Jason Ditzian
2 min readFeb 24, 2017

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The original title was something along the lines of “Twitter and the New Psychoacoustics of Authoritarianism.”

You’re right, the title as published plays into pure confirmation bias. And I guess that’s why so many people are reading it.

I would have appreciated you commenting on/editing my piece BEFORE I published it. You’re clearly coming from a more informed perspective. And your (and from other folks too) thoughtful and thorough responses have helped me clarify my thinking on this.

That being said, I do think what you’re saying backs up my central thesis (if I’d been clearer on my central thesis):

Hitler optimized a relatively new means of communication to entrain the populace and spread his sensational message with a never-before-known-effectiveness. The same sort of thing is happening with Trump, with regards to the phenomena of most people not knowing how to effectively engage with his use of this new-ish medium, and to some effect being mesmerized by it. Similar psychoacoustic effect —but what’s different is the magnitude. Trump’s unfiltered messaging has gone exponential and worldwide, utterly breaking the news cycle in its wake.

It’s too late at this point in the most important sense. The election is over. But taking down the President’s feed would in the very least let the media hit a reset button and start over from a position where it isn’t considered the news standard to republish his inflammatory 140-character comments in full. Instead of propagating this echo effect, we can go back to the good ol’ days where the press created a context effect. And hopefully that will mitigate things a bit.

Not that this is an end-all-be-all solution to anything. But it’s a simple, realistic act that could potentially restore some balance in the short term.

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