TWO nights ago (Wednesday, so early morning Wednesday in the US, as I live in the future), I watched a short video on David Pakman’s YouTube channel, in which he expressed profound alarm – was rather frantic, actually – at having woken up the morning after the election to discover that he had lost about 5,000 subscribers. He said that he contacted a few other commentators in that ecosystem – mentioned Farron Cousins, Jesse Dollemore, and a few others – and that everyone had experienced the same sudden exodus of subscribers, both the free ones on YouTube and paid subscribers.
The essential message was, “Please don’t abandon us,” because doing so would cede the space to the right-wingers, due to the way algorithms work; the liberal pundits’ channels would be derated because a drop in subscriber numbers tells the algorithm that the content is not as interesting to the users. I understand that; algorithms in social media are one of the worst things Mankind has ever invented, and they are brutal.
On a broader scale, the implication of so many people “tuning out,” so to speak, is that people on the left are giving up on participating in the political process altogether. That is bad, of course, because you can’t win a battle you don’t even show up for.
I’m going to make a couple of comments that are going to sound extremely harsh, but I hope they are taken in the spirit of constructive criticism.
First of all, I think the most-often expressed sentiment by the people who commented on that video – various versions of “we are mentally and spiritually exhausted” – is a completely understandable human reaction, and needs to be given its space. It has been more than 9 years of hearing this asshole’s name every goddamn day, and 2 years of this presidential campaign alone. People need to rest just from all of that, and most of us aren’t ready to embrace the reality that there is going to be 4 more years of this, and the very good chance that it will never end. We can’t take any more, at least not right now, and unfortunately, the same algorithm that punishes you punishes us, too; if we don’t unsubscribe, that which we desperately need to tune out for a while continues to be pushed at us.
Second, and this is the really harsh part, but all of you within the liberal media need to address the catastrophic damage to your credibility from the events of this past week. You were not just wrong, you were a spectacular amount of wrong, and the least any of your departed audience must be feeling is terribly let down.
You guys are an echo chamber, and you know it...otherwise, you wouldn’t have already accepted without challenge the “liberal media” tag. And for those of you who may actually be laboring under the pretense that you’re somehow providing a valuable source of substantial information for the benefit of increasing the knowledge of those who haven’t made up their minds which side to take, stop it. No one needs you to tell us that Donald Trump is a vicious asshat surrounded by comic-book villains; your audience comes to you because we already know that. Or have formed that belief; that’s probably a better way to put it, because the belief that Trump is not a vicious asshat is what drives the right-wing echo chamber’s audience to them.
It’s perfectly okay to be an echo chamber, that’s what people want; we want our feeling that we are on the right side of things confirmed. And most of us are smart enough to need that confirmation to be based on evidence and a rational interpretation of events. And you got it very, very wrong. Not intentionally, I am sure, and I am sure that every one of you feels just as personally crushed by the turn of events as every one of us in subscriber-land. But please understand that, for us, it is a natural thought that “I might not be feeling this way if I hadn’t listened to them,” and that putting our trust in you, risking feeling that way again, is a big ask.
So what now? Take the L, try to figure out where you went wrong, where your blind spots are, what you missed, and try to do a better job. What else can you do? If it’s any consolation to you, I think it’ll be easier now that the contest has been decided. I hope so.
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