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red_pepper wrote

It's amazing what you can do with a dozen guys and a few million dollars. Either Russia has the most effective election manipulation machine on Earth, or American election spending is actually just a bunch of bloat. I'm inclined to think it's the second option. Spending has gone up rapidly but campaigns haven't really changed that much; I don't know if it's administration costs or money laundering or what, but it seems like a bunch of campaign money just goes down the drain.

Either way, I take this to mean the massive budgets of the campaigns shouldn't intimidate us.

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WindTalk OP wrote (edited )

I take this to mean the massive budgets of the campaigns shouldn't intimidate us.

Which religion do you believe or disbelieve? As people can be incredibly loyal to the symbols of their childhood. The cost of them isn't nearly as important as the repetition. And religions of the past didn't have electronic duplicate. The brain hasn't changed (evolution) in the past 100 years, what's changed is media.

When people admire massive media efforts that are centered on cosmetic patterns, we should all worry. As all it takes is standing in the cosmetic spot. Just pattern-matching images and verbal patterns. The lust for CGI patterns. Twitter was created by millions of technologist-minded people: once the social pattern of concentrated power emerged, people stepped into it.

I take this to mean the massive budgets of the campaigns shouldn't intimidate us.

Twitter was created by millions of technologist-minded people: once the social pattern of concentrated power emerged, people stepped into it. Once the group-popular mental real-estate is recognized, the real-estate investors step in to "invest in the future" of audience platform.

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