Oh my god. I do this all the time. I think it's because it feels vulnerable to just like things? What if someone tries it out, and they get frustrated by something bad, and then they judge you???
If someone has the opinion "kamala harris is overall quite bad, but you should vote for her anyway", this is how they would express it. You seem to be under the impression that they like Kamala, but are hiding this for social reasons. What if they just don't like her?
And yeah, they didn't mention all the good things you mentioned, but they also didn't list the bad things she endorses. For example, the continuing funding of the horrific war in Gaza, which is the main thing that people on the left cite as a reason for not voting. I think this is dumb because trump is worse on this and most other issues: which is the point she is making in the post.
> If someone has the opinion "kamala harris is overall quite bad, but you should vote for her anyway", this is how they would express it. You seem to be under the impression that they like Kamala, but are hiding this for social reasons. What if they just don't like her?
Yeah, interesting. Here's a few things we could be saying here:
- People who don't like Kamala should consider liking her instead, based on object-level considerations,
- People who don't like Kamala should still be able to talk about her positive attributes, even if they're outweighed by negative attributes,
- People who *do* like Kamala (like Ozy) feel social pressure not to say so, or not to express it in certain ways, and this (along with a broader social phenomenon that applies to more than just this presidential candidate) is a bad thing that we should try to change.
Maybe I read this post as being a little of all three things but especially the last one?
> A friend complained to me a while back, “no one is ever straightforwardly happy about anything. They always have to acknowledge that it’s bad somehow.”
This is a really fascinating observation, because I don't get the same vibe in my social circles. I'm a nice upper middle class liberal on the East Coast, lol, and I can longer deny that I'm middle aged. And, like, only a few tedious people constantly trash their faves as "problematic"?
Sure, we get people who half-jokingly admit they enjoyed something brainless. Or some people are little self-conscious about showing too much enthusiasm for anything, because we're Gen X and we still like to appear a little jaded.
But that Tumblr "everything is problematic, let me disclaim it" attitude was briefly popular from maybe 2016 to 2020. Now, you still see it, but only from a handful of people who are 5 years behind the fashion.
Now, all the nice middle class liberals are busy sighing, "So, I guess half the country really would be OK with a 'dictator on day one', with a 'day of violence', and with Trump using the military against 'radical left lunatics'. Which apparently includes Pelosi, if you go by his other speeches. Which, you know, Pelosi is pretty centrist." I mean, we all read those methodologically dubious studies back in the day that claimed the average person would go along with any atrocity proposed by an authority figure, so I guess it's plausible half the public is OK with this? And so here we are.
I'm really pretty enthusiastic about Harris. And the swing states are well within the usual range of polling error, so who the hell knows it we're going to get a cheerful normie Democratic president, or the guy who dances badly at town halls and who claims Kamala Harris wants to ban cows.
I think I agree with you at the high abstraction level and I think you're right about why (outrage generates XP points in the gossip trap game, so people are effectively chasing it themselves on the one hand and scared of being a subject to on the other).
But I'm not sure I agree on the specifics.
I think the assumption in "lesser evil" content is precisely that they're FOR those who are choosing a lesser evil. They won't be persuaded by "KH good" arguments because if they were, they'd not need extra persuading at this stage? The Nagoski quote feels like a last ditch desperate attempt to nudge the "nope neither they're as bad as each other" population. That this is what an undecided swing voter is like is arguable. I don't know about American politics enough to judge this. But IF that's the target then it seems a reasonable strategy, not that different from "yes Clinton is bad but she's normal bad while Trump is extra out of the window of acceptable bad" argument people used in Trump Mk 0.0.
As to the "it never happens with art or pop entertainment": I think it does quite often, the perceived need to actively acknowledge the worthiness of the content or the identity/suffering based deservingness of the author before proceeding with a statement of dislike or a personal hatchet job. Or in a more subtle version, to acknowledge the popular appeal and craftsmanship before admitting to hating it.
I have a version of this with pretty much any rap/hip hop, for example. Barbie film. Any misery porn memoir I've come across. Almost all clearly feminist poetry and some prose fiction. And it's not that I object to the feminist ideology or even sentiments that drive those works: I support them. But I also find their treatment almost invariably grating and often just artistically crap, or outdated or super simplistic.
Undecided swing voters of course aren't like this at all; they almost definitionally have a mix of left-wing and right-wing opinions, and Nagoski's talking points are all left-wing. Everyone already knows that left-wing journalists favor Democrats over Republicans, so swing voters aren't going to find this persuasive.
The point I think you're maybe getting at is an argument about persuasion vs. turnout. There's a left-wing meme about how there are huge numbers of disaffected left-wing eligible voters who don't vote, and the outcome of elections depends primarily on getting them to show up and vote, rather than on persuading swing voters. (Sometimes people use this as an argument for lesser-evil messaging like Nagoski's, but more often they use it as an argument for moving to the left on policy à la Bernie Sanders.)
Matt Y has written a whole lot of columns about why this is wrong. In short, surveys consistently and convincingly show that nonvoters care a lot less about politics than consistent voters (which should really not have surprised anyone), and the political opinions they do have tend to be scattered and ideologically inconsistent (much like swing voters). Those with strong and ideologically consistent opinions are the highest-propensity voters; left-wingers unhappy about the state of politics may piss and moan about having to vote for the lesser evil, but in the end, they hold their noses and do it, because they know that doing the opposite only makes things worse. Also, just as a matter of math, persuading a swing voter is twice as effective as turning out an unlikely voter for your side. And increasing electoral turnout across the board now makes Democrats do worse, although that's a recent development.
Matt thinks that this meme persists in spite of its easy disprovability because it gives highly-engaged partisans the excuse to engage in messaging that makes them feel good about themselves and that their similarly-partisan friends will appreciate, instead of messaging that works but makes them feel uncomfortable. Also the turnout thing matches left-wing views of how politics ought to work.
I have my own pet theory which is not backed by any particular empirical evidence, which is that angry ideologues are engaging in the typical mind fallacy. They're aware that turnout is lower among younger people than older people (which is true, and better-publicized than the above statistics about ideology, or at least was when I was young). Being mostly young themselves, they ask themselves what would prevent *them* from turning out. The obvious answer to that is, "if I got so fed up with being unable to get the political outcomes I really want, and always having to vote for the lesser evil, that I gave up in disgust", and so they figure that's what's going on with lower youth turnout and so they need to counter it with more ideological messaging/by promising to not just be another lizard. You can do a similar analysis about race (people of color also vote less); the considerations are more complicated but you can get to a similar conclusion if you're so inclined.
In short, while I agree that "yes Clinton is bad but she's normal bad while Trump is extra out of the window of acceptable bad" sounds a priori reasonable—I myself messaged my swing-state acquaintances with it in 2016, because I believed that it was the most important consideration—it's in fact a lot less persuasive to the people who actually need persuading than the highlight-the-nice-things-your-candidate-is-doing-that-normal-people-like approach that Ozy is taking here.
And yes I agree with your typical voter fallacy point entirely. This is now magnified by social media that SEEMS like populated by a cross section of a population but politically speaking it's still — naturally so — people much more than average interested in politics, which as we know, are not like a typical voter (more interested than a non voter but significantly less than anyone who talks politics regularly online).
And maybe it's possible that the undecideds genuinely don't KNOW those positive things that Ozy suggests should be communicated. It certainly won't do harm. Wishing the whole US luck in the election.
I think there is a very obvious reason why Dems in this election specifically constantly have to compare their own candidate to voting for "99% Hitler" (actual framing I have seen used independently multiple times, for both Biden and then Harris after he dropped out) to argue that people (certainly not "swing voters" in this context!) should vote for them, and it's just arguing in bad faith to ignore it.
Feel like this is more of a left of centre thing than a symmetrical thing? Maybe I don't see enough internal conservative media, but I've never seen anyone say "Yes Tump may be terrible for his crimes, and an idiot, but we need to stop America becoming a communist nation!" They seem much more happy to say Trump is great and his opponent is terrible
Not sure that you’re right that there is nothing you’re not supposed to like. I got some uncomfortable reactions when I told people I thought Black Panther was just OK. I guess I should of prefaced it with saying it was a historic moment for a Marvel movie to have a mostly black cast etc, etc
Biden wasn't my first choice in the primary elections four years ago, but I actually am very happy with the Biden administration in general, and I would have enthusiastically supported a second Biden term had he been ten years younger. Honestly, I haven't been more satisfied with a Presidential administration in my lifetime.
Thanks for this excellent article, Ozy! You've really identified one of the core problems in current discourse that I'm trying to push back on with The Weekly Anthropocene.
It's the old Christian game of "are you SURE your practice is true?" we used to play. Everything would get evaluated. The music you listened to, the books you read, everything had to be the right level of "Christian." And if it wasn't explicitly Christian-branded, there was always some hemming and hawing over how this is secular, but there's still a Message...ideological purity was more important than actually enjoying things.
Appreciated the talk about Lead poisoning. It's just as important as you say. Also there is a lot of new evidence that air quality makes huge differences in IQ and achievement. I'd like to see a Harris administration put HEPA filters in every school.
I feel like “it’s okay to have whatever feelings you want about things, as long as you have a balanced perspective on their good and bad points” has the same problems that you identify "it’s okay to like problematic things, as long as you acknowledge the ways that they’re problematic" as having.
My substack is way less negative than that but I tried to curate my Threads and it's just nonstop negativity. I'm not sure I've actually seen a positive Threads post.
>And—as far as I’ve seen—it never goes the other way
Which part? Because rightist do criticise others for not liking stuff. If you didnt like The Godfather than your obviously a commie who totally missed the point of faustian civilisation, says one online rightist to the other. But they dont do disclaimers because a) it wouldnt protect them and b) its what a cuck would do, which creates a new angle of attack.
* I do see SOME posts which criticise things and feel obliged to add a disclaimer. Eg. if I criticise a movie which has female representation, I do feel obliged to specify "I think it would have been worse if they forced the characters to be male, not better" because lots of readers online will round all opinions to "pro movie, pro representation" or "anti movie, anti representation". But I agree disclaimers on positive things are much more common
* Yeah, you make a very good point. It is impossibly hard to just be in favour of things.
* It is really hard to do though :( I don't like saying "this is really immoral but I'm going to ignore it because everyone does it". But if you take a principled stand on the top 5 most morally unambiguous issues, even if you only look at stopping them getting worse, you end up not able to support ANY candidate for anything. I don't know how much that is me getting more aware, and how much it's being influenced by internet absolutism
* A few specifics. I personally think that almost all American presidents will go on propping up Israel so regardless of how much you prioritise that, it's hard to vote based on it. In particular I think Trump is very unlikely to lead any better outcome, so I think not voting democrat is counterproductive. In theory, withholding votes should force democrats to care more. But in practice I think it's more likely to let Trump in. Especially because a lot of people still vote prioritising a pro Israel stance. I would prioritise protests over voting there.
* Some friends reliably avoid non-fair-trade chocolate. Some friends manage to avoid buying electronics from genocidal regions of china. I think those are obviously correct. But I can't cope with doing ALL of them, but I also feel bad I don't, even though I think picking as many issues as you can deal with is the only practical choice
I'm Canadian, so I'm going to focus on Point III.
Oh my god. I do this all the time. I think it's because it feels vulnerable to just like things? What if someone tries it out, and they get frustrated by something bad, and then they judge you???
I'll be more mindful about this.
If someone has the opinion "kamala harris is overall quite bad, but you should vote for her anyway", this is how they would express it. You seem to be under the impression that they like Kamala, but are hiding this for social reasons. What if they just don't like her?
And yeah, they didn't mention all the good things you mentioned, but they also didn't list the bad things she endorses. For example, the continuing funding of the horrific war in Gaza, which is the main thing that people on the left cite as a reason for not voting. I think this is dumb because trump is worse on this and most other issues: which is the point she is making in the post.
> If someone has the opinion "kamala harris is overall quite bad, but you should vote for her anyway", this is how they would express it. You seem to be under the impression that they like Kamala, but are hiding this for social reasons. What if they just don't like her?
Yeah, interesting. Here's a few things we could be saying here:
- People who don't like Kamala should consider liking her instead, based on object-level considerations,
- People who don't like Kamala should still be able to talk about her positive attributes, even if they're outweighed by negative attributes,
- People who *do* like Kamala (like Ozy) feel social pressure not to say so, or not to express it in certain ways, and this (along with a broader social phenomenon that applies to more than just this presidential candidate) is a bad thing that we should try to change.
Maybe I read this post as being a little of all three things but especially the last one?
> A friend complained to me a while back, “no one is ever straightforwardly happy about anything. They always have to acknowledge that it’s bad somehow.”
This is a really fascinating observation, because I don't get the same vibe in my social circles. I'm a nice upper middle class liberal on the East Coast, lol, and I can longer deny that I'm middle aged. And, like, only a few tedious people constantly trash their faves as "problematic"?
Sure, we get people who half-jokingly admit they enjoyed something brainless. Or some people are little self-conscious about showing too much enthusiasm for anything, because we're Gen X and we still like to appear a little jaded.
But that Tumblr "everything is problematic, let me disclaim it" attitude was briefly popular from maybe 2016 to 2020. Now, you still see it, but only from a handful of people who are 5 years behind the fashion.
Now, all the nice middle class liberals are busy sighing, "So, I guess half the country really would be OK with a 'dictator on day one', with a 'day of violence', and with Trump using the military against 'radical left lunatics'. Which apparently includes Pelosi, if you go by his other speeches. Which, you know, Pelosi is pretty centrist." I mean, we all read those methodologically dubious studies back in the day that claimed the average person would go along with any atrocity proposed by an authority figure, so I guess it's plausible half the public is OK with this? And so here we are.
I'm really pretty enthusiastic about Harris. And the swing states are well within the usual range of polling error, so who the hell knows it we're going to get a cheerful normie Democratic president, or the guy who dances badly at town halls and who claims Kamala Harris wants to ban cows.
Perhaps you are less online, it's definitely an Internet driven phenomena.
I used to be "extremely online" for this stuff, and it just made me miserable.
Avoid discorse addicts online and touching grass was an excellent life decision. Would do again, A+++.
If I could manage to be unironically optimistic, I would be. Too much cringe stigma.
I think I agree with you at the high abstraction level and I think you're right about why (outrage generates XP points in the gossip trap game, so people are effectively chasing it themselves on the one hand and scared of being a subject to on the other).
But I'm not sure I agree on the specifics.
I think the assumption in "lesser evil" content is precisely that they're FOR those who are choosing a lesser evil. They won't be persuaded by "KH good" arguments because if they were, they'd not need extra persuading at this stage? The Nagoski quote feels like a last ditch desperate attempt to nudge the "nope neither they're as bad as each other" population. That this is what an undecided swing voter is like is arguable. I don't know about American politics enough to judge this. But IF that's the target then it seems a reasonable strategy, not that different from "yes Clinton is bad but she's normal bad while Trump is extra out of the window of acceptable bad" argument people used in Trump Mk 0.0.
As to the "it never happens with art or pop entertainment": I think it does quite often, the perceived need to actively acknowledge the worthiness of the content or the identity/suffering based deservingness of the author before proceeding with a statement of dislike or a personal hatchet job. Or in a more subtle version, to acknowledge the popular appeal and craftsmanship before admitting to hating it.
I have a version of this with pretty much any rap/hip hop, for example. Barbie film. Any misery porn memoir I've come across. Almost all clearly feminist poetry and some prose fiction. And it's not that I object to the feminist ideology or even sentiments that drive those works: I support them. But I also find their treatment almost invariably grating and often just artistically crap, or outdated or super simplistic.
Undecided swing voters of course aren't like this at all; they almost definitionally have a mix of left-wing and right-wing opinions, and Nagoski's talking points are all left-wing. Everyone already knows that left-wing journalists favor Democrats over Republicans, so swing voters aren't going to find this persuasive.
The point I think you're maybe getting at is an argument about persuasion vs. turnout. There's a left-wing meme about how there are huge numbers of disaffected left-wing eligible voters who don't vote, and the outcome of elections depends primarily on getting them to show up and vote, rather than on persuading swing voters. (Sometimes people use this as an argument for lesser-evil messaging like Nagoski's, but more often they use it as an argument for moving to the left on policy à la Bernie Sanders.)
Matt Y has written a whole lot of columns about why this is wrong. In short, surveys consistently and convincingly show that nonvoters care a lot less about politics than consistent voters (which should really not have surprised anyone), and the political opinions they do have tend to be scattered and ideologically inconsistent (much like swing voters). Those with strong and ideologically consistent opinions are the highest-propensity voters; left-wingers unhappy about the state of politics may piss and moan about having to vote for the lesser evil, but in the end, they hold their noses and do it, because they know that doing the opposite only makes things worse. Also, just as a matter of math, persuading a swing voter is twice as effective as turning out an unlikely voter for your side. And increasing electoral turnout across the board now makes Democrats do worse, although that's a recent development.
Matt thinks that this meme persists in spite of its easy disprovability because it gives highly-engaged partisans the excuse to engage in messaging that makes them feel good about themselves and that their similarly-partisan friends will appreciate, instead of messaging that works but makes them feel uncomfortable. Also the turnout thing matches left-wing views of how politics ought to work.
I have my own pet theory which is not backed by any particular empirical evidence, which is that angry ideologues are engaging in the typical mind fallacy. They're aware that turnout is lower among younger people than older people (which is true, and better-publicized than the above statistics about ideology, or at least was when I was young). Being mostly young themselves, they ask themselves what would prevent *them* from turning out. The obvious answer to that is, "if I got so fed up with being unable to get the political outcomes I really want, and always having to vote for the lesser evil, that I gave up in disgust", and so they figure that's what's going on with lower youth turnout and so they need to counter it with more ideological messaging/by promising to not just be another lizard. You can do a similar analysis about race (people of color also vote less); the considerations are more complicated but you can get to a similar conclusion if you're so inclined.
In short, while I agree that "yes Clinton is bad but she's normal bad while Trump is extra out of the window of acceptable bad" sounds a priori reasonable—I myself messaged my swing-state acquaintances with it in 2016, because I believed that it was the most important consideration—it's in fact a lot less persuasive to the people who actually need persuading than the highlight-the-nice-things-your-candidate-is-doing-that-normal-people-like approach that Ozy is taking here.
I'm persuaded ;)
And yes I agree with your typical voter fallacy point entirely. This is now magnified by social media that SEEMS like populated by a cross section of a population but politically speaking it's still — naturally so — people much more than average interested in politics, which as we know, are not like a typical voter (more interested than a non voter but significantly less than anyone who talks politics regularly online).
And maybe it's possible that the undecideds genuinely don't KNOW those positive things that Ozy suggests should be communicated. It certainly won't do harm. Wishing the whole US luck in the election.
I think there is a very obvious reason why Dems in this election specifically constantly have to compare their own candidate to voting for "99% Hitler" (actual framing I have seen used independently multiple times, for both Biden and then Harris after he dropped out) to argue that people (certainly not "swing voters" in this context!) should vote for them, and it's just arguing in bad faith to ignore it.
Last I checked, Kamala didn't try to steal the election, so she has my vote.
And that's from a guy who's otherwise pretty right-wing (well, it's more complicated, but all your friends would hate me).
Feel like this is more of a left of centre thing than a symmetrical thing? Maybe I don't see enough internal conservative media, but I've never seen anyone say "Yes Tump may be terrible for his crimes, and an idiot, but we need to stop America becoming a communist nation!" They seem much more happy to say Trump is great and his opponent is terrible
Not sure that you’re right that there is nothing you’re not supposed to like. I got some uncomfortable reactions when I told people I thought Black Panther was just OK. I guess I should of prefaced it with saying it was a historic moment for a Marvel movie to have a mostly black cast etc, etc
Biden wasn't my first choice in the primary elections four years ago, but I actually am very happy with the Biden administration in general, and I would have enthusiastically supported a second Biden term had he been ten years younger. Honestly, I haven't been more satisfied with a Presidential administration in my lifetime.
Thanks for this excellent article, Ozy! You've really identified one of the core problems in current discourse that I'm trying to push back on with The Weekly Anthropocene.
It's the old Christian game of "are you SURE your practice is true?" we used to play. Everything would get evaluated. The music you listened to, the books you read, everything had to be the right level of "Christian." And if it wasn't explicitly Christian-branded, there was always some hemming and hawing over how this is secular, but there's still a Message...ideological purity was more important than actually enjoying things.
Appreciated the talk about Lead poisoning. It's just as important as you say. Also there is a lot of new evidence that air quality makes huge differences in IQ and achievement. I'd like to see a Harris administration put HEPA filters in every school.
I feel like “it’s okay to have whatever feelings you want about things, as long as you have a balanced perspective on their good and bad points” has the same problems that you identify "it’s okay to like problematic things, as long as you acknowledge the ways that they’re problematic" as having.
Can you find a single leader of a powerful nation who has not committed what progressives consider to be crimes against humanity?
My substack is way less negative than that but I tried to curate my Threads and it's just nonstop negativity. I'm not sure I've actually seen a positive Threads post.
>And—as far as I’ve seen—it never goes the other way
Which part? Because rightist do criticise others for not liking stuff. If you didnt like The Godfather than your obviously a commie who totally missed the point of faustian civilisation, says one online rightist to the other. But they dont do disclaimers because a) it wouldnt protect them and b) its what a cuck would do, which creates a new angle of attack.
* I do see SOME posts which criticise things and feel obliged to add a disclaimer. Eg. if I criticise a movie which has female representation, I do feel obliged to specify "I think it would have been worse if they forced the characters to be male, not better" because lots of readers online will round all opinions to "pro movie, pro representation" or "anti movie, anti representation". But I agree disclaimers on positive things are much more common
* Yeah, you make a very good point. It is impossibly hard to just be in favour of things.
* It is really hard to do though :( I don't like saying "this is really immoral but I'm going to ignore it because everyone does it". But if you take a principled stand on the top 5 most morally unambiguous issues, even if you only look at stopping them getting worse, you end up not able to support ANY candidate for anything. I don't know how much that is me getting more aware, and how much it's being influenced by internet absolutism
* A few specifics. I personally think that almost all American presidents will go on propping up Israel so regardless of how much you prioritise that, it's hard to vote based on it. In particular I think Trump is very unlikely to lead any better outcome, so I think not voting democrat is counterproductive. In theory, withholding votes should force democrats to care more. But in practice I think it's more likely to let Trump in. Especially because a lot of people still vote prioritising a pro Israel stance. I would prioritise protests over voting there.
* Some friends reliably avoid non-fair-trade chocolate. Some friends manage to avoid buying electronics from genocidal regions of china. I think those are obviously correct. But I can't cope with doing ALL of them, but I also feel bad I don't, even though I think picking as many issues as you can deal with is the only practical choice