The Internet Has Limits, Too

Over at Hee Haw Marketing, Paul McEnany's has a thoughtful post concerning the application of human decency in advertising. I commented that nature of television required deep reasoning be omitted from advertising, since the designed to motivate the audience to take a course of action only last for 30 seconds at a time. The Internet is great, I said, because deeper reasoning is always only one click away.

I submitted the comment before I realized the quandry: Everything else is only one click away, too.

Speaking to the main subject of Paul's post, caring about the outcome of elections requires more work than not caring. So to actually affect the elections some of us care about, we really have two options:

1. Appeal to the audience's higher sensibilities
2. Appeal to their faults

Appealing to their higher sensibilities requires getting them to trust you so that they will come close enough that you can whisper to them. This is a lot of work, because it cannot be forced. I have tried talking about politics in mixed company -- and let me tell you... there is a reason they say not to do it. I've always had better luck on forums where people are talking about news and politics anyway... and even that requires enormous patience.

Appealing to their faults is quicker, because it does not require explaining the logic behind a position (which would explain why it is used so much), but depending on the outcome, this will cause the audience to either be too easily manipulated by clever marketing messages or to never trust what we have to say -- ever again. Both outcomes are rather unsavory and have negative long-term consequences beyond the upcoming election.

But then, with a 90% incumbancy rate, losing elections has long-term consequences, too, which makes the quicker method of motivating voters all the more appealing. The Internet isn't going to solve this quandry by itself, but we can make it so at least we aren't duplicating the faults of network TV, which we do when we resort to silly potty humor instead of more refined discourse. - Cam Beck

Comments

[Paul McEnany]

How many times do they have to be burned before they shut it out altogether?

I'm not sure, but I would think that even if they appeal to the faults of the citizenry, that still carries some expectation with it.

For instance, the gay marriage debate, which seems to only get brought up in even years for "some reason." Does this lack of follow through tend to just make them shut it out the next time, or is that appeal just made to someone who won't pay attention to the odd years, either?

I guess it's just incumbent upon us to represent brands, products, people that we can be proud of.

[Cam Beck]

I think, in reference to the example you cited, if you pay attention what grassroots Republicans are saying, you'll see that they are indeed fed up with being manipulated with what amounts to empty promises from their perspective. Consequently, the threat to the GOP is not so much that they will vote Democrat, but that they will stay home on election day.

Then the New Jersey Supreme Court gives them a reason to be motivated again. You can count on the GOP capitalizing on the ruling the court made yesterday as a reason to be afraid of what it would look like if their opponents succeeded.

And they're not wrong, either. In a system of government such as ours, laws must come from our elected representatives, not unelected judges. Otherwise, we are not a government of the people, but a government of the judiciary.

What happens, though, is that you get people who, because they are happy with the outcome of the ruling, they fail to hold the judges accountable for the egregious usurpation of legislative authority.

This is where the popular critical thinking I mentioned yesterday would come in handy.