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As usual, The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does.
Thinking the purpose of 538 is to forecast elections is like thinking the purpose of slot machines is to give out prizes.
538 exists to sell ads, and to sell ads you need engagement. Tell people (in this case Blue Tribe midwits) that their team is going to win, with sufficient math numbers to bypass their critical thinking abilities into Believe the Science territories, and they'll peck away like starving chickens. Every refresh is a little dopamine hit for them. Their brain might want the truth, but their brain stem wants to feel good.
This isn't an indictment of the Blue Tribe or 538. If 538 decided to tell the truth as it is, the Blue Tribe midwits would migrate to 537.99999, a new site that gives them their fix, and 538 would go broke. Us mottizens want the truth, but we're all also using adblockers, so the algorithm routes around us. We're not the ones paying three figures for slave labor Chinesium vegan shoes.
The internet is a horror show - clickbait, rage bait, gold Trump coins, donate NOW to EMPATHIZE with WOMEN OF COLOR, influencers REACT to THIS clickbait YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! The stupid are too poor to be worth exploiting, the smart are cost too much to exploit, but everyone in the middle is pulling the handle on their handheld slot machine as fast as their thumbs can move..
That's fundamentally what the algorithmic internet is - an omnipresent distributed casino metastasizing into the brain stem of every midwit, sucking out every dollar of surplus value from anyone that's conscientious and agreeable enough to produce anything above their survival needs.
It's amazing watching the real time decline of an heuristic catchphrase.
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Now there's a statement I really wouldn't lean too hard on. My guess would be that most mottezins also want to feel good, we're just a bit kinkier about how we get our kicks.
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