BRAD PARSCALE -- TRUMP'S BRAIN
From this week's The New Yorker, "#Winning by Andrew MarantzMichael Bloomberg's getting behind Joe Biden is made all the more momentous by the digital war Democrats will be forever up against.
This New Yorker article is long, so if you prefer to skip the bio and history of Parscale's becoming Trump's brain, start at the fourth text break that begins "If Aaron Sorkin ever writes a sequel to "The Social Network"..."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/09/the-man-behind-trumps-facebook-juggernaut
We have almost two hundred and fifteen million hard-I.D. voter records in our database now, Parscale claimed last year, although his definition of hard I.D. is not clear. Even if Trump were banned from every social network, his campaign would be able to reach supporters by text. According to Parscale, the campaign is on track to send almost a billion texts, the most in historyand texts are far more likely to be opened than e-mails, social-media posts, or news articles. Weve been working on this around the clock for three years, a senior official who works on the 2020 digital campaign told me.
Recently, the campaign paid more than a dozen Instagram influencers, including TankSinatra, FuckJerry, and MoistBuddha, to run pro-Bloomberg sponsored content. Viral stunts like this come at a cost, both in dollars and in personal dignity; and it isnt clear whether the Instagram ads, which winkingly portray the candidate as a stiff plutocrat interested in buying an election, will appeal to the target demographic. But the Bloomberg campaign is an interesting test case: if enough well-placed memes can turn a mediocre hair product or a boring pop song into a hit, then why not a Presidential candidate?
Some of the public anxiety over Facebook is a response to how easily it can be abused, but much of that anxiety is about the outcomes the platform yields when its working as designed. Even leaving aside the Cambridge Analytica data breach and the allegations of foreign interferenceeven if nobody had ever violated any platforms terms of servicemany of the fundamental problems of social media still remain. Creepy surveillance, dissolution of civic norms, widening unease, infectious rage, a tilt toward autocracy in several formerly placid liberal democraciesthese are starting to seem like inherent features, not bugs.
The real scandal is not that the system can be breached; the real scandal is the system itself. In a sense, its almost comforting to imagine that the only bad actors on social media are Russian state assets, clickbait profiteers, and rogue political consultants who violate the law. If that were the extent of the problem, the problem could surely be contained. ?
LaurenOlimina
(1,165 posts)Just trim Bernie off the end and repeat for every bad call Joe has made. I have no idea how to get ahead of it.
ancianita
(36,030 posts)LaurenOlimina
(1,165 posts)The smear could be that "Joe is a closet hermaphrodite." And then the media will pick up the story about the hermaphrodite, and then the story will be "why won't joe admit he's a hermaphrodite?" and then when he issues a denial it's "What does he have against hermaphrodites?" And while the whole world is yelling about his spare ladyparts we'll all be like, "Huh?" And then the debate becomes about the junk in Joe's trunk and not healthcare, y'know.
I'm afraid it won't be anything tethered to reality.
ancianita
(36,030 posts)tried to get UKRAINE to make it.
Let's not even wonder. Better to ALWAYS be a wrong pessimist than a wrong optimist when it comes to politics. Or anything, in my book.
Politicub
(12,165 posts)When the history of this time is written, hell be on the short-list of people responsible for normalizing right-wing nationalism and promoting the destruction of American democracy.
I think of him as a sociopathic propagandist.
ancianita
(36,030 posts)commercial ad buy people talk about him.
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)The Rethugs started tracking and gathering of their followers and likely followers back in the mid 70's . When I had one of their Data Collection Firms as a Client in the mid Nineties,their data center was a maze of servers and printers and fax machines and make shift Video Studios.
We as Dems,had zip. Still a pencil and note pad operation.
ancianita
(36,030 posts)Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)Because of the Nature of my Business Sales and Services,I was able to see and hear conversations as well as observe .
BTW,the company was run as a Advertising Agency.
ancianita
(36,030 posts)I can ask my son (in the IT business) about this. He's got friends there.
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)and knowing how Office Rentals work,they most likely moved to a more affluent and upscale Business Campus. At that time,their Building was considered class C Rental.