Joe Stanley

Something I’ve been trying to wrap my head around is how to bridge the wonkfest of politics with the community of Tumblr. I’ve also been thinking about this statement from Arnold Kling:

The following thought occurred to me recently. Suppose we look at writing on issues where people tend to hold strong opinions that fit with their ideology. Such writing can

(a) attempt to open the minds of people on the opposite side as the author

(b) attempt to open minds of people on the same side as the author

(c) attempt to close minds of people on the same side as the author

So, think about it. Wouldn’t you classify most op-eds and blog posts as (c)? Isn’t that sort of pathetic? Here are some more thoughts:

1. The default is (c). If you are not consciously trying to do (a) or (b), then you will almost surely do (c)…

I don’t think this gifset moves out of (c). But I do think it is the medium equivalent of moving out of (c) for Tumblr #Politics. If you look at the featured posts, the supermajority are long text posts. Realistically, folks aren’t really reading them; comparing text post notes to photo or heaven-forbid video post notes for featured tags illustrates the point.

I guess this is all just to say that if you are talking about a serious topic, but nobody bothers to listen, was it really worth it? How does that stack against the opportunity cost of something more conducive to the audience and presentation platform?

(via alexstone)