Overview:
Like some unscrupulous strippers, conservative media sets up its consumers for the long con. Truth Social is just another example
My job as a stripper was to lie. Well, mostly. I presented a fantasy—an illusion. I told customers what they wanted to hear, and showed them what they wanted to see. And I swear, I really did like some customers, but the ones I didn’t like never knew it. That was part of the performance. It was what they paid for, and I delivered.
I should have won an Oscar. I was the Meryl Streep of faking affection.
The key to selling a fantasy is knowing what your customer really wants to see. At a strip club, they want to be part of the show, fully immersed in it. They want to feel special.
The ethics of such an endeavor can be…nuanced. Most people walking into a strip club know that they are coming in to be entertained. They are essentially giving permission to be fooled. Just like when we watch a movie, we know that the people on screen are acting for our entertainment. No one thinks Robert Downey Jr. is really Iron Man after the lights come on.
The difference is that we know we are being lied to and are all in for it. Rather than victims, we’re in on the gag.
I would love to say that all dancers worked this way, but unfortunately, they did not. Some would keep up the ruse and take everything they could until there was nothing left. It’s a scorched earth strategy that was very lucrative, but one I didn’t agree with. Oftentimes, the customer not only never saw it coming, but refused to believe they were being taken advantage of after having been bled dry.
Conservative media figured this out long before I did.
Think about it. The constant rhetoric is designed to make its audience feel special. It aims to make them feel smart and important. To make them feel wanted and superior to a manufactured enemy that they all get to hate together. To make them happy to contribute to the common cause. Priming them for the con.
Truth Social was destined to fail, maybe even intended to fail.
The poorly-cloned Twitter app that was supposed to be the orange-tinted conservative’s messiah’s comeback after being banned looks already to be a huge flop. After collecting a ton of investor money of course.
Please excuse my not typing his name. I have a lingering fear that if I type it three times he may reach through my screen and grab me by the you-know-what.
Like the best friend of a hopelessly smitten strip club customer, anyone outside the conservative media bubble saw it coming.
It can be painful to watch someone so willing to participate in their own victimization. But that is exactly what happens when you want to believe something so badly that no amount of conflicting information will change your mind.
Like the strip club customer refusing to acknowledge they’ve been duped, Truth Social’s victims partake in a frantic mental parkour to avoid facing that fact. The talking heads in their bubble will apply salve to the wounds in the form of projecting blame on the enemy they’ve created before priming their marks for the next grift.
Truth Social was never going to be huge. And that stripper that smiles every time you walk in the door is likely happier to see your wallet than your face.