[boomboomsubban]

>Simple example: How do politically motivated troll armies influence an election in a reality where people don't use social media as their primary news source?

By having one super rich troll run for president and buy hour long slots of evening broadcasting. See Ross Perot.

[advael]

I mean there's a world of difference between "Perhaps millions of people, given motivation and a bit of luck, can pull off a thing" and "A super rich guy can pull off a thing"

This is the whole reason people talk about middle-class modern humans of various recent eras "living like kings" in comparison to humans of less recent eras. The thing (Maybe that's "having people from across the world entertain you in your living room", maybe it's "Eating elaborately prepared deserts made out of refined sugar") was possible for some before, but not nearly as many. This is the kind of thing technology tends to change most often. Not best-case capability, but access and scale

Like some of those things are mass-produced superstimulus facsimiles and not good in the same way they were for the ultrawealthy of old, but even those genuinely are changes in how the world effectively works

[smolder]

> deserts

I like to use the mnemonic "One S for sand, two S's for tasty shit."

[advael]

A typo in this case, but appreciated nonetheless

The warlords gathering with deserts in their eyes may never get their just deserts even if their habit of eating just desserts leaves them obese

For while we may get told every other day we live like kings, I am more of a mind to suffer no kings at all in the first place