itmeJP Community


itmeJP Community

Influencers talking about politics

itmeJP General
#1

Hi everyone,
First off, apologies for making my first ever post about a “heavy” topic. I’m not a big forum dweller, though I do check here occasionally. But this is a topic I’ve thought about in the past once or twice, and JP made a tweet earlier today which, with a little good will, makes this topic relevant to this community. I also happen to think it would make a good topic for the guys to discuss on Dropped Frames some day, so I suppose it’s relevant in that respect too.

Here’s what JP tweeted earlier today:
“Sorry for being political, but it is so surreal to go to sleep with people talking about Obama’s speech and wake up to Trump’s press event”

As far as “political” tweets go, that one is obviously pretty tame, and it’s not like the tweet caused any big fuss or anything. There’s about a dozen replies to it, and the majority of them are along the lines of “no need to apologize,” whch I completely agree with. But there were a few tweets which suggested he should stay out of politics.

I understand JP’s impulse to start that tweet with an apology, but it’s also a bit sad that he felt the need to do that. That seems to be the prevailing sentiment among streamers though. Almost all of them seem to anxiously (Danger, Will Robinson!) stay away from controversial topics like politics and religion.

I understand that from a chat-control point of view. A controversial topic can quickly get your chat animated, and there’s a risk it will quickly devolve and make the moderators have to scramble. It’s just easier to avoid it altogether.

But a common argument against talking about politics seems to be “don’t alienate half your audience.” In fact, one of the replies to JP’s tweet says literally that. And I just don’t know if that argument holds up.
I think for the most part (not all, but most), viewers are intelligent and nuanced enough to accept that influencers are people who may have different opinions than them.

That said, I have to qualify that immediately. If JP was to come out as a Trump supporter and regularly spouting racist and sexist bullshit, I would most likely stop watching him. But I think that’s a bit of a special case. If he was to come out as a “normal” Republican, expressing his opinions in a respectful manner, I would have absolutely no problem with it. And I think most people wouldn’t have a problem with it.

The main example I can think of is the Kinda Funny crew. They talk about politics and other sensitive topics quite regularly, and it doesn’t seem to hurt their popularity one bit. In fact (without data to back this up) it probably makes them even more popular. Colin Moriarty is an outspoken Republican, and I disagree with him on quite a lot of things, but I respect the hell out of him. Their audience seems to be a good mix of people from all over the political spectrum, yet I’ve never seen their Twitch chat devolve into chaos, though it can get animated at times.

Of course for Kinda Funny this has become part of their identity, while most Twitch streamers place themselves strictly and clearly in the “gaming” category. I understand that most people watch them for their gaming content.
But even then, I personally wouldn’t mind if more streamers would occasionally share their points of view on world events and the things they care about. Gaming doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and we’re all people with feelings and opinions.

I understand that there’s a value in pure escapism, but I think there’s a much bigger part of the audience who would be interested in the opinions and feelings their streamers have about non-gaming topics, including controversial ones like politics and religion.

Ultimately, of course, it’s every streamer’s personal choice. I just don’t think they should be so scared of it as they seem to be.

Anyway, I’d thought I’d post about it here to see what other people think. Obviously keep the discussion civil, but I have faith in that.

(P.S. As I mentioned in the beginning, I think this would be an interesting topic for an episode of Dropped Frames with maybe Colin Moriarty as a guest, though knowing him a bit he might not accept the invitation. Still, would love to see that.)

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#2

As far as “alienating viewers”, different people draw the line of political sensitivity at so many different places. Something mundane or matter-of-fact to you might be a painful and touchy subject for others. And beyond that, different audience demographics and chat rules (sub only, bannable offenses, etc.) may color the conversation in different ways.

Some of the more politically-vocal solo content creators (as in solo streams and not group channels, etc.) do tend toward cultivating a specific mentality in their community, attracting those of like-mind and pushing away others. This isn’t inherently bad, but the particular way you as an individual practice your business model can be helped or hindered by this. Totalbiscuit and Adam come to mind - and again, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they’re happy with where their communities are at, but the tone of these communities are each fairly distinct by design (in a good way).

However, ultimately I don’t feel that the usual everyday political statements and commentary are going to make any significant differences in their business success. The impact on a percentage scale is probably somewhere in the single digits at its worst, unless that person takes a particularly extreme and overtly offensive stance on one side of the fence or the other. Though I’m sure some vocal content creators would very much prefer alienating those that are ideologically opposed to them on the extreme end.

But I think the real concern with political statements is fringe troublemakers. Look what happened with the wider online gaming community in the past few years with the journalism and feminism controversies. Trolls and haters, hackers and stalkers, etc. The more you put yourself out there on controversial topics, the more these folks can come out of the woodwork. Some of these people treat this shit like it’s their job. It just takes one asshole to ruin the fun for hundreds (or thousands) of others in a community, and sometimes they’ll go onto some “graynet” (whatever you want to call it) forum and get their buddies in on this “prime trolling action”. These people target casters and community members alike. At the end of the day, it’s just simpler to avoid earning their ire altogether for some folks.

*TL;DR Final thoughts: however each content creator as an individual decides to handle political comments is up to them and what they think they can handle, as long as they’re not promoting harassment/illegal shit and breaking the rules of their platform.

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#3

Political discussion is barely acceptable face to face. There are shit loads of reasons for this and many of them get worse in an online environment.

To have a discussion about something there are a bunch of conditions that a group needs to meet in order to proceed:

  • You need to be able to agree what the discussion is about

  • You need to listen to each other

  • You need to accept that you are not trying to be right or to convince the other person to accept your point of view

  • You need to be able to express your own point of view

  • You need to act in good faith and try to understand what the other person is saying and not deliberately misunderstand

  • You need to be able to recognize logical fallacies and be mindful of them

There is plenty of other stuff but in my experience most people cannot do this and the people that can do this often don’t.

If you do discuss things it will normally be with people you already have a good level of shared experience, understanding and respect for, you will know enough about them that if a discussion starts to get political you know how they will behave and adjust your behavior accordingly.

Its important to be able to agree what you are discussing and listen to each other and when this doesn’t happen discussion degenerates. When you discuss something that is a charged topic this normally ends badly.

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#4

Well, you don’t need to follow any particular rules of discussion if you have legal protections of speech, but yeah. In an online environment, there’s often so much depth lost to conversation when you have record permanence of unintentionally misspoken statements, context failure, intent vs. interpretation, lack of personal credibility or accountability through anonymity, and so on.

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#5

They are not rules, they are examples of conditions that you need to have a functional discussion.

For example, I cannot discuss something with somebody who is asleep, I cannot have a discussion with somebody in another language . I cannot discuss something with somebody that refuses to participate. I cannot discuss something with somebody who disregards what I say out of hand.

To have a discussion you need buy-in from the participants and you need a mutual understanding of what a (or this) discussion is.

The dynamics online are different but the fundamental problems are the same.

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#6

Your point about fringe troublemakers is a good one and one I hadn’t considered, though it’s an obvious concern when you think about it. Making a political tweet when you have 100 followers goes by pretty uneventfully, but when you have a million followers it’s a different story.

Still, it seems like a much higher percentage of “big” celebrities (like actors and musicians) don’t seem to let this concern deter them from taking a political stance. That said, they mainly have to be concerned about some backlash on their social media accounts and they don’t rely on the internet to make their living. Things like DDossing and hacking are very valid concerns for streamers.

(Thank you all for the very thoughtful responses so far, by the way. I had faith in that, but you never know.)

#7

Another thing about celebrities - they’re removed from the public by a few extra steps because they usually have teams that handle their public relations angles. Managers tell them what they should and shouldn’t say/do, agents tell them what publicity can be good for them, and assistants handle their accounts. Not universally accurate, but a general sum of things for a lot of those folk.

For streamers and 'tubers, their personal interactions with their viewers are immediate and direct, only a step below personal messaging. Their business models are (for the wide majority) entirely built on the work of the individual, including public relations.

#8

I wouldn’t agree with every condition listed above, though. A discussion can be instructional, for instance - a person with knowledge authority may open a dialogue with a pupil in order to pass on information with the intent of specifically educating them, forgoing the notion that you must discuss as though “you are not trying to be right or to convince the other person to accept your point of view”. Some of the best parents/teachers/mentors can pass on valuable lessons through discussion as opposed to monologues or lessons.

Also, recognition of logical fallacies doesn’t apply to many of those less-educated who still hold discussions (by the most direct definition of the term) with their peers.

I’m just saying that “discussion” as a term is more like a conversational exchange of information that, while conditions must be met (two or more parties talking), doesn’t require all these other etiquettes to exist. According to Google and Dictionary at least.

However, that isn’t to say I wouldn’t very much rather hold a discussion with someone that observes these conditions as mutual etiquette than someone that disregards any notion of such.

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#9

You are using a different definition than i was and this has resulted in a misunderstanding/difference of opinion between us.

Those conditions that I outlined apply primarily when you are debating or arguing something like in a political discussion.

I thought that I agreed with you about instructional dialogue but actually:

If a dialogue is instructional then the point is to instruct, right? The goal is for the person being instructed to understand something. As the instructor it may sound similar but it is not the same as trying to be right or even convincing someone that you are right.

If I want someone to teach me something (most of the time) if i ask them to teach me I have already implicitly accepted they they are right and I do not need to be convinced of that. I just need to understand what they are trying to teach me.

I mention fallacies because fallacies can be a significant roadblock to understanding and they are a huge problem when it comes to arguments.

I suppose when it comes to fallacies it would be better to say that all sides must be capable of understanding each other, if not always understanding the things that they are talking about. Although if you cant understand what you are talking about then even if you can have a functional discussion its not going to be useful.

Like, if two people look at a headline with a misleading statistic and they talk and agree they think it is correct I mark that discussion as a failure. I do this because I inherently value learning and understanding and even if they have successfully communicated they views and reached an agreement spreading misunderstanding is a bad.

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#10

I talk to my coworkers all the time about _____, often politics, though I make an effort to be diplomatic about it. Though I’m sometimes struck by how common/prevalent logical fallacies are, especially among my educated peers, I also accept that I can be explicitly wrong about a lot of things too (to the point of fallacy specifically, as well as factuality of course). Sometimes it’s very minor, but there’s still value in the whole of our exchange. So on your last point, I would just label that as a poor discussion, not necessarily a failed or “non” discussion. Though logic and higher debate must follow certain conditions in order for those engagements to be expressly valid, that’s not necessarily equivalent to casual discussion which is on something of a “conditional lower order” in my perspective.

What I mean about instructional discussion can probably be best conveyed through a simplistic example. Take a child - they’ve done something they shouldn’t have, but because they know no better they think they are in the right. You, as the parent, are the authority of knowledge here, but in this particular circumstance for whatever reason the best approach ends up being discussion. You have the child share why they did “the thing”, tell them why it was wrong, listen to their rebuttal/perspective, further explain your point of view, and repeat until this discussion is resolved. In some cases, you also learn something special about the circumstance that makes it extraneous and exceptional to your knowledge authority.

In another fashion more relevant to this discussion, imagine a scenario where the other party is simply misinformed. You know that they are factually wrong, but they engage in a discussion of opinion/perspective. Your intent is to instruct through discussion. And, perhaps, after hearing their evidence and avoiding fallacies you then realize that you are wrong… Because politics isn’t always just dealing in opinion. That wasn’t instruction, that was discussion with intent.

This can happen with a toddler, a teen, or a subordinate or peer at work… and so on.

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#11

See in this case (parent and toddler) you are explicitly trying to make the other person agree with you. I initially agreed with your point because it made sense. But then I thought about it.

I think you are arguing that your goal in this kind of discussion is “trying to be right”.

BUT, You want them to learn. You want them to understand,

And THAT is your goal. You are not engaging them to be proved right. You are engaging them so that they can understand your point of view and develop a new one. So even if you are right and even if you are showing that you are right. It is not the goal of your approach. It may be a method that you use to achieve the goal but it is not the goal. They are subtly different but they are different.

It’s important to mention that you can only ever help the other person learn because but it will always come down to them in the end. You can explain, re-explain and go to the ends of the earth being clear and reasonable. But someones learning is ultimately down to their own efforts.

In those discussions it might be best to say that your goal is to help the other person to understand.

1 Like
#12

[spoiler]:adamgm:[/spoiler] Here i will note that this is all super relevant because you cant really talk about whether you can have a political discussion as a type of individual in a context, without first laying the groundwork. [spoiler]:adamgm:[/spoiler]

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#13

You’re not trying to prove your “rightness”, certainly. However, you are trying to “convince the other person to accept your point of view” in certain cases. You are trying to have your child share your perspective that ____ is bad by helping them understand why it’s bad under normal circumstances.

You also can’t accept in some situations that your child (or subordinate) simply has a different perspective and that you have no responsibility to change it, because you are actively working toward shifting that perspective to an acceptable standard (unless you discover new circumstances through the course of the engagement). From “This is why I think you shouldn’t have hit Tommy” to “Normally this dangerous situation is supposed to be immediately reported to a superior, let’s discuss why you felt that was unnecessary”.

This discussion must have a resolution, but it’s still being engaged as a discussion in every normal fashion because you also aren’t engaging as an absolute authority like in a reprimand, scolding, or lesson where there isn’t permissible room for another equivalent authority perspective.

So, in the latter example, if your subordinate is adamant in their perspective on the situation, but this is a serious offense and they failed to convince you of any extraneous circumstances in your discussion, then the fact that they refuse to accept your interpretation of company policy is grounds for termination. However, it was your responsibility to convince them otherwise because they were expressly wrong.

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#14

This is the most meta discussion I’ve ever had in my life.

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#15

ahaha i love meta discussions!

i think we pretty much agree with other
I will add that even when its your responsibility and you actual goal to convince someone the best you can do is help them.

oh and btw all the stuff about conditions and mutual understanding and buy-in before you do something all completely applies to roleplaying games.

see also “office hours” and “Day9 and being right”

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#16

Yes, definitely. We can only ever be an influence on anything in the universe, never gods over it.

And agreed about RPGs. What’s the point playing something that the other people don’t want to play or comprehend? Surprises are fun, but there has to be an understanding about what’s okay and cool.

And so another paradox in space and time has been sealed by the power of two! :itmejpfist::itmejpfist:

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#17

Everything is political. Including the choice to remain silent.

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#18

Puts pencils up nose. wraps feet in toilet paper. stares in silence.

#19

I see you vote for the Monster Raving Loony Party :itmejphappy:

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#20

now for the highly overused line “If you choose not to decide You still have made a choice”