#148) POLITICS: “The THEREFORE Test” for Campaign Slogans

Slogans are essential for effective mass messaging, but there seems to be no simple structural rules for creating them.  At all.  Here’s a first one.  It’s “The Therefore Test.”  Just say the word THEREFORE before the slogan.  Yep, it’s that simple, and will tell you plenty.  Jayde Lovell did an interview with me about this last week which just aired on the new Young Turks Network (TYT) digital television channel.  You can view it here.  

 

A SLOGAN SHOULD BE A STATEMENT OF CONSEQUENCE

Narrative consists of three main forces — agreement, contradiction, consequence.  Guess which force a slogan should embody.

If your slogan consists only of agreement it’s going to be boring.  If it conveys only contradiction it will be confusing and unfulfilling.  But if it’s a statement of consequence, it’s pushing forward and ideally even conveys the ultimate goal — action.

The ABT Narrative Template (And, But, Therefore) embodies the three forces.  So this is yet another application of the ABT tool.

 

THE “THEREFORE TEST” FOR SLOGANS

This becomes a very simple test for a slogan — just say the word “therefore,” then say the slogan.  Try it on some of the best slogans ever.  Each one rolls off the tongue after the word of consequence.

THEREFORE … give me liberty or give me death.

THEREFORE … just do it.

THEREFORE … you’re in good hands.

THEREFORE … better dead than red.

THEREFORE … I can feel a Fourex comin’ on

The last one is my favorite from living a few years in northern Australia.  The test isn’t the defining criteria for every possible slogan, but seems to work for most.

 

YOU CAN FEEL THE ABT THAT CAME BEFORE

Really good slogans, like these, seem to almost project backwards as you can feel what the ABT (And, But, Therefore narrative structure) was that brought you to the slogan.  Here’s the matching ABTs for the above …

The crown is having its way with us AND there are those who urge caution, BUT we can no longer endure the repression, THEREFORE … give me liberty or give me death.

You may want to hesitate AND it would be easy to not act, BUT life is short, THEREFORE … just do it.

You need reliable insurance AND many companies don’t provide it, BUT Allstate does, THEREFORE … you’re in good hands (with Allstate)

There is disagreement in this country about the threat of communism AND some feel it’s not a danger, BUT we say it threatens our entire existence, THEREFORE … we’re better dead than red.

Fourex is the best beer in Queensland AND you don’t want to drink too much of it, BUT I’m done with work, THEREFORE … I can feel a Fourex comin’ on.

 

TRUMP SHOWS HOW IT WORKS

(Trump Warning: if you can’t stomach Donald Trump you might want to skip this section)  Wanna learn a few things about mass messaging in today’s information-glutted society?  You really should set your emotions aside and engage in the clinical analysis of Trump’s communications traits (I’m hesitant to use the word “skills”).  I’ve been doing this for 3 years now, including this episode of the podcast, “The Business of Story,” the morning after the election.  It proved to be one of their most popular and has produced lots of emails to me from listeners over the past two years.

Look how Trump’s slogan makes sense coming off the word of consequence:

THEREFORE … make America great again.

And now look at how logical the ABT is that precedes it.

America was once a great AND mighty nation, BUT we’ve slipped in the world, THEREFORE … we need to make America great again.

It’s more than three years since Trump announced “Make America Great Again” as his official slogan in July, 2015.  He has not changed one word of it from the start.  That reflects how much of a bullseye he hit with the narrative structure from the start, showing once again that narrative is everything.

 

THEREFORE … LET’S LOOK AT CURRENT CAMPAIGN SLOGANS

Now it’s time to put The THEREFORE Test to work by looking at some of the current crop of political candidates and their slogans.  Here we go.

 

1)  ARIZONA:  ARIZONA: MCSALLY (REP) VS SINEMA (DEM)

In what may be the most intense race between two women this year, there is the military veteran Martha McSally running against the charismatic activist and current Representative Krysten Sinema.  Here are screen grabs of their slogans on their websites.

McSally has the better slogan(s), though neither is very good.  She has two slogans.  Let’s try them out:

THEREFORE … will you STAND with Martha McSally?

THEREFORE … make no mistake.

Both are firm and confident, reflecting her military background, but both are vague.  Is there one specific issue she is STANDING on, and is there one major decision she wants you to make no mistake about?  Both are consequential, but kind of empty.

More important — she has two slogans.  That’s not good.  How many slogans has Trump had?  As the bestselling 2012 book, “The One Thing,” will tell you, it’s about … the one thing — meaning “the singular narrative” when it comes to mass communication.

Sinema’s is worse.  All she has is a statement — like this:

THEREFORE … an independent voice for Arizona.

It’s not terrible.  As a general rule, if you can’t think of something powerful, short and clever then just go with a simple statement of a relevant fact — which is what this is.  Not bad, not good.

 

2)  TENNESSEE:   BREDESON (DEM) VS BLACKBURN (REP)

The race for Bob Corker’s open senate seat in Tennessee has a businessman, Phil Bredeson, running against Marsha Blackburn, a current Representative.

These are both pretty dull.

THEREFORE … working together to get things done for Tennessee.

THEREFORE … Tennessee values first, Tennessee values always.

Neither of them have much of a ring to them.  They are kind of bare minimum, platitude-ish.  Yes, we all want to get things done and are for “values.”  Neither says much.  When in doubt, just make a simple statement like these — doesn’t hurt, doesn’t help much.

 

3)  KANSAS:   KELLY (DEM) VS KOBACH (REP)

In the Kansas governor’s race it’s state senator Laura Kelly against current Secretary of State of Kansas, Kris Kobach.

THEREFORE … we are no longer ceding this state.  We are determined to take it back.

THEREFORE … time to lead (the conservatives to fix Topeka).

Someone needs to tell the Kelly campaign two sentences is not how you make a slogan.  Yes, the statement is clear, but there’s no ring to it — it’s too long — meaning it simply isn’t a slogan.  Try putting that on a t-shirt.  Not gonna work.

Kobach’s slogan is passable — “time to lead” — but doesn’t say much.  The funny part is the second half — to fix Topeka — given that the conservatives under Brownback broke it.

 

4)  TEXAS:  O’ROURKE (DEM) VS CRUZ (REP)

Okay, here’s an A-level contest that clearly has A-level talent behind their communications.  The upstart challenger Beto O’Rourke is taking on the incumbent Ted Cruz.

THEREFORE … Texas deserves better.

THEREFORE … tough as Texas.

Beto’s slogan is great!  It’s the kind of thing you can hear people muttering to themselves all day long — basically “we deserve better than this.”  It’s not at all specific, but it’s punchy and rolls perfectly off of THEREFORE.  It’s in the realm of “Just Do It.”  The only problem he has is that …

Ted’s slogan is equally powerful.  It plays off of the longtime campaign of “Don’t Mess With Texas.”

You can feel the ABTs preceding both.

BETO:  Texas has had some great politicians and they have done the state well, BUT right now there’s some lousy politicians, THEREFORE Texas deserves better.

TED:   Politics can be fun AND produce great things, BUT it can also get really ugly in DC, THEREFORE we need a senator to represent us who is Tough as Texas.

It’s gonna be a fierce next 6 weeks for this election.

 

5)  INTERMISSION:   THE SWING LEFT CAMPAIGN

This is my favorite of all the slogans for this fall.  It’s Swing Left, the nationwide activist campaign for the Democrats.

THEREFORE … don’t despair.  Mobilize

That’s the best ever.  Whoever made this slogan up needs to go to work for the Democratic party in general to create a slogan that can go on the black hat I wore in my interview with Jayde.  Seriously.

Think about the ABT that sets it up:

Trump won the presidency AND we’ve had some rough times, BUT it’s not going to help anything to give up, THEREFORE don’t despair — MOBILIZE (dammit)!

It’s just about perfect.  It has contradiction — going against the urge to despair.  It is aspirational — get going and mobilize.  And it’s faintly funny.  It’s great.

 

6)  NEW YORK:  MOLINARO (REP) VS CUOMO (DEM)

Now we go from the best to the worst.  Ugh.  The hopeless Republican challenger Marc Molinaro is taking on the Andrew Cuomo machine.

Let’s listen to them coming off the THEREFORE.

THEREFORE … let’s believe again.

THEREFORE ………….. together …….. ahead?  (um … whut?)

Molinaro doesn’t really seem to have a slogan.  His paragraph statement would work better as more of an ABT (“We in NY believe in this AND this, BUT recent folks have messed things up, THEREFORE elect me and let’s believe again.”)

But far more fascinating and borderline nauseating is what’s on Cuomo’s page — “Together Ahead.”  Everyone in the Democratic party needs to take a deep breath and realize that slogan represents everything that has got the Democrats into their tailspin of ineptitude that now characterizes the party.  It’s a slogan that not only has no ring to it, it’s downright BBB (Bland Beyond Belief).

Where did such a meaningless slogan come from?  I can offer a pretty solid guess.  I’m gonna bet there are more than one hard core Hillary supporters in his communications team and that they are still believing that her slogan, “Stronger Together” was a good one (it wasn’t — it was terrible).  So they are thinking by using the same word “Together” they are resonating with her wonderful campaign.  Ugh.

“Together Ahead” is just a terrible slogan.  Cuomo is so far ahead it won’t matter, which is kind of a shame — people will associate his huge victory with the slogan, as if one caused the other, but just think about what it says.  It’s two narrative directions.  Either word by itself would be better.  Just make it, “Together!”  or make it “Ahead!”   It’s a perfect example of “more is less.”  Keep it simple, eggheads.

 

WEAPONIZING THE ABT

That’s probably enough slogans for now.  Except one more.

Did you see the brilliant Bigfoot campaign commercial last week for Dean Phillips, running for representative in Minnesota’s 3rd district?  I love it to the nth degree.  It’s my kind of commercial — way more than MJ Hegar’s “door, door, door” commercial a couple months ago — which was good, but not brilliant like this spot.

Not surprisingly, his campaign has an excellent slogan:

THEREFORE … everyone’s invited.

And the preceding ABT would be:

My opponent claims to represent the district AND thinks he’s a voice for the public BUT the truth is he isn’t, THEREFORE for Dean Phillips campaign, everyone’s invited.

 

SO WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR A SLOGAN?

Here’s the short checklist I offer up.  There’s lots of “experts” on this communication stuff, but few are able to offer up a rational/analytical explanation for their instructions.  The ABT makes this possible.

1)  CONSEQUENTIAL – that it rolls off of “THEREFORE”

2)  SINGULAR –  just one slogan

3)  CONTRADICTION – implies some element of contradiction to something else

4)  ASPIRATIONAL –  ideally, is inspiring people to reach for something

5)  CONCISE –  short and has a ring to it

#145) Trump Still Knows Narrative: 5 Recommendations to Democrats

For more than 3 years I’ve been warning of Donald Trump’s communication skills from the perspective of the narrative tools I’ve developed.  He’s still doing the same things.


Not your typical politician.  Not really even a politician.  Trump comes, not from the world of politics, but entertainment.  It’s a problem.

 

UNDERSTANDING TRUMP

Journalists and scientists actually have a lot in common.  Both are obsessed with seeking the truth.  Both are to be admired for feeling considerable social responsibility.  And both do not understand entertainment media.

In a 1999 speech that has become my North Star, scientist-turned-filmmaker Michael Crichton said simply, “Scientists don’t understand media.”  No one would have known better than he, given the depth of his knowledge of the two worlds of science and entertainment.

It’s pretty much true for journalists as well.  They have traditionally been mystified by the madness of Hollywood and mass entertainment.  

The most important and prescient quote in that Crichton speech was this, “The Information Society will be dominated by those who are skilled at manipulating the media.”  I can’t imagine a more accurate prediction of the emergence of a figure like Donald Trump — someone more from the entertainment world than the political world — 20 years ago. 

A few days after Trump’s victory, CNN posted a list of 24 reasons he wonbut the article showed no grasp of the Information Society perspective Crichton understood.  The entire article does not include the words “information” or “communication.”  They missed his central attribute — Trump Knows Narrative.

 

TRUMP KNOWS NARRATIVE (STILL)

Media is about narrative.  It doesn’t tolerate material that is low in narrative content.  You can’t hold a press conference to read a telephone book and expect television to cover it.  It’s that simple.  And it means conversely, if you’re good at producing material with strong narrative content, the media will favor you. Comedians know this — if they bore or confuse they will die.

In the summer of 2015, after writing an entire book about narrative (“Houston, We Have A Narrative”) I began to notice how much Trump matched the narrative principles I had presented.   On January 5, 2016 I began my warnings that “Trump Knows Narrative” in detail — shortly after starting this blog.  

It was still months before Trump won the nomination.  In that first post I said, “The Democrats had better stop ridiculing him, stop making predictions that he could never win, and start understanding this thing called narrative that he has a mastery of.”  Ten months later, the morning after he won, I was the guest on the podcast, “The Business of Story.”  The title of my episode was, How Trump’s Narrative Intuition Beat Clinton and Put a Reality TV Actor in the White House.”    

Here now is an updated list of the top 5 ways in which you can see how, “Trump Knows Narrative,” continues to be true.  With each point I offer up my recommendation to the Democrats and their current candidates.

 

1) SLOGAN 

Here’s where it starts, and part of why I began my warnings about him in 2015.  He came out of the gates with a slogan (“Make America Great Again”) that was straight out of my ABT Framework and the ABT (And, But, Therefore narrative template).  

It was this:

Our country was once a great AND mighty nation, BUT we’ve slipped in the world, THEREFORE it’s time to Make America Great Again.

Democrats, lacking narrative intuition (as evidenced by their backing a candidate who had no clear narrative), could not see the power of that slogan — they could only think to ridicule it.  And that is still about all they can think to do when it comes to Trump.

What’s deeper about the slogan is that it also arises straight out of The Monomyth as articulated by Joseph Campbell.  The core principle of the Monomyth is that the hero embarks on a journey which has at its core one overriding desire which is to “Return to the Ordinary World AGAIN.”  

In 2015 as I initially saw the slogan I found myself feeling something familiar about that word “Again,” until I finally realized this connection.  He is basically drawing on “the power of myth” with the slogan.  Yes, that is how deep his narrative intuition goes.

RECOMMENDATION:  The Democrats need a slogan.  It’s that simple.  We live in a media society.  For mass dynamics, you can’t opt out.

 

2) ONE WORD

One of the key observations that has emerged from our Story Circles Narrative Training — which is approaching our 50th circle — is the power of the Dobzhasky Template that I first introduced in “Houston, We Have A Narrative.”  This is my template for finding the “One Word” that is the narrative core of a topic.  

For Trump, it goes like this:

Nothing in America today makes sense, except in the light of GREATNESS.

That’s it.  That has been his message from the start and hasn’t changed one bit.  It pervades everything he says.  He is constantly hammering home this need for everyone.  He ends most speeches with it.

He doesn’t have any sort of analytical understanding of narrative.  He could never teach a course in it.  He only embodies it.

RECOMMENDATION:   Put the Dobzhansky Template to work.  It’s simple.  Nothing in _____ makes sense except in the light of _____ .   This is the tool to help you pinpoint your theme, and your theme is your message.

 

3) NARRATIVE INDEX

In the fall of 2015 I defined The Narrative Index as simply the ratio of the words BUT to AND in any given text.  I found that everyone from Abe Lincoln on the high end to George W. Bush on the low end shows consistent patterns in this simple metric.  

I’ve posted repeatedly about Trump’s high scores for the Narrative Index (here, here, here) and have talked about overall patterns of the Narrative Index for everyone who is yearning to lead society.  I also presented it in the 2nd edition of  “Don’t Be Such A Scientist” this spring.

RECOMMENDATION:   Track down the speeches of your favorite candidates and simply use your word processor to count the occurrence of BUT and AND, then calculate the ratio of the BUT to AND.  If it’s below 10, you’ve got a problem.  And while you’re at it, also calculate the AND Index, presented here.  If it’s over 3.0, you should be concerned, if it’s over 4.0 there’s definitely a problem.  Trump’s average for about 20 speeches was below 2.0.  Trump knows narrative.

 

4) SINGULAR INSULT NAMES

Trump’s use of nicknames (Crooked Hillary, Lyin’ Ted, Pocahantas) is about mass communication, far more than bullying.  This is where you can see how journalists simply don’t understand entertainment.  The only context they seem to be able to view this issue in is bullying.  There’s a stunningly long list of these names on the Wikipedia page for them.

But it’s much deeper.  

These are simple, singular labels that cut through the noise of today’s information overloaded world.  All you have to do is read the 2012 bestseller “The One Thing” to see the significance of these nicknames.

From the start the Democrats have been completely confused by the names.  All they could think to do is chuckle and dismiss them as being just silly.  They aren’t silly.  They are powerful communications tools, identical to stereotypes.

And just two weeks ago I listened to Chris Matthews on his show “Hardball” on MSNBC chuckling dismissively about the latest label from Trump: the Failing New York Times.  

RECOMMENDATION:  Stop laughing.  And come up with one singular, simple, widely agreed upon and used insult name for Donald Trump.  Why hasn’t this happened?  Yes, lots of pundits have proposed their own names, but a hundred different names is no different than none.  The number you want is ONE and only ONE name for him.  Have the Democrats not wanted to hurt his feeling?  I just don’t get it.  Fight fire with fire, and do it fiercely.

 

5) CONFIDENCE

Here is Trump’s ultimate tactic, straight out of narrative tradition — the omniscient narrator.  It’s what mass audiences seek — not someone who “has the courage to say they don’t know,” but rather someone who is willing to emulate what you get in a good novel — the all-knowing narrator.

Yes, it’s that simple.  We crave certainty, he’s willing to provide it, even if it’s a pack of lies.

Trump knows narrative.

RECOMMENDATION:   Find the things you’re certain of for the Democratic party and lead with them.  It’s what I’ve said for years.  “An Inconvenient Truth,” should have opened with the incredible things climate science has brought us that we can be certain of (i.e. El Nino, fixing the Ozone Hole).  You don’t lead with statements about what might happen in the future that you’re uncertain of.  You open with what we can all agree upon, and you milk it for all its worth.

And while they’re at it on the confidence front, why don’t the Democratic members of congress confidently make the case for prohibiting the president from using Twitter.  He’s the most important diplomatic voice in the country, why can’t the people control him?  Desperate times call for desperate measures.   Innovations in technology call for innovations in legislature.  

#144) “Buried Pearls”: 43 years later, why is OBFUSCATION still the central problem of science communication?

In 1975 Michael Crichton published an elegant short paper pointing to obfuscation as “the problem” for medical communication.  His essay was equally valid for the communication of science in general.  He ended by mentioning that so much important communication ends up as “buried pearls.”   Sadly Crichton’s great little paper ended up itself as a buried pearl.

Do evolutionists have a t-shirt with a slogan on it?  Yes we do!

 

EXASPERATION AND THE MARCH OF OBFUSCATION

What happened?   How was it that the core problem of science communication was so clearly identified and articulated in 1975, but then quickly lost to the dustbin of non-citation?

I invite you to read this simple, elegant paper by techno-thriller author and eventual Hollywood giant Michael Crichton, written in his last months in the academic world.  He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute, though by then he was more of a creative writer than scientific researcher, which obviously caused him to start asking, “Why are these scientific papers so hard to read?”

It’s a great article.  Why wasn’t I told about it as a graduate student in biology?  Why didn’t I hear about it in the 1980’s as science communication first emerged as a major concern (I remember when NSF first starting requiring 10% of grant proposal budgets go to outreach)?  Why didn’t someone write to me after any of my 3 books on science communication and tell me about it?   Why does Google Scholar show that it has only been cited 83 times over the four decades since its publication?

 

IT WASN’T ALWAYS THIS BAD

In the discussion of the paper, Crichton points out that, “Only in the twentieth century has obfuscation become widely acceptable.”  That parallels my relating in, “Don’t Be Such A Scientist,” historian of science Naomi Oreskes telling me about how a century ago scientists had to be good with communication in order to even raise the funds needed to do science.  

But the twentieth century saw the rise of the science industrial complex which produced a new breed of scientist — nurtured in the laboratory, funded without communication skills, sheltered from the public, and admired for the mysteriousness of scientific knowledge.  Obfuscation became an accepted practice and only continues to get worse.

Meanwhile, the problem of obfuscation continues to be rediscovered in essays like this one from 2015, which at least concedes, “The idea that writing should be clear, concise, and low-jargon isn’t a new one.”

 

WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN?

It’s always fun to have some laughs at the hopelessness of academic communication.  Slate reveled in this presentation of the Ignobel awards where they have a young girl come out on the stage and shout, “Please stop. I’m bored.” repeatedly for anyone who goes on for more than a minute.  

For my documentary feature film, “Flock of Dodos,” I staged a comic debate between the world’s slimiest intelligent design proponent and the world’s angriest evolutionist.  It culminated in them revealing their t-shirts emblazoned with their slogans.  The screen grab above shows the evolutionist reading his “slogan.”

Plenty to laugh about, but then we end up with the New York Times handing over 24,000 words and an entire issue of their Sunday magazine titled, “Losing Earth,” for a junior writer to tell a tale of scientific heroism that leaves out the entire element of science communication ineptitude.  The writer, Nathaniel Rich, told of James Hansen and Rafe Pomerance as climate warriors ahead of their times, but what he should have mentioned was the Crichton 1975 paper pointing out what verbose clods scientists were and continue to be when it comes to getting their own message out.  To celebrate scientists back then over their climate efforts is like praising a football team that has excellent offense but no defense.  They weren’t the whole package — that point needs to be kept in mind, Mr. Rich — and that is the real story to be told.

Nothing has changed.  Just two days ago Al Gore (who isn’t a scientist, but emerged in 2006 as the lead spokesperson FOR the climate science community) went on for over TWO HOURS in his climate “training” session in Los Angeles prompting a friend in the audience to text me the following message:

Gore gave a 2+ hour version of his presentation. And the more I think about it, the more I’m surprised that with all of the people surrounding him, all of the production, team, experts, etc, no one has tried to shape his presentation more, or make it less one dimensional….it was literally one hour of slides showing floods, fires, and droughts. Not kidding. I started fidgeting and getting frustrated and thinking WTF??? We’re here because we’re already on board, JEEZ know your audience!!!

To quote the old Peter, Paul and Mary song, “When will they ever learn?  When will they evvvvvvver learn?”

In the meanwhile, Crichton pinpointed the problem in 1975 — obfuscation.  The ABT Framework is the solution, and here’s a simple, elegant new presentation of it by Tullio Rossi.   

#135) The Colorado National Park Service Story Circles Video

“That one hour that they got together every week was the most enjoyable hour of their work week.”  That’s how Larry Perez, Communications Coordinator for National Park Service in Ft Collins, Colorado, opens this new video about Story Circles.  The video speaks for itself — Story Circles works.


COMMUNICATIONS TRAINING doesn’t have to be boring and dull.

#130) The ABT/Narrative Fingerprint of the United States

Southerners tell stories, northerners are more informational/intellectualMaybe.  More than a billion tweets suggest this.

 

YOU MIGHT THINK EVERYONE TELLS STORIES, BUT … LOOKS LIKE THERE’S SOME REGIONAL VARIATION.

 

THE GREAT AMERICAN WORDMAPPER SHOWS AMERICA’S “BUT VS. AND” PATTERNS

One of the best payoffs from the presentation Jayde Lovell and I gave at SXSW Interactive was the vigorous discussions that popped up on Twitter.  In the middle of one of them we got a big treat which you can see above.

Jack Grieve is a “forensic linguist” at Ashton University in the U.K.  He joined our discussion and mentioned this amazing study he was part of.  It’s called The Great American Word Mapper, where they analyzed over a billion tweets in the United States.

On Monday this week we had him connect through Skype to our Story Circles Narrative Training Demo Day with USGS folks in Minneapolis.  He told us more detail about the study.   It turns out every time you tweet, there are geographic coordinates recorded.  That’s what they used to produce this amazing regional resource.

We were discussing my Narrative Index (BUT/AND x 100).  He sent us the above plots for BUT versus AND.  Which is incredibly fascinating.  And exactly what I would predict.

 

SOUTHERNERS ARE STORYTELLERS 

Long, long ago, when I was still a professor at UNH, I heard a talk from the Director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.  He made the case that the south is THE voice of American culture.  He based this on a number of aspects, such as the only truly original art form the U.S. has given the world is jazz music, and the largest number of great novelists and playwrights have come from the south.   He also pointed out there are no other centers for the study of culture for other parts of the country. 

Having grown up in Kansas and spent plenty of time in the south, I definitely know that it is the greatest region for storytelling in the country.  Which means I would expect it to be the region of the greatest ABT activity, and thus … exactly what you see — the greatest use of BUT in tweets.

There’s lots of other reasons for this pattern you could suggest.  He felt it was strongly correlated to African American populations, but … look at Maryland — it has the 4th highest percentage of African American population.  And look at New York versus Arkansas — they have the same percentage.

I think it’s a higher level function.  I would argue the north/south difference in storytelling holds across all ethnicities.  But then what do I know — I’m just making this ABT stuff up as we go along!

#110) Banning Trump from Twitter: Valarie Plame Advances a Great Narrative

Valerie Plame understands media. It’s not about facts. It’s not about pointing out individual pieces of misinformation from Donald Trump. It’s about advancing new narratives, like “Let’s buy Twitter and kick Trump off.” The information side of that is cockamamie, but as a narrative it’s awesome and attention-getting. And idea-generating. She gets it. If only the Democrats did as well.

 ADVANCING THE NARRATIVE.  This is what it’s about — launching new narratives.


ADVANCING THE NARRATIVE. This is what it’s about — launching new narratives.



DIPLOMACY CAN’T AFFORD TO BE NON-NARRATIVE

I’ve spent all year trying to explain there is an analytical reason for why President Trump should not be allowed to use Twitter for anything related to diplomacy. Back in January I pointed out that Twitter is too short, by half, to allow the communication of coherent ABT-structured narratives. And I’ve spent the year wondering what in the world is wrong with Congress that they can’t seem to see this as anything more than a laughing matter.

Twitter is not a joke. It’s a source of rapid mass communication. It creates all sorts of mass MIScommunication, as I explained in that essay, using Stephen Colbert’s debacle as an example.

Finally someone truly gets it. Former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson has taken the issue into her own hands with an attention-getting idea that is unlikely to occur, but that’s not the point. She is identifying the problem — that we’ve got a President who is well known to behave in a reckless manner. He simply should not be allowed to do it with Twitter.



WE’RE IN A POST-SUBSTANCE WORLD

The last election showed how we have entered a new phase of The Information Society. Facts and accuracy now count for very little. What matters now is higher levels of information organization — namely narrative threads.

Some how, some way the Democratic party has to grasp this, realize that Twitter is dangerous, realize that the last President used it very cautiously, but the current President is running roughshod with it.

There has to be a way to stop this from happening. It begins by identifying the problem and getting everyone talking about it. The Democratic party has done nothing at all about this. It’s up to single citizens like Valerie Plame Wilson for now to at least try. She gets it.





#101) How Twitter fuels our increasingly mediocre narrative-driven world

The news used to be driven by the truth, at least in theory. Today — more than ever — it’s driven by story (as Trump knows well), which requires sources of contradiction. When contradiction is in short supply, Twitter conveniently provides it. USA Today knows this at a deep and instinctive level. They continue to blaze the path into The Age of Mediocrity.

STORY TRUMPS TRUTH today in ways not seen since the medieval Dark Ages.  Brought to you by science, technology and Twitter, run amok.

STORY TRUMPS TRUTH today in ways not seen since the medieval Dark Ages. Brought to you by science, technology and Twitter, run amok.



STORY TRUMPS TRUTH

Narrative consists of three forces — AGREEMENT, CONTRADICTION, CONSEQUENCE. If you want a solid narrative structure, you need sources of all three.

Furthermore, Rule #1 of storytelling is that “The power of storytelling rests in the specifics.”

Today’s news media has a ravenous appetite for both contradiction and specifics. Twitter provides both.

If I tell you Ann Coulter got into a spat on a flight, that’s moderately interesting. But if I can use Twitter to quote specific words from her AND specific words of opposition, as USA Today does in this article today, it’s much more powerful. Who cares whether the Twitter sources are reputable.

Even more to the point, if I tell you Ed Sheeran’s appearance on “Game of Thrones” sucked, that’s moderately interesting. But it’s much more interesting and engaging if I can cite specific voices — regardless of whether they are professional movie critics. Who cares who they are, they are sources of contradiction and specifics — precious narrative fuel.

It’s happening all day, every day now. How do movie critics even have a job any more? How do any experts have jobs? We are devolving into a gelatinous mass of supposedly all-knowing crowd-sourced knowledge, driven by an increasingly insatiable thirst for narrative, accompanied by an increasing disgust and even contempt for what used to be known as “the truth.”

Thus continues our information-glutted sleigh ride into The Age of Mediocrity, overseen by The Master of Contradiction in the White House. And followed suit by the increasingly dull and mediocre Democrats who respect and value the voices of mediocrity.