Life under a clicktatorship
One of the strangest moments to emerge from the U.S. kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro was the flurry of images posted by President Trump on Truth Social. It felt a bit like a student who can’t decide which spring break photos look cutest, so they just upload them all…. It felt as if a group of twelve-year-old boys in a basement had been handed control of the most lethal military in history—and were using it to boost their online brands.
A primary motive of this administration is boosting their clout on social media. It’s simultaneously pathetic and terrifying. “… standing out online often demands being awful—channeling negative emotions like anger and outrage, usually based on misinformation or conspiracy theories.”
What I’m arguing is that the Trump administration isn’t just using social media to shape a narrative. Many of its members are deeply addicted to it. We would be concerned if a senior government official was an alcoholic or drug addict, knowing it could impair judgment and decisionmaking. But we should be equally concerned about Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk’s social media compulsions—just as much as their alcohol or ketamine use, respectively.
Overexposure to online engagement has cooked the brains of some of the most powerful people in the world. This is not exclusively an American phenomenon…. But in the US government, poster brain feels endemic. The Trump administration is made up of a cabinet of posters. For many, that’s how they won Trump’s attention. The head of the FBI, for example, is a podcaster—that’s his main qualifier for the job.
Parker Molloy, a trans woman journalist, received death threats and suspended her BlueSky account for a day after she made a post that it was weird that somebody modified an Animal Crossing cartoon mascot to give it boobs.
Why Young Men Are Souring on Trump.
The disaffected young men who helped elect Trump are fed up with high prices, worried about A.I., and frustrated by the president’s neocon turn. And, according to exclusive new polling data, they’re souring on Trump just as they turned on Joe Biden.
Encouraging news — not just about waning support for the bumbling crime boss, but also that young men have good reasons for opposing him.
Now the Democrats have to get their thumbs out of their asses and start supporting the people instead of oligarchs.
I discovered this separately myself and am pleased to see validation. Articles on how to beat insomnia tell you that if you’re having trouble sleeping, you should get up out of bed and do something else. That is 100% not true.
John Scalzi:
No one was asking for a pop art scifi movie that was ostensibly about shooting big damn alien bugs but was really a meditation about the quiet mainstreaming of fascistic thought and imagery into everyday life, and how all that glossy, idealized ubermensch aesthetic and thinking falls apart once it meets the chaos of war. But surprise! Here it is! Would you like to know more?
Maybe I’d enjoy the movie more if I saw it again today. Maybe I’d find it too painful to watch.
The December Comfort Watches 2025, Day Eighteen: Starship Troopers