For those interested in meta discourse…this comment I’m replying to is a good teaching tool to carry out some exercises, so I’m going to pull it apart, instead of actually talking to the guy.

(Think of it as a live-action English class, but instead of pulling apart boring-as-shit short stories written decades ago, I’m gonna do it to this guy.) Note, I’m not an expert, I’m just a novel writer that gets really pissed off when I see people using techniques IRL that I use in fiction.

First, look at timing of that guy’s comment. Original post pops up about the Russian state’s “success in amplifying disinformation” online. Within 16 minutes, we have this guy jumping in to say, “But what about the US!” Just fast as fucking lightning, diverting attention away from a news post shedding light on how online information can be manipulated by state-level actors to amplify lies and misinformation.

Of course, I can imagine a topic like this is a high-priority target to be shut down. “Oh shit, they’re onto us!”

Now, is this guy actually a Russian agent? (Or from some other nation?) I don’t actually know. It’s impossible for me to find out. But whether this guy is totally legit in all the views proclaimed and is an individual American who truly believes them, or a bad actor from elsewhere, it doesn’t matter.

If you set a cup outside and rain fills it up, or if you go over and fill the cup yourself, the end result is the cup is filled. How it comes to be and the intent behind it doesn’t matter. We can’t prove intent here, that’s invisible thoughts in the poster’s head that we can never access. But we can see the actual action they took (posting), and the timing of it (which they chose), and the words contained (all of which they also chose to use), and think about WHY someone would post those words in this thread with that timing. We can’t see their intent, but we can analyze their actions and choices.

And in this case, the end result of them chiming in here and now with “the US does shitty things too!” is in my opinion distraction from a really important topic, that social media (including this site right here!) is being manipulated to sow division. As someone else in this thread pointed out, it’s “whatabout-ism”. The original news article is about one thing, and this guy jumps in pointing to some other topic instead.

Here’s some other things I want to call out, pertaining to their word-choices.

I don’t think we

“We”. In their very first line. They’re trying to put themselves into a group with other Americans, trying to form closeness with their words. Think of in a movie, the used car salesman slinging their arm over your shoulder. WE want to do this thing, right? WE think this way, yeah?

It plays on the human desire to not be left out of the group. And the fear of saying, “No, WE don’t actually think that at all!” in case there’s repercussions for disagreeing.

should put ourselves on a high horse

Again, playing on emotions of people. “High horse” is a phrase that has an emotional weight. I’m a writer and there’s very few places where I’d use that phrase unless I was really pissed and trying to rouse emotions in others by being mocking or belittling.

When combined with the “we”, think of someone throwing their arm over your shoulder and saying, “Now, WE don’t want to be all stuck up on our high horses, DO WE?” and it suggests someone who goes against the speaker is on a high horse or is otherwise speaking with a snootiness that is not in line with their station or social status.

Which, again, goes back to creating fear in the reader. Anxiety. If we engage with the original news article, are we getting above our station in life? Are we acting out of line? Do “good” people get out of line? And if I think I’m a good person what happens if I do something that might be out of line? A bunch of anxiety about one’s unverbalized social status in life swirls around.

Russia hoax was proven false, many Clinton personnel and news stations just ran with it.

The word “hoax” is emotionally charged. People don’t like being embarrassed, they don’t want to fall for hoaxes, so when you use that word, fear is roused in the reader that there’s a chance that THEY have fallen for a hoax, and if they don’t back out quick, people might think less of them, or they might feel stupid. People’s priorities can get super-fucked-up if they just THINK they got caught doing something stupid, if there’s just a chance they fell for a hoax, because there’s a lot of emotion tied up in it–panic, shame, guilt. So there’s ways to manipulate if you start telling them they might’ve fallen for a hoax.

Another emotionally-charged word here is “Clinton” (one, it has decades of political baggage, two, it’s being dropped in this post when Clinton hasn’t actually been doing much or anything politically since she lost, which again suggests the person I’m responding to is shit-stirring as it’s brought up for no reason connected to current events in order to harvest the fearful emotions connected to the name from previous years and decades.)

And then connecting the word “Clinton” to “media” aims at fearmongering that “the left” is controlling media.

It’s kind of like a magician doing something flashy with one hand (invoking the name of Clinton and the fear of Clinton-run media) while doing the actual slight-of-hand sneakily (this post here that’s using whataboutism, the false-closeness of “we”, and other charged words like pulling “Clinton” and “many Clinton…news stations” out of nowhere).

Someone might jump in now that I’ve said this and say that yeah, America has done shitty things, and yeah mainstream media does shitty things–those are important topics too, are you shutting that down/censoring/etc?

But I’m saying that human social interaction has always had a “time and place” component. You don’t go to a funeral and ask the widow if she’s single. Yeah, she technically is…but it’s not the time nor place even if her being single technically is a fact.

Similarly, for a thread that is talking about something that is VERY important (like social media being manipulated by bad actors), it’s not the time and place to jump in and start turning people onto other topics. Unless, you know…you’re trying to sow division and cause chaos. Then I imagine jumping in and saying “we” have done “other” bad things and shouldn’t get on “our high horse” would further your goals.

Anyway. My point with the above isn’t to be some textbook water-tight whatever debating the guy. I honestly don’t care about that bit. It’s more an attempt to talk to people about how timing of a comment is important, and word choice in a comment can rouse emotions (very easily in fact), and these things should be in your mind when you read comments on political threads.

And if you’re tired of the usual political comments–someone says something inflammatory, someone posts a rebuttal–you can jump up to the meta discussion, and start picking apart in your head the timing of the other person’s post, and the emotional “color” and “weight” of the words they chose to use, etc. and ask yourself questions about why they said that, in this place, with this timing, and what kind of person might have that comment they posted in their history, but also all the other posts in their history, and see if you can build up in your mind what sort of individual that might be, with what motivations.

This is like…the one place where those English class analysis of paragraphs or stories actually start to be very important in real life. The one place where those skills have real-world use instead of seeming useless outside of the classroom.

(Extra credit: There’s a few places in THIS post where I used some emotionally colored words. What are they? What effect did they have on you? I don’t actually want anyone to tell me, I have no prizes to give out, I just want you to think about it.)