6a protein chx soup 15g + fibertwos
9a breakfast burrito + vitamin
10a. Retreating to the waist-high incline pushup to master form, I'm going to just stay with this until 3 sets of 12 feels too comfortable. Inhale on the downward (eccentric) motion, exhale on the upward (concentric) motion.
* * *
The Left's Branding Problems
American Leftism has a branding problem, or maybe it's a handful of individual problems, in social media. In short, we have great ideas and messages, but they're too often watered down by tone, overembellishment, unprofessionalism and channel branding.
The instance that caught my eye today was a text meme from "The Angsty Canadian". Someone in the (artificially right-nudged) fence-sitting center sees the word "angsty" - and almost certainly associates it with weakness, annoying pearl-clutchy whining. In personal discourse I respect the courage implicit in a touch of self-deprecation / vulnerability but I know better than to think of politicized social media channels as "personal".
And [Angsty] "Canadian"? Socialist! Their whole flag is red, ainnit? Un-American! Probably letting dangerous "those people" terr'ists cross MY redwhiteanblue borders! I like my propagander wrapped in the MERICAN flag, thanks, and better throw a cross or two in there for good luck. And by this lampoon I mean that the people who see themselves as "the real patriotic Americans", and/or terrified of the 1%er fake slippery-slope conflation of socialism with not-actually-Communist dictatorships, are going to process the checkboxes being criticized by a foreign-identifying socialist, and embrace/internalize those "bad boy" checkboxes. We already have a whole right-wing brand dedicated to voting in the "outlaw" because they align with the idea of being treacherous sadistic thugs yet still retaining privilege as long as they worship the right over-criminal.
Second, the memetician fumbled the subject-verb agreement and we see the phrase "people who don't fully subscribed". This reminds me of a stock tactic of email scammers - intentionally mangling the language so that cognitively able recipients disengage automatically on their own, ergo any respondents are more likely cognitively vulnerable. This is a very bad look for the Left.
Third, leaning on profanity for emphasis. Yes it stirs emotion, which is a valuable propaganda technique to solidify sympathetic audiences. Both sides use it. But it's also a turn-off - not just to opposed-view audiences, but to sympathetics with enough emotional IQ to recognize and react against emotional manipulation.
So for Leftist memetics targeting me as an audience - my ideal message projects: self-confidence and self-worth; nativity; emotional sobriety.