On September 2, 2020, the video from a recent livestream I’d done got published to YouTube.
The title: “Why TRUMP Will Win 2020 Election”
My argument was built from the perspective of observing and noting what I saw; not sharing what I wanted to happen, but what I thought would happen and why. I made my case as objectively as I could.
Trump supporters, who seem to have become more open about their MAGA status over the last 4 years (or maybe it was just me being more willing to look for and listen to them), loved it. They liked, shared and commented on the vid heavily. Many of them, amazingly, found me to be very intelligent, smart, and subscribe-worthy based on my analysis.
A few weeks later, I realized that since I didn’t have a dog in the political race, I needed to balance out my messaging. After all, I’m the guy who said in episode #1424 (“Seeing Both Sides Of Any Argument”) that a wise person could argue the “yea” or “nay” of anything.
So, I made another video that both hedged my first and proved my skill (or so I thought): “Why BIDEN Will Win 2020 Election”
Funny enough, Trump supporters dominated the engagement on this one, too: there are two “dislikes” for every one “like” on YouTube. The majority of the comments were people telling me I was wrong, and that Trump would win re-election in a landslide.
As of the second week of November, we know what happened: Joe Biden had been declared the winner (I have to use this wording since President Trump has yet to cede the race as of the time of this writing). My predictions had a 50% success rate.
YouTube being YouTube, I’ve received just as many comments after the outcome as I did before the outcome. Not surprisingly, 98% of these comments are on the “Trump Will Win” video (which has 6x the views of the Biden vid, even pre-election).
The two most common responses (by the sheep who, as I recently told you, note what others have said and follow suit):
1) This didn’t age well ?
2) You were wrong!! Haha!!!
Of course, none of these commentators either know about or care to acknowledge that I argued both plausible outcomes of the election. Granted, what I did is not a normal thing to do, especially given how emotionally engaged people were ON BOTH SIDES (Trump voice ?) of this event.
I knew that in putting both vids up, the prediction that got proven wrong would draw all the attention from supporters of the winning side (from, we should note, people who sat on their hands when they could’ve made predictions themselves — but this game is not for everyone).
It reminded me about something — actually two somethings — you should keep in mind when it comes to the internet and humans in general.
1) People will silently watch while you take a risk, make a prediction, or put yourself out there.
If it succeeds, they’ll either remain quiet or politely congratulate you.
If it fails, the chorus of ridicule is 5x louder than the congratulations.
Why? Because your success reminds them of how their fear of failure kept them on the sidelines — AGAIN. That’s quite hard to deal with.
Your failure, on the other hand, confirms that they’re better off waiting for a no-risk guarantee (like celebrating the winner after we all know who won) than to take any chances in life. You failing confirms their lack of action, which is pleasing to the soul. They were actually correct in doing nothing.
2) What actually happened matters LESS than what serves the story in someone’s mind.
We like to use #FACTS when stating what we think is unchallengeable information. Our “facts” are really just the info that we choose to acknowledge (very often not the whole story), and/or the opinion/reasoning we’ve heard so many times that we’re convinced that it’s true.
This is why persuasion matters more than raw information now. If you want to get people on your side, you need them to believe a certain story. Whether it’s true or not is a secondary concern — and even then, only for people who care about getting it right over proving themselves right.
THIS is #FACTS.
Don’t hate the players.
Don’t hate the game.
Play the game.
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