Chris Adams10h ago

“A second senior White House official who is also closely involved in the video-making effort described it as a collegial, creative endeavor. ‘We’re over here just grinding away on banger memes, dude’”

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/18/white-house-iran-game-online-00834373

Inside the White House plan to sell the Iran war online

The administration is bucking decades of decorum by depicting the Iran war as a violent video game.

Politico
Show threadNathaniel Swigger10h ago
@acdha I’ll go ahead and predict that the war will continue to be unpopular despite the awesomeness of these banger memes. This is the kind of stupid shit that happens when you’re ruled by the Very Online.
Show threadChris Adams10h ago
@nswigger I’m betting you’re right. Nobody is paying more for gas and saying that it’s worth it for the engagement metrics.
Show threadNathaniel Swigger9h ago
@acdha Social media isn’t real life. It’s not the town square. I don’t know how many times we need to learn this.
Show threadChris Adams9h ago
@nswigger I think there’s also a class of cognitive errors introduced by being easy to measure: people see impression counters think it’s important because that number is always there.
Show threadNathaniel Swigger
@acdha Yeah, it’s hard to convince people that the dopamine hits they get from seeing likes on their posts are totally meaningless.
12:40pmWeb