Why Trump’s Peaking And What You Can Learn From It

Or, How Not to Create a Brand That Matters

Armbands. Racism. (The endorsement of) violence. Is Donald Trump a fascist? Should we be concerned? Is his rise inevitable, unstoppable, inescapable? What are we to make of it?

In this short essay, I want to explain why I think Donald Trump is, contrary to conventional wisdom, peaking — and so use him as a mini case study of how not to build a brand. Not merely because it is my opinion, speculation, or wish, but through analysis, by examining the economics of attention. Thus, I will draw simple, logical conclusions — that, resonant and luminous, clarifying and sharpening, can teach us some urgent, necessary, and true lessons about the arts of trust, respect, and love.

I want to warn you that you will likely instinctively disagree with much of what I have to say. But is that the still, clear voice of your mind speaking — or fear? Let us, then, shed our prejudices, and begin to use our reason.

It is a truism of the techno-economy that there is a fixed pool of attention, and an ever greater supply of content competing for it. Therefore, there is bitter, bruising competition for that attention, as in almost no other sphere of human activity, for there are no costs to creating a blog, twitter account, instagram…an endless list.

In such an economy, a producer, one who wishes to be known, seen, heard, read, has broadly four strategies available to them.

The first is Advertisement. One can advertise to people, as has been done since time immemorial. But advertisement is a poor strategy, for the simple reason that ads themselves are just noise, froth in a vast ocean — atop which people can surf, ignoring, blocking, and tuning out ads. It is the costliest strategy — and also perhaps the most superficial.

The second is Endorsement. The producer can get endorsements from those who have already amassed audiences. Hence, new marketing’s wearisome courtship of “influencers” of all kinds, with swag, toys, bribes, and the likes. It is not as costly as Advertisement — but its great failing is that it puts one at the mercy of one’s allies, whom one must buy, instead of earn, and so cannot be worth much to begin with.

The third is Quality. The producer can try to offer a higher quality good, and hope that it simply attracts an audience. He may innovate, and offer better information, stories, design, features, any number of things. But the hard truth is that the techno-economy is far from a pure meritocracy: just because a thing is a wonderful thing does not mean anyone is on average very much more likely to pay attention to it. And so quality is no guarantee of discovery: in techno-media’s vast furious ocean, ceaselessly churning, even a Picasso, Hemingway, or Einstein is likely to drown.

The fourth strategy, which is the one of interest to us in this short essay, is Trolling. Let me summarize it thus: do not compete for people’s attention. Steal it. Grab, seize, plunder, snatch it away, by any means necessary. With whatever is sensational, outrageous, fabulous. Press their emotional buttons, and evoke their conditioned responses of fear, anger, anxiety — or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, awe, wonder, mystery (think the Angel Industry as a counterpoint to the Fear Complex). Here’s a crucial point. It’s the easiest of all four strategies by far — it requires the least investment from a producer: no real resources, merely a clever rhetorical sleight of hand.

Each strategy has its upsides and downsides. I won’t discuss those of first three, because that is beyond the scope of this little essay. But I will the fourth.

The “successful” Troll has drawn attention. Perhaps a great deal, probably fervid and emotional. By pressing people’s buttons, by making absurdist arguments which overgeneralize and underspecify, by highlighting the outrageous, probably by making up “facts”, by offering proposals that are absurd, by creating a character for himself that is not just larger than life — but more sensational than reality.

Now what?

The Troll’s Dilemma is this: it is easy to grab people’s attention. But it is very hard to keep it. Techn0-media, remembers, is a furiously competitive space. It is full of a million blogs, tweets, essays, pictures, animations, all competing for a fixed pool of attention. And the supply is ever growing, for the simple reason that techno-media, like a predator in pursuit of prey that is profit, is always seeking ways to create new interactions. What, then is the Troll to do? On every side, he is beset by competition. If he does nothing, he will lose the attention he has worked so hard to gain. But if he does something, he can only move in one direction.

The Troll’s Dilemma has only one real solution. Be even more sensationalistic, outrageous, absurd. Be more extreme. Not just than the next guy, faster — but than yourself, yesterday. How else are you going to get more attention? The Troll always has to one-up himself with more and more extreme trolling for his gains in attention to be sustained, to grow, not to flatline.

Perhaps you see the problem already.

While it’s true that people will react, in a conditioned manner, to having their buttons pressed, it’s truer that they grow habituated to a more and more extreme stimulus that is exploiting their very conditioning. That’s psych 101: you may think of it this way. You only have so many mental resources to give, and after a point a more and more extreme stimulus cannot yield any more response from you. You will have OD’d on a bad fix of attention. When you do, your credulity will break: this stimulus, you are likely to say, is costing me more than it is benefitting me. Habituation. That is, at some point, the Troll crosses a line — from the senational and the outrageous, to the wearisome and the fatiguing. And when the Troll does, his day is over. He has reached a point of no return. The bubble has burst. His wings have melted.

Think about it for a moment with me. The Troll is competing for a fixed pool of attention through more and more extreme tactics, postures, poses, rhetoric. It is not that this credible or entertaining— it is more that it is triggering. It triggers an emotional response in people. But to trigger the same response in people tomorrow requires the Troll to be more extreme than yesterday. But no one can readily believe in more and more extreme propositions forever, unless their minds do not work in some fundamental way. And so after a point, not only are people emotionally exhausted by the Troll — they do not believe him, believe in him, or trust him. For his fundamental promise has been untrue: instead of resolving their emotional tension, he has simply exhausted it, and exploited it.

Hence, the Troll is not likely to ever become a Leader. What is he likely to become? A figure of scorn, derision, and mockery. You may think of any number of recent examples of people who have used the Trolling strategy as a rocketship to the heights of attention: Piers Morgan, The Kardashians, reality TV stars in general, any number of minor league internet loons. How have they fared? While they might have made a bit of money in the best case, they have never become figures that earn our trust, love, respect, and adoration. Quite the opposite. They have, in a phrase, built not strong, enduring brands — but anti-brands: reputations that will live with them for life as figures of notoriety, indignity, and scorn.

All of which brings me to Donald Chump. He is a textbook troll. But here is his Achilles Heel. He is not even a very good one. Let me explain.

Already, we see Trump being forced to become prey to the dynamics I have described above. He issues more extreme proclamations each day than the day before. Recently, he has called for people to have to wear armbands in public, which of course rightly raises the issue: is he a fascist? To which the answer is: yes. But. The real question is this: how much further can he go? Not in moral terms — but simply in strategic ones.

What next? Will he call for the US to declare nuclear war on half the world? Internment camps? Bloodline citizenship? A Gestapo and SS? Perhaps you see the problem. Let us assume he does propose any or all the above. He has gone so far already that any further will likely be too far. Not because people are rational beings — assuredly they are not — but because it stretches the veil of disbelief too far: so far that it must break. No one can seriously believe that a President of the US would do any of the above in the modern era — no matter the lunatic fringe that wishes so. The Troll may be more and more extreme — but now the people are exhausted, their sentiments exhausted, their credulity depleted. And so their conditioned responses of outrage, fear, anger, simply do not respond anymore.

Poof. Trump’s magic slowly dissipates. He has overplayed his weakest of hands. Bluster, the Troll learns too late, can take one only too far. Not because at some point one has to put one’s cards on the table — but because the audience will surely simply walk away from a game in which no one ever does.

Here is how Trump should have played it. He should have timed his proclamations, rising in extremist pitch, to the campaign itself. He should have saved the most extreme for last, and generated a fevered wave of hysteria. But he has blown it. He has spoken too shrilly, too early, too often. So he has crested too soon. And though he will surely try to outdo himself, I think the matter is done.

Can Trolls rise to the top — and stay there? Sure: but only under one set of conditions. In a social system that has lost its moorings completely. One in which more and more aggressive extremism isn’t credulity-breaking, exhausting, emotionally depleting, but instead offers a kind of way out, however impoverished, bankrupt, or self-destructive. Are we in such a situation? You may say: Trump is Baby Hitler. But the US is not Weimar Germany. It is a country with its problems, to be sure. But those problems do not include crippling reparations, hyperinflation, and post-war devastation. They are of a different caliber entirely. So while it is true that a small number of Very Deluded People may equate the two — and so vote Trump 4Ever, it is truer that to the average, it is more likely that, given the simple economics above, trolling’s extremism contains within it the seeds of its own demise.

Trolling is the easiest strategy in the brave new world of techno-media. It requires the least investment, and anyone with time, a rhetorical flourish, and a chip on their shoulder can employ it. But it also delivers the smallest return: in most cases, a negative return, that sticks with the producer for life. And so like most things in life, precisely because it is the easiest so it is also the most foolish. You can no more build a great brand — one that is trusted, loved, respected, and adored — upon a foundation of trolling than you may build a skyscraper upon quicksand.

We have come to think of Trolls as monsters. Something like the Minotaurs and Medusas of our age. And they are. But monsters are not just menacing evil. They are also tragic, pathetic figures. Medusa’s gaze turned all who bore it to stone — and yet Medusa, herself, betrayed, beheaded, barely lived at all. The Minotaur, too, was sealed shut in a dark labyrinth.

The Troll, then, is not merely a monster. He is more a pathetic figure. He is a creature whose destruction is born in his very triumph, who carries the burden of his own demise on the shoulders that lift him to glory. That is why we should not fear trolls, but instead laugh gently at them. For the very fragile mechanisms of their conquest are themselves what, breaking down at the moment of truth, what undo them.

So let us relearn what the wise have since the dawn of time known. Our monsters, new and old, whether made of flesh and blood, or stone and rage, are neither merely terrible creatures to be afraid of, nor accursed beasts to pity. Wisdom is knowing that as the pendulum of emotion swings, gravity-bound, from fear to scorn, they are better understood thus: mistakes we may become, foolish, tragic, yet ever with us— so that we, reaching ever to the stars, for the fullness of our possibility, giving thanks for the mighty privilege of life, do not turn into them.

Umair
London
November 2015