself and not splitting it with the statistically probable one other person in your household, that's not statistically very low.
(Compared to cost of living it is, certainly, but that's just because almost everybody is shit poor compared to cost of living).
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I'm married. My wife lost her job a few years back due to the badly slumping economy and hasn't been able to find a job that pays anything close to what she used to make. She makes less than 50% of her former salary.
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LOL. Am I old? Yup. No doubt about it. I've seen a lot of water go under the bridge. However, my situation isn't my gripe. My gripe is what is being done to this great nation of ours, how it is being torn apart at the seams.
The economy is doing great? Really? shadowstats.com proves we have 22% unemployment, 10% inflation, and have been in a contracting, not expanding, economy since 2001. Yup. A very good economy. Or do you just accept at face value everything the government tells you? You know,
Re:Trump's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's look at single payer insurance. California has 39 million residents. They figured single payer costs of $400 billion/yr. That is twice California's current total yearly revenue.
For reference - the UK NHS budget is £120m [kingsfund.org.uk] (USD$153m) for 65m people.
I can definitely see a US single payer programme costing way more per capita for many years (possibly decades) as the "old way of doing things" is unwound though.
Since the federal government already borrows $4 out of ever $10 it spends just where do you see the money to pay for a single payer system coming from?
I mean the obvious place is from the budget of the Department of Defense, right?! Most of the Americans I know (I lived in Ohio for two years) would happily stop exporting shrapnel and high explosives to the middle east if it meant they could get more efficient healthcare services.
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That's good value - $2 per person per year!
I think you meant £120 billion, not million.
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Shit! I did. I got frustrated trying to get the pound symbol working on Slashdot and ended up editing it a bunch of times before finally giving up.
Please mod parent up - I wasn't trying to dissemble, 120m is obviously way way way too small.
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Or the pockets of billionaires.
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You could take every penny every billionaire in the US has and it wouldn't make a dent in our debt. Anyone who really believes this idea that taxing the rich will solve our financial woes is pretty much living in fantasy land.
You add up all the wealth of all the billionaires in the US and what do you have? $100 billion? That isn't even a tiny patch on our debt, or our yearly spending. We spend 3-400 times that in federal spending every year. Trump's proposed budget is $4.2 trillion including both discr
WRONG UNITS - should be £120b (Score:2)
I screwed up the amount; it was supposed to be £120b per the linked reference. That'll teach me to try to battle Slashdot's unicode support with the pound sign.
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Let's look at single payer insurance. California has 39 million residents. They figured single payer costs of $400 billion/yr. That is twice California's current total yearly revenue.
For reference - the UK NHS budget is £120m [kingsfund.org.uk] (USD$153m) for 65m people.
Wow, healthcare for $2 per person per year? That figure cannot be correct. I suspect you need to multiply those numbers by 1000, and even then I'll bet that's not the full cost. £120B would make sense for operational expenses (salaries, supplies, etc.), with capital expenditures (buildings, durable equipment, etc.) accounted for separately.
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Yep I typo'ed, sorry :( See my other comments but the correct figure (in the link) is 120b.
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Well, if you cut 100% of the defense budget and applied it to the costs of single payer health care there would still be, conservatively, $2.6 trillion over and above current federal spending and we would still be borrowing far more than 4 out of ever 10 dollars the federal government spends. The numbers don't lie. It isn't economically feasible.
And, to tell the truth, I think Britain's health care system is lousy. Surgeons going to lunch with an anesthetized patient still lying on the operating table, n
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The problem is that healthcare is too expensive in the US. In other countries the costs are kept much lower, and government run insurance schemes that don't seek to make a profit help too.
Subsidies? (Score:5, Informative)
Why aren't you taking advantage of the subsidy? You're earning under 200% of the federal poverty level for a household of two, so you should qualify for a subsidy equal to whatever it takes to reduce the second cheapest silver plan to 6.3% of your income. (Yes, there is still the matter of deductibles and copayments, but at least the premiums would be much more reasonable at around $150/month.)
Better still, in some states you should qualify for Medicaid on the basis of being disabled. I take it your state is not one of those?
Re:Trump's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not accepting your numbers for US single payer insurance costs, which were no doubt pulled out of some biased right wing article you found. I also hate to break this to you, but single payer insurance is inevitable. It's the only thing that can ever bring costs down other than providing catastrophic only coverage that pays for nothing else, which would be a big problem for you. And even providing catastrophic only coverage is likely to see premiums go through the roof because the insurance companies will get less money that way in premiums, so they'll make it up by raising costs.
Your argument about the government paying pension plans is bogus because the US government back in the 1980s moved away from a pension plan system for federal employees and for over 30 years now all federal employees have had to have 401K plans. They have no choice.
Re:Trump's effective (Score:4, Insightful)
Personal anecdote, but my coverage through MassHealth is the best coverage I've ever had. Coverage and premiums vary tremendously from state to state. Compared to Mass, the ACA health care available in New Hampshire is a disaster, I hear. That's not the case in my neck of the woods.
Let's look at single payer insurance. California has 39 million residents. They figured single payer costs of $400 billion/yr. That is twice California's current total yearly revenue.
Well, duh. Our health care system is purely for-profit, which means taking advantage of sick people... people in duress who are desperate to get better and know that if they don't, they can't work and are basically fucked. No insurance plan will help if a US medical procedure costs 15-20 times as much as the same procedure in Germany. Most nations in the world have aggressive price control for their health care specifically to prevent profiteering. But here in the US, that's called punishing success, so of course we can't do that, and pharmaceutical companies rank among the most profitable companies in the world because it's a comfortable racket if you can get your foot in the door.
Sad!
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That isn't really the problem.
The government has so tied up business with regulation that it sucks trillions of dollars a year out of the economy. Since Obamacare went into effect the vast majority of jobs created have been part time and temporary jobs so the employer wouldn't get hit with the costs of Obamacare. The other problem is the QE that the Fed started under Obama. They have been printing over $80 billion/month and sending it straight to the stock market. One of the laws of economics is that th
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Doesn't everyone over 40 already know that?
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Apparently not. If they did they you wouldn't see all the Trump hating going on for they would realize that Trump is doing some good things. He is trying to restart our economy in an economically viable way. He is creating jobs, only it will take a while for all of this to show up. And he is doing it without big expenditures of our money.... You know, big "stimulus packages" that only create inflation because they are nothing more than printing money that has no basis other than more debt.
All that said
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So when Trump started saying things like healthcare for all and good jobs and education folks rallied around him because, hey, whatdayagot to lose?
I think you have Trump confused with Bernie. Trump told 'merica that he has a really great healthcare plan, the best. So good, in fact, even he isn't sure of the details - but it will be great! On jobs, Trump claimed he'd bring them back. He wasn't very clear on this one either; perhaps he meant reanimating the corpse of the late Steve Jobs. Maybe he wants to build one of those sarcophagus things [wikia.com] from Stargate SG1 [slate.com]. That would take care of healthcare and bringing back Jobs. Of course, there were also
Sorry, what I meant was (Score:3)
You Can Do Something About It (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, emotionally manipulative language is effective, but it doesn't have to be. Train yourself to look for it, and then choose to reject it. When you see someone appealing to your emotions instead of your reason, recognize what they're doing and call them out for it. That's especially true when they're saying things you agree with, because that's when you're most vulnerable to manipulation. We each have the responsibility to reject people who try to manipulate our emotions and tell them that's not acceptable. We also have the responsibility not to stoop to doing it ourselves. If your arguments are sound, they can stand on their own without emotionally manipulative language. If you find you can't make your arguments sound convincing without it, that's a pretty good clue there's something wrong with them.
Re:You Can Do Something About It (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, emotionally manipulative language is effective, but it doesn't have to be. Train yourself to look for it, and then choose to reject it. When you see someone appealing to your emotions instead of your reason, recognize what they're doing and call them out for it.
They ought to be teaching this to school kids.
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Yes, emotionally manipulative language is effective, but it doesn't have to be. Train yourself to look for it, and then choose to reject it. When you see someone appealing to your emotions instead of your reason, recognize what they're doing and call them out for it.
They ought to be teaching this to school kids.
Right on! They should teach this right alongside money management and debt which is also missing from the school system oddly.
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Oddly?
It's by design. Don't think so? Try to work with your local public school officials to make it part of the curriculum. Take copious notes and record conversations and meetings so you have data to write a book and your time won't be a total waste.
Want to be really sick? Talk to a private school about it and compare the responses.
It sounds you already are familiar with the "data" otherwise you wouldn't know the details about the means to collect it. Why don't you just share the data you are already aware of and your interpretation of the findings?
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Train yourself to look for it, and then choose to reject it.
But Right-Wingers won't do it. Sad!
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Yes, emotionally manipulative language is effective, but it doesn't have to be. Train yourself to look for it, and then choose to reject it. When you see someone appealing to your emotions instead of your reason, recognize what they're doing and call them out for it.
Better yet, learn the mechanics of it and out-play your opponent strategically at every turn without them knowing you're doing it until they are frustrated to no end. Nothing produces more butt hurt than that. It's quite satisfying too.
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Depends what your goal is. If you're trying to "beat" your "enemy" by any means necessary, preferably causing them pain along the way, that might work. Unless it turns out they're better at it than you. But if you're more interested in promoting rationality, encouraging intelligent discourse, and getting people to work together to solve problems, that's not a very good strategy.
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Depends what your goal is. If you're trying to "beat" your "enemy" by any means necessary, preferably causing them pain along the way, that might work. Unless it turns out they're better at it than you. But if you're more interested in promoting rationality, encouraging intelligent discourse, and getting people to work together to solve problems, that's not a very good strategy.
I appreciate your sentiment, it doesn't make it any less wishful thinking. Rational discourse only works if all parties involved are engaged solely in rational discourse as a means for conflict resolution. If another player in the game is not engaged in rational discourse they will take advantage of the other players solely relying on rational discourse. The rational discourse exclusive players are assuming this sort of ideological high ground but they tend to get demolished by refusing to engage in the
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If your arguments are sound, they can stand on their own without emotionally manipulative language.
They'll stand on their own and not do anything. If you want to actually persuade people you need to connect to emotion. Psychologists have known for decades that people decide in seconds based on emotion, then find reasons to justify their decisions to themselves.
The only time pure reason wins is when you have no emotional investment. For instance choosing the right hard drive upgrade: What's the capacity, performance and price? That's all you need to know. But choosing a car? Most people (in America at lea
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If you want to actually persuade people you need to connect to emotion.
The only thing I'm trying to persuade people of is to be more rational and reject arguments based on emotion. If I tried to do that by manipulating their emotions, I would already have failed before I even started. Sure, emotional manipulation is effective. I also view it as very destructive. And we can learn to be more rational. But you aren't going to even try unless you view rationality as a good in itself, not just as a tool to be used or discarded at your convenience.
The idiots who wrote this study... (Score:2)
Effective? (Score:2)
But are they effective? I suppose it depends on what the aim is - the way I read it, the study shows that they are only effective if he wants to sow discord and create division - his supporters become a bit more sycophantic, the rest of us are sickened even more. But didn't he talk about uniting all Americans and making America great again? Division only diminishes the nation.
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Effective! (Score:2)
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Yes because there are no stupid democrats anywhere, and I forgot that every democratic president has been a perfect Saint and has done no wrong. This my team go shit is getting sickening. It WILL be the demise of the United States of America. Mark my words.
Some explanation is needed (Score:2)
Can someone please tell me who this Trump guy is, why he's important and WTF are "tweets"?
Thank you.
Bad data set (Score:3)
Trump's tweets are so "effective" because he was running for and then held the most powerful office on the planet and he is totally incompetent in every way except for media manipulation. And even there he routinely shoots himself into the foot.
The very fact that he is anywhere near this office much less in it is totally appalling to anyone who has the slightest familiarity with the facts. That group will re-tweet because of the seriousness of the consequences of the election are quite real to them. Add to that his base that loves him will retweet him no matter what. The "effectiveness" has little to do with the structure of his utterances.
Comparing this to anything else for any purpose other than point out how outrageous it is is meaningless.
This is how sociopathy works (Score:2)
Take a tip from Mr. Paul Anka.. (Score:2)
Just Don't Look [youtube.com]
This whole "it's a train wreck, I just can't look away" or "I want to see what he'll say next" argument is growing more and more pathetic.
Emotions trump reason. Sad. (Score:2)
And one of the things I hate most about Trump is that he's now doing the same for what should have been the conservative side.
But we have only ourselves to blame, don't we? We keep rewarding these idiots for their fallacious reasoning and their appeals to emotion rather than rewarding princi
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Re:That's not a style (Score:5, Insightful)
Because part of the study was measuring the rate of spread among people with the same and opposite political views to the tweeter using the moral-emotional language, so tweets about divisive topics make perfect candidates as there are clearly identifiable sides.
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The majority of the world is clearly against it while those who are for it are dying out and on the way to the genetic dumpster due to negative birth rates.
[citation needed]
(And just so you know... I've already one handy that says you're wrong.)
Re: That's not a style (Score:2, Funny)
Government represents the people in theory only. It's not a valid source of statistics. By your logic, 25 million North Koreans support killing their uncles.
Re: That's not a style (Score:2)
Re:That's not a style (Score:5, Funny)
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"Defending" is such a nice word until you look at what activities are hidden behind it.
Setting on fire the limo owned by Muhammad Ashraf, a muslim immigrant running a limo rental service. Wounding Luis Villarroel, a mexican immigrant, driver of that limo, with shards of broken windows. All in the name of defending immigrants from Trump.
Look, Soviet Russia was "only defending" other countries from the capitalist oppression too. It's just a narrative.
Honest minorities people behind #notyourshield during gamer
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Tweets are less invasive, because I never see them unless I go to Trump's twitter page. Or CNN. Or ABC. Or Foxnews. Or Slashdot. Or...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand where fair an balanced comes from. It's a bunch of BS. Trump commits a new atrocity ever day of the week, but for some reason we have to trawl the bottom of the barrel to find a Democrat snafu to keep it fair. Oh hey guyz, remember that tiem dat Obummer wore tennis shoes and dress pants. OMG so unprofessional. Fair an balanced is how we end up with morons like Alex Jones getting air time. The guy should be sitting in a padded cell, not making six figures telling people there's a chi