Tribes and tribalism: why 'weird' works
Plus a fabulous AI trailer for la ville Son Francisceaux
The most interesting development in US politics in the past two months has been the abandonment by the Democrats of the message that Joe Biden pushed, which was that his putative opponent Donald Trump posed (or poses) “a threat to democracy”. There’s a good reason why this didn’t land with undecided voters: they could look at Trump and say “isn’t this the guy who was in charge before? I don’t seem to recall democracy collapsing then.” And while the Democrats (particularly Biden) could then say “no, no, you don’t understand, he led an attack on the Capitol and now he’s planning to do even worse”, most people ignored that message, because most people live their lives confident in the belief that The Worst Will Not Happen1.
When Kamala Harris took over as the candidate, there was a brief flurry of searching for a message. Fortunately two days Tim Walz (who became the vice-presidential candidate) appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and described the effects of the Trump strategy, and the people around him:
“We do not like what has happened where we can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary,” Walz said. “Well, it’s true. These guys are just weird.”
This really stuck. Possibly there are lots of Republican strategists who are kicking themselves right now, because “weird” is the perfect political divider. It can be deployed by either side against the other, but getting in with it first and loudest means the other side can’t use it against you: if you say to someone “you’re weird”, it does them no good to say “I’m not weird, you’re weird”, because it sounds a) completely defensive b) a bit pathetic c) if you actually thought that, why didn’t you say it earlier?
What’s also brilliant about “weird” is that it’s the ultimate scissor statement. You either agree that the Republicans are a peculiar bunch with odd obsessions (childless cat ladies? What’s the problem with them?) or you think that’s an absurd claim to level at them, and that Trump and the GOP are making important statements on which the future of the US rests. You’re certain to come down on one side or the other, even if you don’t come down all the way. “Yeah, I guess they are a little weird” is absolutely enough for the Democrats, because it gets you to edge over to their side, and that’s enough to build on.
Groovy
Tribalism is deeply grooved into our psyche, perhaps because it’s been an essential survival mechanism for humans for millions of years: surviving on your own has been difficult, and also you don’t get to fulfil your inner desire to find a partner and reproduce. Being part of a tribe means you get all the side benefits, including protection from marauders. So we want to belong.
If someone is weird, then they don’t belong in the tribe; the implication is that they should be excluded. Weirdos! What are they good for? Nothin’, except being weird.
Of course, if you don’t find anything weird in the group being accused, then you’ll prefer to side with them, and you’ll see the other group—the accusers—as disconnected from the truth. Because if they knew what you know, they wouldn’t call you weird. Oh no. They’d see how right you are.
Thus the polarisation happens: the two sides are neatly divided into groups, self-selecting.
And this is the point about politicking: you want people to be in your tribe. You want them either to remain in your tribe, or to join your tribe because they like what you do. Motivating people in those ways is the essential function of electioneering, where the choices are almost guaranteed to be “Stick with what you’ve got” or “Change from what you’ve got”. This year’s US presidential election is subtly different, in that it’s between “Revert to what you had” versus “Replace with someone similar”, but the principle is the same: get people to ask themselves which tribe they want to be with.
A threat to whichy what now?
Notice the big difference from the “threat to democracy” message. On that, you had to get people to really think about what constitutes democracy, and what a threat to it looks like, and whether they really cared much about it. Politicians, obviously, care very much about it, but motivating the average person in a diner in the midwest is a different challenge.
But “they’re weird”? Much easier task. Doesn’t need policies. Doesn’t need any grasp of detail. It also doesn’t require anything more from the potential voter than looking up from their drink at the bar to a TV screen and silently thinking yeah, those people are a bit odd. It’s made even easier by the fact that politicians essentially are odd, because they have to be obsessed with all sorts of minutiae about polls and policies and tactics and what to say and not to say in order to keep certain interest groups onside, and yet project an air of being a totally normal person who isn’t actually bothered with any of that stuff.
The frustrating thing for the Republicans, surely, is that if only they had thought of this earlier, they could have used it with equal effect, and the Democrats would have been stuffed because the “no, you are” tactic simply doesn’t work. In fact it’s very difficult to think of how to respond:
"There's a new insult that her [Harris] and her husband have been using, calling you weird. Does that hurt your feelings?" the reporter asked.
Vance appeared to wince and smile while letting out a hearty laugh. "No, not at all. It doesn't hurt my feelings," he said.
Which is very much the dril tweet:
The problem of course is that the “weird” attack can only work once. Anyone trying to deploy it when the midterms roll around in 2026 will sound like they’re stuck in the past—which of course they will be. In the meantime, people need to figure out a newer, fresher scissor statement that will once again get the political tribes wandering towards them, like wildebeest in search of water.
Glimpses of the AI tsunami
(Of the what? Read here. And then the update.)
• Part of Taylor Swift’s decision to declare in favour of Kamala Harris was the AI-generated fakes put out by the Trump team, which made Swift decide to clarify matters. Ooops.
• Why is AI so bad at generating pictures of Kamala Harris but not of Trump? Access to originals, as much as anything.
• Teaching chatbots how to respond: sure, he might be destroying his future job, but while it’s there, it’s work.
• J’absolument adore this AI-generated video for the (sadly not) forthcoming French TV series La Baye Aréa, generated by Midjourney 6 and Runway Gen-3. Watch it until you get all the names. (You’ll figure out what’s going on by the third name.)
• You can buy Social Warming in paperback, hardback or ebook via One World Publications, or order it through your friendly local bookstore. Or listen to me read it on Audible.
You could also sign up for The Overspill, a daily list of links with short extracts and brief commentary on things I find interesting in tech, science, medicine, politics and any other topic that takes my fancy.
• Back next week! Or leave a comment here, or in the Substack chat, or Substack Notes, or write it in a letter and put it in a bottle so that The Police write a song about it after it falls through a wormhole and goes back in time.
One could diverge into an observation about climate change and how to alert people to it, but that’s probably for another time.
FYI, a followup, Nate Silver has an article where he mentions how this "weird" tactic overall "didn't actually poll very well":
https://www.natesilver.net/p/kamala-harris-needs-weird-voters
It makes sense. This is the sort of rhetoric that the base just loves. If you say (exaggerated for effect) "Republicans are RAPISTS!", then there's many activists who will cheer, agree that's exactly so, say it even more harshly, etc. And, to be fair, motivating the base is important in politics. But that's not likely to convince the not-already-convinced. Now, some standard punditry at this point might go on to argue about backlash, in favor of their preferred political strategy of wonk op-ed articles and academic policy papers. I won't fall on that fainting-couch. It's just that it's a dangerous cognitive error to confuse what the already-decided enjoy, with anything else. Perhaps social media makes this even more prevalent. The amount of grief Nate Silver gets, for not playing to the most partisan mobs, is quite intellectually disturbing to me (then again, he can get trashed all the way to the Bank Of Substack).
I don't think tribalism matters much here. It's not like Reps never used "weird" (the "childless cat ladies" meme you reference, together with countless others, was exactly that). It's that it does not stick against Dems, for the same reason a thousand variations of "you're callous and cruel" never stuck against Reps.
What matters is not tribalism is the abstract, but what image each tribe projects hic et nunc. To understand better, we might look at the reverse: why did a thousand variations of "you are elitist/callous/uncaring", usually coming from the very same people who routinely shit on the poor for giggles, was so successful?
Because Reps never pretended to care, while Dems built both their self-perception and their outreach on being the empathetic, understanding party ready to lend a hand. So any perceived failure in that regard sent them spiraling in self-doubt and was judged very harshly by voters. The cited Scott Alexander is a good example: SSC routinely featured posts along the lines of "I heard a liberal being less than fully charitable and empathetic toward people who want them dead. So much for the tolerant left!". I think the apex was his post on incels, which started off with "being dismissive to bitter lonely men makes you as callous as Reps are to the poor" as if it was the worst thing one could ever be, but obviously any post before and after insisted that being too dismissive of conservatives' views of the poor wss *also* the worst thing one could ever be.
I say this not bc of a personal pet peeve, but bc it illustrates very well how standards work: people have an idea of what they should expect from parties, and on a very instinctive, emotional level they judge them only based on expectation, not on an absolute scale.
What Waltz did with "weird" was a nuclear takedown to the level of "liberal elites": find a widely publicized core value of the opponent which you do not share in the slightest, and keep pointing out their failure to live up to that value. Yes, the average Democrat (or at least the average Dem operative) is much weirder than the average Rep, but who cares? Dems have always been weirdos. The public does not expect any different and no swing voter will begrudge this too much (if they did, they'd not be swing voters). But Reps being weird? Were they not supposed to be the bulwark of normalcy? The stern patriarchs? The squares?
Reps are having a meltdown bc... how do you even respond to that? They keep posting photos of blue-haired vegan poly liberals, and everyone is "well ok, we knew about them, but why did *you* post that cringe about cooking in tallow to avoid catching postmodernism? It does not sound that normal to me! Do you even go to church? Have you been lying to us the whole time?" and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it