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Is Vance not pretty heavily rotted from online discourse too? He seems to have gone a deep end in some ways at least.
I saw his interview on Joe Rogan and thought he was someone who could actually be good: a moderating influence on Trump, an adult who can get some things done while being stabilizing in general versus Trump's more insane flips. I really liked his book too, and thought he might have some of the right instincts. I haven't been impressed so far, and his behavior in the Zelensky meeting and in general on social media have been the opposite at least in my perception, it seems to maximize for heat vs light in the real world.
Twitter shitposting seems to be highly contagious in general, with Rubio recently wading in to shout at Poland, which wasn't my idea of diplomacy. Seems like a clown show in general, rather than showing strength as I assume they intend.
I'm really interested in the opinions of others though... what do you all think?
Vance is interesting. At times he'll speak thoughtfully and reflectively, and at others he'll sound like a teenage edgelord ("Childless cat ladies"). He's too obviously smart for it to be brainrot IMO, so my best guess is he's trying to gain popularity with the online right who he sees as crucial to his political ambitions.
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The problem was that Zelensky was using that meeting for heat as well, grandstanding to the press and dragging the subject away from the actual purpose of the meeting, which was signing the minerals deal that his own government suggested as a backdoor tripwire security guarantee. Zelensky has a habit of double-dipping like this; Biden also allegedly yelled at Zelensky for being an ingrate, just like Trump and Vance, when, on a call to discuss an aid package Biden had just secured for Ukraine, Zelensky immediately launched into a spiel about all the additional things he needed and wasn't getting from the U.S.
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I think the Zelensky thing is actually misunderstood. What Trump and Vance were doing was asserting control. Zelensky was used to dealing with Biden and the Left and having the USA government roll over and hand him several billion dollars. In the clip, the entire point is making it clear to Zelensky that he’s not in charge anymore, and that if he wants the US to help him, he has to accept our terms — which all told, and given the circumstances Ukraine is in, are actually pretty generous. But unless the people running the country actually assert themselves m there’s no reason to take it seriously.
I would say the same for the deep state. The reason to go in and pause payments and force people to prove they’re working is two-fold. First, the obvious benefit of cutting the fat. It needs to be done. But the other benefit is that it puts the deep state in its place, where it is on notice that it serves the elected government, and the days when they could simply roll their eyes and ignore the government are over and you better get with the program.
If you want to make actual changes in how things are done, you cannot be timid or nice about it. If you show weakness, you’ll be walked all over. Better to be overbearing but get the job done than be weak and try to explain in four years why nothing of note has changed. And I think most of this posturing now will pay off later. Iran and Syria and Hamas are watching Trump and Zelensky. They know they’re no longer dealing with Sleepy Joe who will maybe pretend to be bothered by what they’re doing but be too weak to do anything but tut-tut while they walk all over him. Trump, and thus the USA are done being the teat the world suckles while getting nothing in return, and are done being openly disrespected.
The written deal on offer at that meeting, to the best of our knowledge, was that Zelenskyy signs a mineral deal which in expectation transfers value from Ukraine to the US, and gets nothing in return. Trump was explicitly not offering any kind of security guarantee or military assistance, and can't offer a ceasefire because negotiations between Trump and Putin are still at the talking-about-talks stage. Zelenskyy had successfully negotiated the negative economic EV of the deal down to a de minimis level, and was in Washington to sign a mostly-irrelevant mineral deal as a confidence-building measure.
Assuming all parties were acting sensibly rather than having a destructive snit, something happened immediately before or during the press conference that made it clear that the mineral deal - or rather the as yet unwritten deal that the mineral deal was a confidence-building step towards - didn't work. And it is fairly obvious what that disagreement was. The two key negative turning points are when Trump asks Zelenskyy to come out in favour of a ceasefire (Zelenskyy is quite properly unwilling to do anything that reads as committing to support a US-negotiated ceasefire until he knows what it might look like) while Zelenskyy asks Trump to promise further military support against Russia if Russia misbehaves (which Trump has made clear he doesn't want to do). The disagreement is that Trump sees the end goal as Ukraine agreeing to a ceasefire negotiated between the US and Russia, and Zelenskyy sees the end goal as changing the balance of power such that Russia might plausibly agree to a ceasefire on reasonable terms.
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Vance is one of those individuals who’s been rising his entire life. Him miscalculating when faced with a plague of purple people eaters is one thing, but I’d expect him to have calculated reasons for his rhetoric. Those reasons might be better for himself than for the commons, sure, but it doesn’t take twitter brain rot to do that.
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Why do you think this, or Rubio's posting, us caused by Twitter? Was everythibg that made Democrats look bad in your eyes also caused by Twitter?
OP's complaint seems to be about detachment from basic reality, yours is a lot ccloser to just not liking their priorities and policies.
I mean I'm not impressed with Musk, Rubio or Vance on Twitter, and all of them seem a bit deranged on it - they're suffering from brainrot from the medium it seems to me. Though I did include some other points which are more not liking their priorities and policies, some of that also seems to be them playing to the social media crowd - maybe I'm wrong there however.
OP's baseline for "brainrot" is "making a factual statement on how much money you saved the government, and being off by a couple of orders of magnitude", yours is "they're maximizing for heat rather than light". I don't think it's correct to lump these together, and it might even be an instance of generating more heat than light itself.
I think a common sense approach is best here. Rubio , while less then the others , is indeed showing signs of 'brainrot'. https://x.com/marcorubio/status/1898755922492588082 , this is not a serious answer to another politician who is correcting musk's nonsense, this would be considered a bad answer here on the motte , so you can't tell me it's an appropriate response for this level of communication. The US goverment is clearly confused, fanatic and out of control and the evidence is right there , no reason to trip over ourselves with analysis. There are literally hundreds of examples of this. I literally just yesterday saw a goverment official say something like ' trump is the only person in the universe that can solve the ukraine war' , yes he did say ' in the universe' , what the hell is going on? I am not even going to talk about Homan and his insane antics.
The whole thing is more performative then substantial, seems like everyone is trying to show off , with some of them being legitimately insane/incapable.
Unless he's claiming there are aliens, "in the universe" is the same as "in the world". It's just a rhetorical flourish, it doesn't actually mean anything different.
I am aware , that doesn't make it any better though .It is a cartoonishly ridiculous level of ass-licking. I could barely believe what I was hearing , rhetoric like that obviously has no place in a serious discussion. Children speak like that.
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Take to task the Polish asshole who turned something clearly not a threat into a threat.
Musk's constant antagonizing of europeans is not in question. So it's not that one tweet that's problematic , but his whole stance getting involved in shit he knows nothing about and shouldnt be involved in. The only asshole is Musk , in fact I personally believe most people are way too lenient on him. I like the way the french politician put it ,' the ketamine addicted buffoon' i believe he said.
EDIT: Also did you read the tweet , musk says verbatim ' Their entire front line would collapse if it turned off' . Very well could be a threat. And considering how much of a demented asshole elon musk has been that's certainly how I would take it too.
Context. Musk was saying “I’m not a Putin stooge—I challenged Putin to single combat and I’m basically the person most responsible for keeping the Ukraine army in the fight so don’t call me a Putin stooge.”
It was only a threat if someone doesn’t understand context
Context ' I said some nonsensical idiotic things 3 years ago , so you should take these more seriously then the idiotic things I said yesterday which were highly critical of you and positive of Putin' . Seriously? This is your argument? Elon isn't the 'person most responsible for keeping the ukraine army in the fight' that is a ridiculous statement. Are we saying whatever at this point without any interest to the truth? Seems like you don't actually understand context.
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Of course it’s not a serious answer. Social media has near-zero incentive for serious answers. Televised Congressional hearings were bad enough when it came to grandstanding; why’d we have to make the feedback instant?
Twitter delenda est.
I know that’s not actually a practical option. I would like some way to convince the public that it’s not actually important, though.
PowerImportance resides where men believe it residesYou know, I don’t actually own a crossbow yet.
I thought all mods got one?
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What are you referring to when you say ' it's not actually important ' ?
Twitter. X? The broader category of short-form social media, really.
Imagine if most government broadcasts came through TikTok. Every day a bureaucrat would smile for the camera and tell you how great the economic forecast looks for today, or that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia. Then she’d floss or whatever it is the youth are doing. Fifteen seconds total.
It’s fundamentally silly. Unserious. Recognizably low ratio of signal to noise. You could swap out the message and 90% of the video wouldn’t change, because it’s almost entirely style over substance.
That’s X. The actual content of a tweet is of secondary importance. What matters is the style—the snappy phrasing, the correct applause lights. What matters is connecting those things to the right people. Deliver unto your bubble what they were already thinking, and the algorithm shall reward you.
Elon Musk can quote whatever the fuck he wants and people who like his style will gather, insisting he’s “directionally correct.” Then his network gives him all the positive feedback he apparently craves. The amplifier is in saturation. There is next to no signal.
I would like the general public to feel the same way about tweets as they do about TikToks. They are entertainment. Leave the information transfer to a more serious medium.
Oh of course. I agree. In fact I would be even more pessimistic in my position and would say that you underestimate how much the younger generation ( 26 and under ) believes what they see on tiktok. I am 26 and see it relatively often in some of my peers , thankfully not many , yet the younger you go the more the percentage increases. Pretty depressing honestly. I personally believe at this point that X , tiktok and instagram are some of the worst things that have happened to humanity.
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I worry we're getting lost in defining terms here, possibly my mistake.
Making incorrect statements and sticking by them certainly seems to be one type of brainrot (as per OP), but I think it's fair to broaden it out, and to be clear my definition of brainrot isn't "maximizing for heat", though that's part of it, it's also more generally that many people senior in the US government seem to be basically shitposting on twitter. That seems really odd to me, and I include Vance and Rubio in that shitposting category.
I honestly wanted to discuss with people why that might be the case, and if others agree with the shitposting accusation, but if you don't want to discuss that, that's fair too.
Also, @mixpap.
And I believe that's a bad idea, unless you can come up with a clear definition that all sides agree on from the outset, otherise this will clearly devolve into "everything I don't like is brainrot, and the more I don't like it, the more brainrot it is". I can easily make an argument that the CDC declaring that racism is a public health emergency, or the entirety of the transgender movement is "progressive TikTok brainrot".
I don't think it's necessary to get into a deep analysis of the word brainrot , we know and you know what we are trying to express. A man that that might have been capable in a specific field , now very deluded and problematic in his statements ,getting involved in all kinds of things that don't concern him and lying constantly while doing it. If , as some have suggested , ketamine is the cause of his insanity then ketamine induced brainrot could possibly be a relatively accurate diagnosis? I am only half joking.
A definition of brainrot I found with a google search is “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration”. I would argue that this is exactly what's going on with musk. He is degrading intellectually as a result of online content ( a lot of it being russian propaganda as I have many times underlined ).
I don't think this is true, and the fact that you didn't address any of my examples shows it, as does the motte-and-bailey dance from Musk to other public figures, and back to Musk depending on which one is convenient at the moment.
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