It’s unfortunate that people don’t talk about the benefits of negative publicity more in this context. Attention can be metabolized into money or other resources. Negative attention too, because it will galvanize at least some positive attention, and because it gives you free publicity and sometimes people will straight-up pay for things they think are terrible. Look at what Jordan Peterson and Donald Trump have made out of being hated by so many.
You can’t do this if you’re depending on the average of public opinion for validation, though.
You can’t do this if you’re depending on the average of public opinion for validation, though.
I’m curious why you write this line after speaking about Donald Trump who did have to win something like an average of the population to vote for him.
Nassim Taleb writes about the benefit of negative publicity. His notion of anti-fragility is useful for thinking about when negative publicity is beneficial. Conceptually, I think that notion is more useful than asking yourself whether you depend on an average of public opinion.
When you want more of a how-to guide there’s Ryan Holiday’s Trust Me I’m Lying.
It seems to me like the main interesting thing Trump did was win the primary, and his tactics seemed designed to galvanize strong supporters, not win over the median Republican voter. I think the general election very closely followed party affiliation, which suggests that most voters just aren’t that sensitive to the details of who’s their party’s candidate and vote the party line.
But even under the median voter theorem you only need slightly more than 50% of voters to like you just a little more than the alternatives, and the intensity of opposition doesn’t matter much.
Even so, I agree Trump was not a straightforward example. Oops!
There were at the time plenty of people who predicted that even if Trump would win the primary he surely wouldn’t win the general selection. The fact that he did seems to be more obvious in hindsight.
The situations I was most imagining (from Sarah’s original post, not necessarily from Jessicata’s comment) were actually more Dunbar-ish-number-sized – a workplace or local community, that is large enough to have multiple interest groups.
In that context… well, there’s still a benefit of negative publicity (I have sometimes written things with intent to be medium-controversial, so as to get more attention to an idea). But it comes embedded with more personal costs than when you’re engaging the wider world and “no such thing as bad press” is a bit more fraught a guideline.
It’s unfortunate that people don’t talk about the benefits of negative publicity more in this context. Attention can be metabolized into money or other resources. Negative attention too, because it will galvanize at least some positive attention, and because it gives you free publicity and sometimes people will straight-up pay for things they think are terrible. Look at what Jordan Peterson and Donald Trump have made out of being hated by so many.
You can’t do this if you’re depending on the average of public opinion for validation, though.
I’m curious why you write this line after speaking about Donald Trump who did have to win something like an average of the population to vote for him.
Nassim Taleb writes about the benefit of negative publicity. His notion of anti-fragility is useful for thinking about when negative publicity is beneficial. Conceptually, I think that notion is more useful than asking yourself whether you depend on an average of public opinion.
When you want more of a how-to guide there’s Ryan Holiday’s Trust Me I’m Lying.
It seems to me like the main interesting thing Trump did was win the primary, and his tactics seemed designed to galvanize strong supporters, not win over the median Republican voter. I think the general election very closely followed party affiliation, which suggests that most voters just aren’t that sensitive to the details of who’s their party’s candidate and vote the party line.
But even under the median voter theorem you only need slightly more than 50% of voters to like you just a little more than the alternatives, and the intensity of opposition doesn’t matter much.
Even so, I agree Trump was not a straightforward example. Oops!
There were at the time plenty of people who predicted that even if Trump would win the primary he surely wouldn’t win the general selection. The fact that he did seems to be more obvious in hindsight.
The situations I was most imagining (from Sarah’s original post, not necessarily from Jessicata’s comment) were actually more Dunbar-ish-number-sized – a workplace or local community, that is large enough to have multiple interest groups.
In that context… well, there’s still a benefit of negative publicity (I have sometimes written things with intent to be medium-controversial, so as to get more attention to an idea). But it comes embedded with more personal costs than when you’re engaging the wider world and “no such thing as bad press” is a bit more fraught a guideline.