Re: the Selzer poll.
I'd like to examine the wording of this poll and the effect had on the outcome. The wording was as follows:
Likely voters in Iowa were asked: "If the general election were held today and the candidates for president were Kamala Harris for the Democrats, Donald Trump for the Republicans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for We the People and Chase Oliver for the Libertarians, for whom would you vote? If you already voted, for whom did you vote?"
The September poll, by contrast, did not include language targeted at early voters:
Likely voters in Iowa were asked: "If the general election were held today and the candidates for president were Kamala Harris for the Democrats, Donald Trump for the Republicans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for We the People and Chase Oliver for the Libertarians, for whom would you vote?"
The 2020 wording of the Selzer poll was as follows:
Likely voters in Iowa were asked: "If the general election were held today, for whom would you vote?"
The 2016 wording was as follows:
If the general election were held today, and the candidates were Hillary Clinton for the Democrats, Donald Trump for the Republicans, Gary Johnson for the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein for the Green Party, for whom would you vote?
I believe the "If you already voted, for whom did you vote?" wording of the October 2024 poll skewed the results for a few reasons. First, it seems slightly confusing. It's possible that respondents could have interpreted the additional wording as being about their perception of how others would have voted. Given that Democrats tend to vote early and people tend to know this because of the 2020 election coverage, this may have skewed the result. Secondly, poll questions should be as short and simple as possible. The 2020 wording of the question was much shorter, and did not include multiple parts for poll respondents to think through. The 2016 wording, while structured similarly to 2024, also did not include language about early voting. One rule of survey design is to avoid asking multiple questions at once, and this violates that.
Lastly, the inclusion of this language may bias participation towards respondents who did vote early. And while that does tend to favor Democrats, Nate Silver has written about how early voting doesn't predict results. Therefore, the accuracy of this poll result may be skewed.
Overall: The markets moving from 60/40 to 50/50 might have happened anyway and this just happened to be the outlier poll that triggered it. It's probably a good thing that the betting markets now accurately reflect where the race has been according to aggregators like Nate. But the result seems to be due to the wording of the poll, rather than an underlying change in the Iowa (read: Midwestern) electorate.
EDIT: For contrast, the Emerson poll showed a 53%/43% lead for Trump and was worded as follows:
If the Presidential Election were held today, would you vote for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?
slutdragon
1yr ago
I don’t think it’s entirely unrealistic tbh. But I think you have to have a fair amount of experience with dating apps to know that.
There are a lot of factors that influence your popularity on dating apps, besides of course your traditional ones re: appearance. One of them is that the apps tend to give you a “new user” bump in visibility for the first few days you’re on the app. They show your profile to pretty much everyone, because a) their algorithms need to find out who likes you and who you like, and b) they want to get you a match quickly so that you get addicted to the app. Another factor is the preferences you set in the app. How big of an area range are you swiping on? What age range? Have you set any preferences regarding race, religion, height, etc.? If you keep your preferences set to the default (default being incredibly broad, which I assume this guy did, given he is new to the apps) then that shows your profile to a lot more people than if you set more narrow preferences. Finally, the metropolitan area you are in plays a factor. It’s a lot easier to rack up matches in the NYC area than it is in New Mexico, for example. I remember vacationing in Santa Fe and there were 5 girls in my age range on Bumble within 25 miles. I had to extend the range to like 60 miles to reach Albuquerque to see more matches.
The “new user bump” could explain why people changing their titles to something fancier didn’t experience a boost in popularity, since they were doing it with an existing account and had already been seen by the majority of the people within their range. On top of that, you don’t post your salary on dating apps. These folks claiming they make more money than this guy, kudos to them, but that’s not something you’re able to evaluate from a dating app profile. Most job titles tend to be illegible signals as to how much money you make. “Partner at X Firm” on the other hand, is a highly legible signal that the guy is successful (even assuming you don’t know much about VC, you might assume partner at a law firm and still correctly believe he is successful). “Portfolio manager” or something at a hedge fund is less legible, unless you know something about how hedge funds are hierarchically structured.
Premium memberships also play a role. Every app has a swipe limit; buying premium allows you to bypass the limit and swipe as much as you like. It’s easy to swipe on a hundred people per hour, if not more. When I was in college, I would buy premium and then set the minimum radius to one mile and swipe until I ran out of people. Then two miles, then three. The first two miles would only take me a couple hours of swiping in Boston. So I don’t think “he would have had to swipe right on 400 people at a 50% rate” is really a great argument for saying the post is fake. He could have swiped right on 10k people within a hundred mile radius in a day or two. Two hundred matches is a 2% match rate, which judging by the numbers I used to see from the bumble subreddit seems to be around the average for men (bumble lets you request your user data and see how many people swiped left/right on you). As for why he would keep swiping while not messaging anyone? For starters, I bet he was a kid in a candy store getting all those matches. He probably kept swiping for the pleasure of seeing who else would match with him. But also, he’s never asked someone out on a date before. Would he even know what to say?
Premium also tends to let you see who has already liked you and match with them immediately. When I have signed up for Tinder in the past, it wasn’t unusual for me to get hit with the “99+ people like you, upgrade your membership to see them!” ad after a day or two, seeing as I have lived in major metropolitan areas (Boston/NYC). It’s possible he used one of the other premium features (called Spotlight on Tinder, forget if the other apps have it), to place his card at the top of the in the stack and be shown to more people for a short period of time (30 minutes). This would allow more people to like him first and rack up matches quicker.
The last premium feature I can think of which might have played a role is the concept of priority likes. This is a feature typically reserved for the highest tier of premium membership. How it works is that your card will be shown before non-premium users and lower tier premium users when you like someone. Unfortunately, it’s one of the only ways some guys get matches on Tinder, because they get buried beneath the hordes of other men competing for the relatively smaller population of women on the apps.
To be clear, I’m not saying he did all of these things. However, a combination of just one or two of these premium features combined with the right circumstances could produce a high number of matches in a short period of time.
Finally, regarding the incel tropes being a tell. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. There are a lot of shy, nerdy dudes out there with not a lot of dating experience. The “red pill” experience of realizing that women are attracted to status is a common enough experience that an entire internet subculture emerged around helping men come to terms with the realization and helping other men reach the same realization. I imagine it is a similar realization for women, realizing men only like them for their bodies. Is it really that hard to believe that this dude with very minimal dating experience suddenly gains some social status because of his job and is shocked by how differently people treat him? We read stories all the time about people who experience dramatic weight loss being treated much differently. Why should this be different?
slutdragon
2yr ago
I should clarify my original point about “content creator business model” doesn’t necessarily exclude advertisers. I meant more that the primary driver of revenue would be exclusive, paywalled content. A content creator centered business model can still have advertisers. For example, on Tik Tok, influencers show off the clothes they just bought, apply cosmetic products, or talk about what restaurants they’re trying. Twitter could utilize the paid subscription model for premium content, but have advertisers pay for placement in free, sponsored content. The two are not mutually exclusive
slutdragon
2yr ago
There’s a piece from the Verge that I think does a decent job describing the situation.
I think the author starts out strong. Saying Twitter has political problems, not tech problems, and Elon is now the King of Twitter are statements I fully agree with.
I think he’s wrong to assume that Twitter is still going to utilize an advertising based model. Twitter’s power user base seems a lot closer to Substack than Instagram or Facebook, in that it is preferred by the intelligentsia. The value of the platform is in these power users and the audiences of people who want to hear what they have to say. I think Twitter could probably also steal some business from OnlyFans, since the platform is already a major funnel for creators on that platform. A creator based model probably makes a lot more sense than an advertising model, since the platform is far less visual than, say, Instagram.
The cryptocurrency exchange Binance is reportedly one of the investors in Twitter, hoping to turn it into a cryptocurrency friendly platform and fulfill the promise of web3. Quite frankly I’m not sure how much crypto is needed to fulfill much of the promise of web3 (letting people own their own data, essentially), but I think in the long run letting users monetize themselves rather than relying on advertisers is a winning strategy for some platforms in the long term.
Running some quick numbers: Twitter has about 400M users, 200M are daily active users. Twitter’s revenue in 2021 was $5 billion.
Let’s say one million Twitter users (half of one percent) are popular enough that they can charge for the content they produce. Lets also assume an 80/20 revenue split between users and Twitter (the same as OnlyFans). If those one million users can generate an average of $2100/month in revenue (at $10/month this is only around 200 people), then that’s about $5 billion in annual revenue (1M users * $2100/month * 12 months/year * 20%).
Is this enough to justify Elon buying the company? No, but the point of the exercise is to demonstrate that given that it isn’t hard to replicate Twitter’s current revenue without an advertising model. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that a shift to a creator business model could unlock far greater revenue for the company and make the purchase both worthwhile.
The author goes on to say that Elon will have trouble dealing with governments in Germany and the Middle East…frankly, they need Twitter more than Twitter needs them. Social media is absolutely part of a government’s power projection tools, and Twitter is arguably the most important for verified government officials.
My predictions would be that if Twitter shifts to a creator business model rather than an advertising model, it will double its revenue by 2025. I’d also predict that while one or two countries may ban Twitter, most fears about governmental retribution against Twitter will turn out to be unwarranted.
slutdragon
2yr ago
Not sure I follow the lineage you trace back to the birth of Abrahamic religion, or the Conformist/Conscientious mapping.
However, I think this
tl;dr: Blue-Tribe gains status with better communication tools, Red-Tribe gains status with hierarchical structure and industrialization
fits in broadly with the existing data on how income and educational attainment impacts support for the left today (see the attached image).
I think historically, we can see this conflict play out repeatedly. Power concentrates around the ability to have a monopoly on force (princes, kings, the state) or resources (early agriculturalists, medieval landowners/ merchants, and modern industrialists). It seems the red tribe today has its basis in many local businesses (small monopolies), that don’t require much education to run. Think of a local landscaping business or car dealership.
Subverting power requires coordinated action. A religion in one respect is an early broadcasting system, as people carry its message with them when they travel. Particularly, Christianity can be thought of as communicating ideas about how to individualize. More individualized persons in society is important because generally they are more productive, but more importantly for subverting power, they will put pressure on existing elites to push society towards equality (Peter Turchin’s theory of elite overproduction and conflict comes to mind here).
I think the modern blue tribe has its roots in the church and its role as counterweight to kings. The modern blue tribe is made up of high education/low income voters. Where might you find these people? I think most commonly, within our communication structures, particularly academia and media. The manufacturing of ideas and control of the spotlight can act as a counterweight to power by coordinating action amongst the masses. The people who get to do this are awarded high status and get to mingle with those with high income. However, they do not make high incomes because there’s no way for them to monopolize or own their influence (though the rising creator economy may change this dynamic).
slutdragon
2yr ago
Mass immigration is essential for the West. It reduces pressure on wages and creates constituencies that can be played off against troublesome locals
I agree that immigration is essential for the West, albeit for different reasons. Birth rates have declined below replacement levels, and thus, western countries are facing population busts where there will not be enough people to maintain society and care for the elderly. Demography is destiny, as they say.
Throughout the rest of your post I’d replace the idea of “the regime” and “the Leviathan” with “the impersonal forces of global capitalism”, but would largely agree.
This fortifies the elite’s interest in sponsoring forces hostile to inherited social and cultural norms (feminism, gender fluidity, LGBTQI).
Agreed that capitalism celebrates these concepts because they are good for business. Feminism allowing women into the workplace creates a larger pool of labor to draw from. Appealing to identities in advertising and hiring practices (sexual orientation, gender identity, race, etc.) increases consumption and the potential labor pool.
The emergence of a sub-proletariat (by definition either involuntarily unmarried or unable to support stable families) within the working class is in no way problematic for the regime…it reduces pressures for higher wages
I think the class of people unable to support a family is more of a side effect. Global capitalism has unlocked incredible value for the wealthy. There is excess capital to be invested, which results in the prices of assets increasing dramatically (housing, for example). However as Piketty discovered, economic growth doesn’t keep pace with the rate of return on capital, which is why wages have stagnated while asset prices have ballooned. This slow economic growth makes family formation harder.
An unhappy and violent future seems guaranteed
Unhappy? Likely. I think our demographic decline is going to create a massive labor shortage in the coming decades that even a dramatic increase in immigration seems unlikely to solve. It seems to me that capital must bear this cost rather than labor in the form of higher wages, lest they risk the value of their enterprise. I think some larger companies are already realizing this, though the smaller ones may be slower to pick it up.
Violent? I’m not so sure. I’d hope that capital would realize that it must renegotiate its relationship with labor and this would occur peacefully, and given how most of the pressure from the current movement is occurring non-violently online, I think this may be the case. However, previous periods of economic transition have been marked with violence so perhaps I’m being naive.
slutdragon
2yr ago
It’s always struck me that masculinity is more socially constructed than femininity.
To be a woman is more of a biological designation, as the transition from girl to woman is marked by the onset of menstruation. However to be a “man” is more of a socially developed role as one can be an adult male yet not a “man” (sort of like the scene where Anakin Skywalker is denied the rank of Jedi master despite being on the Jedi council).
The “Three P’s” theory of masculinity says that men must protect and/or provide in order to procreate. The value of your protection or provision depends heavily on the social conditions you find yourself in. For example, being a good provider in previous eras may have meant having a small, productive farm, but today it could mean having a good job in tech/finance/law/etc. Protection is largely a function of physical size and capacity for violence, but this value is less today than it would have been even decades ago due to global declines in violence.
This may be why women are viewed as “complete”. Her reproductive capability is innate, whereas men must venture out into the world and compete for the right to use their reproductive capabilities. Do you think the difference between the two journeys could be related?
Thought this tweet was interesting. Seems like you might be right about the non-representative sample (Independents didn't move, so the shift if it exists is being driven by republicans flipping).
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