So back when blogs were blogs and had comments (with decent signal:noise ratio, even), I’d be in the comments at Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein’s sites (hey wonklife, I was Senescent).
Fun times, fun times. No better way to hone your theory of mind than spending all day watching people describing what they thought other people would think about what they thought about those other people’s public personas.
That’s where I first came across Steve Sailer, who would show up day after day, ignore whatever shit he got, and have something cheerfully novel to say about the topic of the post as a leadin to linking two essays on tangential subjects. Good strategy.
Anyway that was the setting for one of the most interesting things I ever noticed. There was this commenter on Yglesias’ blog named Petey, who was actually really clever, subtle, worthwhile.
And then in the middle of the 2008 presidential primary, John Edwards said something about a plan to make something - healthcare? I forget - available to everyone by letting people sign up from computers at public libraries.
And it was like a throwaway moment, not fleshed out at all, but this guy Petey went all in on it, praising it to the heavens in comments. And people would be like “but Petey, how’s that supposed to work?”
And he’d just insult the questioner and restate the premise, like “What are you, a moron? You go to the library. You sign up. That’s it.” And people would be like “no, you misunderstand me, (informed question about backends and regulation and &tc)” and he’d just insult them, and restate the premise.
And this was completely at odds with his whole persona for years up to this point, and he just kept it up. He’d praise Edwards to the heavens and just repeat slogan-level statements as if they were glorious wisdom, and when questioned just insult the questioner and repeat them harder.
And then Edwards dropped out and he switched to Hillary as if nothing had happened and kept doing it. (Even though he had previously been seriously shit-talking her, for example.)
And one of the things he did was whenever he referred to Yglesias he’d call him “trust fund scumbag Matt Yglesias”, by way of accounting for why Matt failed to get on board and push the same line, the line that he should obviously be pushing and had no reasonable excuse not to.
And one of the things I respect Yglesias for most, he had a comments section that would regularly reach the mid-100s, which was a lot back then, and he almost never made any signs of acknowledging that the comments even existed. Once in a blue moon of blue moons, he’d post a comment of his own.
And this is the only time I ever remember him actually making a post(!) that acknowledged a comment. Not because something had caught on - all the other commenters thought Petey was being ridiculous. Not because anyone had actually said something worthwhile, quite the opposite! People said worthwhile things all the time. Rather, specifically because someone had thrown the steering wheel out the window and implacably committed to repeating the same idiocy (“forcing a meme”, if you will) over and over forever.
And that is the power of message discipline.
