POLITICS
Is “Occupy Democrats” Fake News?
Anger porn, misinformation & Facebook memes
Occupy Democrats is a very popular brand. Until very recently, its posts routinely found themselves breaking Facebook's Top 10 performing posts every day. Its success has been cited by the likes of The New York Times, framing their piece as the story of "How Immigrant Twin Brothers Are Beating Trump's Team on Facebook."
For the longest time, I did not look too deeply into the content of this brand, perceiving it as generic anger porn. It may not have been the best news, but I filed it away as no worse than the other liberal news aggregators out there, even toting it as a success for how to gain traction in building a political "brand." As I wrote in an article on helping the Left do better on social media:
In the same way that Ben Shapiro is always complaining about how liberals are ruining society, Occupy Democrats' posts spend a lot of time dunking on people like Trump and Fox News. Facebook, as a platform, is set up for this type of engagement, which means if you want to be successful there, serving up a hot dish of outrage porn on a consistent basis is a great way to amass a following.
And while that sentiment isn't necessarily wrong — anger is still a great way to amass a following online— it…
