this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2026
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So what am I supposed to make of all the huge billboards, text and phone campaigns, professional advertisements, and pushing by companies like Google telling me to vote?
Voter weariness is also thing. Inundate the voters with negativity and tons of advertising to get people to not vote. It's a solid tactic.
We're lucky in WA state to have voter pamphlets and mail in voting, but not everywhere is so lucky. I have to say that this year has been getting worse with the pamphlets at the state level. There is some fuckery even here.
So when rich people fund "both sides are the same" propaganda, its to convince me of the same thing, that both sides are the same. But when they fund "get out the vote" propaganda, its to convince me of the OPPOSITE, to not vote. How can I tell whether a message is intended as reverse psychology or not? Do I just decide based on what I've already determined I want to take away from it?
It kind of seems like by this logic, I can arbitrarily pick and choose which messages are legitimate by just presuming that its either reverse or forward psychology.
Oh yes, so go online to convince others not to vote, tell them it's useless and say both sides are the same. Totally NoT billionaire money trying to get people to not vote.
Wait, are you saying I'm on a billionaire propaganda payroll? I mean, just really think about this, my friend. You seem cool and have your heart in the right place. But you're telling a person on Lemmy that the view they're sharing is billionaire money, but the big tech "vote" banners I see on apps and services are telling us to do the right thing, and that those are meant to be reverse psychology to make us not vote, so we need to actually do what those ads tell us, but not the other ads that tell us to vote for certain candidates, which are forward psychology, so we need to do not do what those say.
But I am the bad faith propaganda spreader? Or at best a good faith propaganda victim? Where is this billionaire "don't vote" propaganda? I've never seen it on ads, billboards, or apps. The only places I see no voting sentiment are free social media, and among my IRL contacts. Is it possible that's the billionaire psyop? Yes, it is. But it just seems weird because we don't know that those things took money, but the "get out the vote" campaign definitely does.
It just seems like there's a lot of convolution needed to make that stance consistent. I'm not denying that your stance ends up consistent, it just seems to have a lot of hoops to go through to get there.
Reverse psychology.
Curious what you think about my response to that here:
https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/29190906
Seems like a setup for unfalsifiable reasoning
The companies being evil doesn't mean everyone working there is, I imagine the employees make this a big sticking point.
Or Michael Bloomberg creating an entire "news" outlet to push people to vote his position year round.
Well, obviously you're supposed to vote for whoever advertised more.
We're America, for Christ's sake. If we don't believe in the power of money, then what would we believe in?