Hopium & Copium: The Great Social Media Distortion Filter

Okay, this going to seem like a tangent, but stick with me, because it's part of a larger point I think is worth making.

I never left Twitter. Some people I know did, but I sort of stuck around to see what would happen and when I didn't see an appreciable decline in the quality of the septic tank fire that it always had been, I shrugged and kept going. On impulse a few weeks back, I downloaded the Threads app, because I find the Threads web interface incredibly clunky and MAN OH MAN is Threads so much better on the app. But I've been running them side by side for a few weeks now and I'm starting to see what people are talking about when it comes to the declining usefulness of Twitter.

Now, it's not all bad. Full credit to Elon, Community Notes was a brilliant and much-needed feature that honestly, more social media platforms should copy-- and it should be a lot more widely used than it is on Twitter. But man... it's getting rough. Either my algorithm is breaking down or it's just so many bots and so many troll accounts and so much noise. 

However, Threads, while not as toxic as Twitter, suffers from the same problem. There's a lot of noise there too, it's just a different kind of noise. And while my algorithm there tends to push topics that I want to see more of and not just repeated bot noise, there's still noise. (You know how many times I've seen competing genres of the same Tweet? "The latest polls are bad for Trump. There's full-blown panic in the Trump Campaign." *scroll scroll scroll* "The latest polls are bad for Kamala. There's full-blown panic in the Harris Campaign.")

The point is this: if you scroll Twitter you can find yourself very convinced of one thing (the Right has been muttering about yet another story about Walz that's 'going to be very, very bad for him', but I've yet to see anything) and on Threads, you will find yourself convinced that the latest mountain of legalese filed by Jack Smith on the Immunity Case is finally going to be what gets Trump once and for all. ("We've got him this time, guys! Really!") But here's the big picture: someone is going to wind up being very, very, wrong about all of this and at this point, I have no idea which side it's going to be.

I don't know if the Debate moved the needle all that much. I think it might have pushed undecideds (if there are any left) towards Harris because of the two candidates, she came across as the least crazy and more normal of the two. Trump's problem remains his inability to put a period on the end of a sentence. He left points out on the field because instead of just making the point, he kept going and going and going and "They're EATING THE DOGS!" became the soundbite of the night.

Do I think the debate was "rigged" for Kamala? No. Much like in sports, if you're complaining about the refs, it's because your team is losing. Do I think the moderators could have and should have pushed her a little harder on a few things? Absolutely-- a follow-up on the 'evolution' of her policy positions ('flip-flopping' if you prefer) could have been to her benefit. But she also answered that question. She did so in a fairly normie politician kind of way (talk about values, say the words 'middle class' a bunch of times, sprinkle in some biography and personal struggle and then at the very end kind of sort of answer the question.) But on balance, I think she did what she needed to do (be not crazy, old and project competence to the American people) and he did not.

I'm going to solidify this take and make it official: this will come down to the ground game and if that's the case, then I would say advantage Harris, no matter what the electoral forecast looks like. 

But do I trust anything I see on social right now? Not really. There's a lot of sound and fury signifying (probably) not much of anything at all. If an October Surprise materializes, we can talk about that when it happens, but for right now, all I'm left with is, let's get this over with, because man, do I want to vote.

I still have no idea what's going to happen. A lot of states have just not had reliable polling in a very long time-- like before Biden dropped out. There are emerging indications that there have been some double-digit swings away from Trump in places like West Virginia and Oklahoma. I don't think that puts either of those states in play by any stretch of the imagination, but if Trump goes from winning a state by 27 points to winning by 12, should that result replicate, I don't think that bodes well for him.

I worry about Virginia. Democrats don't seem to be that worried about it as NoVa is probably where the center of gravity in that state is these days, but I do worry about it. Youngkin (who would have been a far better VP choice for Trump and a far better top-of-the-ticket choice for the GOP) is not cut from the same cloth as Trump. I think he's more MAGA-adjacent than anything else. If there is an unpleasant surprise on election night for Democrats, it might be here. 

I think North Carolina is gettable for Harris. (MAGA, much like the Tea Party is absolutely horrific at candidate selection.) 

I am curious about Florida. (They've got bigger fish to fry than the election right now. Stay safe, Floridians!) But: I'm not convinced about Florida being in play yet-- there seems to be a lot of wishcasting/manifesting on social about that these days. We'll see.

Texas might well flip. But it's firmly in the category of "I will believe it when I see it." And to me, I'd need to be convinced of something before I buy into that idea. It's 'irrational exuberance' for Dems. "We can flip Texas this time, you guys. For real!"

No idea what Nevada and Arizona are going to do. 

I do not think Trump was in New York because he thinks he can flip the state. I think he might like to believe that, but I think it was some down-ballot love for Long Islands/Upstate Republicans whose seats could decide control of the House.

Iowa: the assignment here is simple. Elect more Democrats. If they can pull that off, I'll be okay with it. If they can break the GOP Trifecta (please, God, please) I will be overjoyed. If Iowa flips? I might be popping champagne on November 6th.

I have no idea what the heck is going to happen. I think there is reason for optimism for the Harris Campaign, but The Great Social Media Distortion Filter means that discerning what's real, what's fake and what's out of this world bugnuts crazy is proving to be incredibly hard to do. Both campaigns project images of the wind at their backs and trouble ahead of their opponents. When the dust settles, one side of this mess is going to be very, very, wrong.

Touch grass, y'all.