Experts say that politicians like Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Trump and President Obama have been ahead of the curve in harnessing social media’s paradigm-changing power. Their ability to shine in bite-size media is reminiscent of John F. Kennedy’s prowess compared with Richard M. Nixon’s in the first televised presidential debate in 1960. And tools including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have given these politicians a significant portion of control in disseminating their own messages.
.. Ms. Olin, the social media strategist for the Obama campaign, said that social media tools might allow adept politicians in the future to paper over nuance or even obscure their beliefs, instead favoring moments that would most likely take off on social media.
On Kobe Bryant
WHAT STARTLES MOST about Kobe Bryant is his longevity. He has played in the NBA for twenty years. Few, if any, have played so well for so long. But longevity was also Kobe’s curse. He lasted into an era that had no use for him, an anachronism. By the time he won his last two championships, he was already being eclipsed by a player (LeBron) who was historically better.
.. What once seemed like a kind of vicious genius became what it perhaps always was: theatrical, ritualistic gestures toward a game that no one played any more, and with reason.
.. The era of analytics has not been kind to him, and histories written with the statistics in mind will be merciless. PER, VORP, plus/minus: all give us a Kobe who was never the best player in the league and often bad for his team.
.. Scrutinizers will continue to point out the selfless masters who didn’t or won’t enjoy Kobe’s long sendoff: the doe-eyed Tim Duncan; Kevin Garnett, another straight-out-of-high-school great; the tragic Steve Nash, possessed of possibly the worst haircut in the history of the sport, deprived of his ring by the infamous hip check from the malicious Robert Horry (who undeservedly has seven). These figures were transformative in a way Kobe will prove not to be.
.. He was a sociopath, and his deep-seated contempt drove him to become one of the most beautiful athletes
.. It’s curious how few post-mortems have mentioned the 2003 sexual assault case that, had it taken place in an era of social media, would have sunk his career.
Will Trump Be Dumped?
He doesn’t like invidious comparisons but he’s cool with being called an authoritarian.
“We need strength in this country,” he told me Friday morning, speaking from his Fifth Avenue office. “We have weak leadership. Hillary is pathetically weak.
.. Trump insisted that “the violence is not caused by me. It’s caused by agitators.” He added that “Hillary is the one disrupting my rallies. It’s more Hillary than Sanders, I found out.”
.. I wondered if he realized that, in riling up angry whites, he has pulled the scab off racism. “Obama, who is African-American, has done nothing for African Americans,” he replied.
.. He said he would soon unleash the moniker that he thought would diminish Hillary, the way “Little Marco” and “Lyin’ Ted” torched his Republican rivals; “I want to get rid of the leftovers first.”
.. Unable to resist, even though he knows I respect Kelly, he also described her to me as a “total whack job” with “no talent.”
.. Joe Scarborough said that just as F.D.R. was the master of radio and J.F.K. of television, D.J.T. is the titan of Twitter. The titan agreed, gloating about how his tweets to his seven million followers, sometimes penned in his jammies, become cable news bulletins. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll do them sometimes lying in bed.”
Not exactly a fireside chat. But it sure started a fire.
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The Shame Culture
Crouch argues that the omnipresence of social media has created a new sort of shame culture. The world of Facebook, Instagram and the rest is a world of constant display and observation. The desire to be embraced and praised by the community is intense. People dread being exiled and condemned. Moral life is not built on the continuum of right and wrong; it’s built on the continuum of inclusion and exclusion.
.. Second, there are nonetheless enforcers within the group who build their personal power and reputation by policing the group and condemning those who break the group code. Social media can be vicious to those who don’t fit in. Twitter can erupt in instant ridicule for anyone who stumbles.
Third, people are extremely anxious that their group might be condemned or denigrated. They demand instant respect and recognition for their group. They feel some moral wrong has been perpetrated when their group has been disrespected, and react with the most violent intensity.
.. The ultimate sin today, Crouch argues, is to criticize a group, especially on moral grounds. Talk of good and bad has to defer to talk about respect and recognition.
.. He notes that this shame culture is different from the traditional shame cultures, the ones in Asia, for example. In traditional shame cultures the opposite of shame was honor or “face” — being known as a dignified and upstanding citizen. In the new shame culture, the opposite of shame is celebrity — to be attention-grabbing and aggressively unique on some media platform.
.. It is a culture of oversensitivity, overreaction and frequent moral panics, during which everybody feels compelled to go along.
.. If we’re going to avoid a constant state of anxiety, people’s identities have to be based on standards of justice and virtue that are deeper and more permanent than the shifting fancy of the crowd.
.. The guilt culture could be harsh, but at least you could hate the sin and still love the sinner. The modern shame culture allegedly values inclusion and tolerance, but it can be strangely unmerciful to those who disagree and to those who don’t fit in.