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YouTubers Will Enter Politics, And If They Do, They're Probably Going To Win (buzzfeednews.com)
A group of twentysomethings leveraged their huge YouTube audiences and actually won seats in Brazil's federal and state elections. What happens next is anyone's guess. Ryan Broderick, writing for BuzzFeed News: Kim Kataguiri is known in Brazil for a lot of things. He's been called a fascist. He's been called a fake news kingpin. Is he a YouTuber? He definitely uses YouTube. He's definitely a troll. A troll with a consistent message, though, he points out. Maybe he's Brazil's equivalent of Milo Yiannopoulos. His organization, Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL) -- the Free Brazil Movement -- is like the Brazilian Breitbart. Or maybe it's like the American tea party. Maybe it's both. Is it a news network? Kataguiri says it isn't. But it's not a political party, either. He says MBL is just a bunch of young people who love free market economics and memes. One thing is very clear: His YouTube channel, the memes, the fake news, and MBL's army of supporters have helped Kataguiri, 22, become the youngest person ever elected to Congress in Brazil. He's also trying to become Brazil's equivalent of speaker of the House.
[...] Kataguiri's political awakening is a textbook example of the way algorithms beget more algorithms. During his last year of high school, his teacher started a debate about welfare programs in Brazil. So Kataguiri started googling. He discovered Ron Paul and the Brazilian libertarian YouTuber Daniel Fraga. "Then I did a video to my teacher and my friends at school to talk about what I had found out," Kataguiri says. "There was one problem: I posted this video on YouTube. So it was public and it went viral." He says people kept asking for more videos, but he didn't know anything. So he went back to googling, and then made more videos about what he learned.
[...] Kataguiri's political awakening is a textbook example of the way algorithms beget more algorithms. During his last year of high school, his teacher started a debate about welfare programs in Brazil. So Kataguiri started googling. He discovered Ron Paul and the Brazilian libertarian YouTuber Daniel Fraga. "Then I did a video to my teacher and my friends at school to talk about what I had found out," Kataguiri says. "There was one problem: I posted this video on YouTube. So it was public and it went viral." He says people kept asking for more videos, but he didn't know anything. So he went back to googling, and then made more videos about what he learned.
Ego-stroking Talking heads will always be egoi-stroking talking heads...
The trolls get old fast, but there are others on YouTube from the UK that now has entered politics. I have no idea if their combined subscriber base of over 1mil, will be enough to change elections.
With Sargon stepping back from the Culture Wars, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Is he really tired of YouTube fame, or is he positioning himself for a political career with UKIP? I think 1 million subscribers isn't enough to make a real impact, but it is great training for politics. Heck, just the idea that "maybe we should debate ideas on their merits" has become radical means it's time for something to change.
IMO the more "radical centrists" and "free speech extremists" get involved with politics, the better, for all they will inevitably be called *phobic Nazis.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Isolated cases where You Tube may or may not have influenced elections does not mean that You Tubers in general have all that much power. I really doubt many people will vote XYZ just because someone on You Tube told them to.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Now you know that if the politics were of a different slant, this would be celebrated.
I, for one, welcome our new Pewtie Pie overlords.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem is that for every sane Youtuber with a halfway decent following, you have an army of idiots that BLOW YOUR MIND, can count to 10 and show you a million things to do to your hair (with a link to buy the crap in the description, either as a promo-link to Amazon and the like or they run their own crap already and bypass the middleman when it comes to swindling teenies out of money).
Not to mention the criminally insane, from apricot-core eaters to flat earthers to the politically-religious, ranging all the way from the kill-the-fags right wing nutjob to the kill-the-cis-males left wing nutjobs.
My only hope is that they are SO many and fracturing their user base SO widely (because they themselves can't get along) that they splinter it up into so many insignificant groups that they in total don't matter.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We have a solution to all those problems: Voluntary trade; 2 individuals agreeing how to allocate their resources (i.e., how to interact).
Under capitalism, you vote every time you make a decision, and the weight of your vote is a privilege determined by how much control of societal resources you've managed to gain through interaction that is solely voluntary.
People need a signal for when they are making good choices, and they need a signal for when they are making bad choices. Capitalism gives us this, and Democracy, sadly, does not. Democracy is a dumb man's first draft of Capitalism.
Stupid is relative. In many cases, elected officials could be replaced by a random number generator with better results, because random noise is less harmful than active corruption or relentless pursuit of a ridiculous ideological agenda.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The trolls get old fast, but there are others on YouTube from the UK that now has entered politics. I have no idea if their combined subscriber base of over 1mil, will be enough to change elections.
If you have 1 million followers only 1000 will vote for someone just because you told them to. How is this different to newspapers editors endorsing a candidate? How many elections has that changed? As bad as society is people won't just vote for someone because "someone on You Tube" told them too.
You will have people on one medium endorsing one candidate, a rival on another medium endorsing another candidate, it all cancels out.
Before you say "but people are sheep and do whatever they're told by you tubers"- let me ask you... have you ever voted for someone JUST because one person on TV, or Newspaper, Radio, You Tube, etc told you to? If the answer is no- you can't really expect humanity as a whole to vote like that. If you're that easily swayed you're probably not committed enough to vote anyway.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Oh please. They ARE allowed to vote. They filled out the registration form wrong and need to correct it within a certain period of time. That is all.
Given how easily you're fooled by HuffPo-like propaganda, you should probably just stay home instead of voting.
So, when any politician or person running for office is banned by youtube, the company can be charged with Election Tampering ?
Voting is mandatory in Brazil.
Polling places are kept away from college campus
Name one college where that is true. Usually there are polling places ON campus, because they have a lot of buildings with rooms that can be devoted to polling quite easily.
Young folks aren't just lazy and stupid. There's a concerted effort by the powers that be to keep them from voting.
Hint: When something seems wrong, always vote on lazy/stupid as being the reason.
Except that I take exception with them being stupid. Voting well takes some work to research who and what you are voting for. It's not stupid to avoid work if you don't think there is any return for doing so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How about we start with a mandatory by law 2 hours off work paid on voting days when part or all of your shift intersects voting hours? We can follow up with making a reasonable number of polling places within reasonable reach of the local population accessible by public transit and prohibiting gerrymandering by appointing independent governing boards and straightforward districting. Even the requirement for an identical name on all government records is BS; is a clerical error on one of the 318 government documents on me get me out of paying taxes? Right now a large portion of voters are disenfranchised or about to be disenfranchised due to one of those reasons.
> I have heard that less that 50% of the population vote, since the "middle of the road" people feel there simply is no point to vote.
Also, less than 50% of them know who the vice president is.
They are more interested in biking, playing soccer, video games, or whatever their interest is, and have very little interest in civics. Not enough to even know who the VP or the Speaker of the House are. Given they have roughly zero relevant information or understanding to draw from, when asked which candidates they support, they give reasons like "because she's a woman, so she'll support women's issues. I think. Beto is a woman, right?"
Personally, I prefer for important decisions to be made by people who have at least a very minimal understanding of the basics of the topic. I personally think that decisions about national economic policy should mostly be made by people who have read page 1 of the Economcs 101 book, so they know what the two main branches of economics are. If someone doesn't know what economics is, how can they possibly make informed decisions weighing the benefits and drawbacks of one set of economic policy proposals vs another? They can't, obviously. Their vote can be decided only by the manipulative tweets of orgainzations who stand to gain from one policy or the other.
While I have no doubt that you know "what a troll is" to the point of a science, you make a good point. "Troll" used to mean "an insincere opinion proffered to provoke an emotional response", and that's still the /. mod guidance, but these days it seems to mean "someone I disagree with".
Alex Jones may be a bit of a troll - I doubt he believes half the shit he talks about - but he's really not focused on aggravating people who disagree with him (after all, normal people simple don't listen to him, so he has no audience to troll).
Breitbart is merely sensational, and no more so than most media outlets. I wouldn't call "exaggerating stuff you actually believe for clicks" trolling, but maybe that makes me old fashioned.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Off course it comes from Buzzfeed, the left's Breitbart but just because someone has a platform you do not agree with or understand, does not make it bad, fake, non-existent.
Going through YouTube and similar platforms is just the modern equivalent of sending out flyers in your mailbox and placards in your yard.
Not sure what this guy's message is per se, but the left's lunatic identity politics is turning off young men and working people across the world. You can't just re-categorize an entire population of people with mental disorders as "freedom fighters" and hope that it works.
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I'd say Milo and maybe Ann Coulter are trolls, but the label doesn't extend to people who are merely kooky or extremists.
If you don't like identity politics, you REALLY won't like the modern right with their constant appeals to the straight white male persecution complex/privilege loss anxiety.
And I think this is less likely the end of leftism than it is the violent, desperate death throes of the right as a mainstream political force. Leftism hasn't become any less common or made any sudden moves in the last few years. It's the right that has taken off its gloves and mask, taking the complacent left by surprise, even as it has become less common. Leftism appears to be losing right now because it's still marching in formation against an enemy that's suddenly started using ISIS-level guerilla tactics.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
As for removing polls from campus, google.
Not one of the search results says anteing like polling places are *moved* off campus, and ignores that most colleges across the U.S. HOST polling places for the reasons I specified. Hell, one of the links talks about free buses from one campus to a polling place... making it easier for students to vote, not harder.
I said this elsewhere in this thread but, well, nothing I say is going to convince you.
You are going to have to try reality based arguments instead of describing things you imagine are true but are not.
The best we can hope for is that you're in the minority and that as more folks become aware of Voter Suppression it will be ended.
Don't worry, all of the folks pushed away by imaginary voter suppression are made up for by imaginary dead and illegal votes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I used to think this. Recently, the way the Democratic party is running, I feel we are now in an era of Minority rule. Take any hot topic item, whether its abortion, gay marriage, forcing a baker to make a gay wedding cake, etc. Lets take the gay wedding cake one.. Now look at the demographics of the democratic party. While the LBGTQ(insert-more-letters-here) group is solidly democrats, so are the black southern baptist and blue dog democrats. Latinos are typically very devout catholics. These groups have a very different set of ideals when it comes to certain social issues. Now if this was a national vote where it was not party driven, you would probably see only 15% come out and say "Yes, a baker should be FORCED to make any cake he or she disagrees with, regardless of religious belief". But because this 'coalition' exists to force all its members to tow the party line, this 20% suddenly jumps to 47% of the population, and members are being represented against their beliefs. As if there was some shortage of gay bakers to make a cake. This is why we are now a country of minority rule. We keep making exception after exception for every minority group instead of demanding people be treated exactly the same. Same means Same, not "All Animals are created equal; some are more equal than others".
The same thing happens in the Republican party, but its not quite as fractured as the Democratic party. There is a large number of people that vote republican that identify as libertarian, so they don't agree on social issues nearly as much as they do on fiscal and economic ones.
Georgia is purging them from the rolls left and right while moving polling away from campuses. This isn't propaganda, it's fact
No, it's propaganda. The people who filled out the registration form incorrectly have 26 MONTHS to fix it, and they can vote in this upcoming election. Your "facts" are disingenuous at best and are therefore propaganda. Also, I never said anything about moving polls. I didn't comment on that so why are you bringing it up?
That means you don't get to plead ignorance.
I'm not.
having decided that some people shouldn't be allowed to vote because they disagree with you.
When the hell did I say any of this? You sure are good at putting words into people's mouths.
What I hate about folks like you is you.
Folks like me? You mean, folks who can read between the lines and critically think? Folks who aren't sheep?
you won't just come out and say "I don't like Democracy"
Because I DO like democracy.
You hide behind talking points to fool people.
What talking points are those? I simply called you out on your totally incorrect statement about the 53,000 people not being allowed to vote.
Democracy is good, but only when _everyone_ votes.
False. Democracy is good when INFORMED people vote. Not sheep who just look look for the little "R" or "D" behind the name. Sorry I triggered you by pointing out your B.S. statement. Get out of your echo chamber a little more often and maybe you'll toughen up a bit. And please, for the sake of all of us, get informed before voting.
I don't agree with your analysis, I think weaponized identity politics was invented on the left. Concepts like intersectionality, white privilege and so on are all products of the left. Just look at how many things are now considered racist acts and how trivially easy it is to accuse someone of racism as part of political fight about any topic.
I think it is wishful thinking on your part to think that mainstream could somehow be in a death throes - after all masculinity, heterosexuality, and to a degree whiteness are still in plurality if not majority. Trying to intimidate and guilt such large population into submission will go only so far, especially if every concession is immediately followed up with more demands.
Leftism is hopefully losing because it became regressive, dogmatic, and frequently eats its own. I hope its demise means return of left that advocates worker's rights, welfare and economic equality, freedom of speech, and so on.
As far as the 'rich' not paying their 'fair share', the top10% of Americans in income pay two-thirds of Federal income taxes while the bottom 50% pays ~3%..
I hate this argument because of the wealth distribution in the US. Granted this is just one of the first easy to read sources I found but you'll notice that the top 10% hold 75% of the wealth while the bottom 50% hold 1.1% (according to this chart). Given that, one could argue that the bottom 50% pay too much and the top 10% pay too little.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/
ask "Should the Baker be FORCED" then you'll get a lot of 'No's'.
ask "Should the Baker be allowed to refuse service" and you'll get a lot of 'No's'
The end result is the same. LGBTQs are denied access to a public resource (in this case a publicly available bake shop).
Me? I just replace the word "LGBTQ" with "White Male Christian" and if I would say "that shouldn't be allowed" then there's my answer. Once you can use religion to discriminate you can do damn near anything. It'll start with baking cakes and end with riots and apartheid.
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You just negated your argument when you said "Same means Same" and the minority + coalition rule. In your case a non-popular minority can never achieve "Same mean Same" status. If "Same means Same" means a living/breathing homosapien stripped of color/religion/lack of religion/sex orientation-attraction/gender/weight/height/eye color/hair color/etc then you have me. We need to ignore or tolerate the stuff we don't like more.
That's an argument against mandatory voting. Brazilian politics makes America look good.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Kim Kataguri and MBL are just a small part of the problem, here in Brazil: the likely new president, Jair Bolsonaro, is "an YouTuber": he just spread videos from his social networks, but he already tell everyone that he will not participate on TV debates - more info: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1...
Everytime power turns over in China, they also have a wave of 'anti-corruption' trials. That isn't generally a good thing.
Hint: 'Corruption' doesn't mean what you think it means.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
where he said he'd pay the legal fees of anyone who beat up a Democrat? Or how about all those alt-right rallies where they showed up with weapons. One guy ran over Dem protesters with his car. You guys are violent as hell.
You've let neo-nazis and white supremacists into your party. Heck, you even helped them legitimize by calling them the "Alt-Right". What did you think was gonna happen when you did that?
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seeing as how they get more federal tax dollars than they pay in. California & New York pretty much make the US work.
/.ers). What we need is to get people to the polls.
You're right about the Authoritarian Oligarchic Kleptocracy, but the solution isn't less voters, it's _more_ voters. Progressive, pro-worker policies poll in the 70s. Those include single payer healthcare, legalized drugs, college for all (good even if you're not in college, since it keeps the young'uns out of the job market for a bit so they compete less with us aging
To do that we should follow Obama's suggestion: Make voting mandatory. I can't tell you how many folks I know don't vote because their vote's suppressed. The most common one is jury duty. In most jurisdictions they pull first from the voter rolls. Working class Americans can't afford Jury duty. 60-80% (depending on how you run the numbers) live paycheck to paycheck. Add to that voting on a Tuesday, the Electoral college & Senate, and voter registration purges and you've got around 20-30% of the population effectively disenfranchised.
The best way to have Democracy is to have _everyone_ vote. When voting is mandatory then you can't use cheats to stop people from voting.
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The right wing took over the Democratic party. It happened when Clinton moved the party right to win the presidency (he needed a ton of money and couldn't get the big money donations without selling us out). Take Al Franklin, a real lefty. He was shut down by Kamala Harris and other right wing women to pave the way for her presidential bid.
Speaking as a White guy, White Privilege is real. Us White Guys are painfully aware of it. We've had decades of preferential treatment in loans, school admissions, job interviews and the like. I'm not going to argue this point, it's a historic fact. Go google a bit and educate yourself.
But thing is, so the fuck what? Your angry at people for pointing out that you started on first base, but you should be mad at the billionaires who not only started on third but sent armed goons around to kick you back to home plate (and kick your teeth in while your at it).
I keep saying this, your enemy isn't the fat chick who runs your local women's studies dept. She's powerless unless you sign up for her class, and here's a trick, just take Chinese History. It meets the requirement for "multi-culture" and it's chalk full of manly wars. Your enemy is the guy who sits on a gold throne and tells you he's a man of the people.
You've been had buddy. I know that's gotta make you pissed to think it, but the sooner you face facts the sooner you can do something about it.
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