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Echo chambers have their problems. Only hearing one side, surrounding yourself with similar views, and egging each other on can lead to radicalization and polarization. Many blame the various silos of the internet for all manner of society’s current problems.
But, boy can it be fun to shit on someone when there’s no one there to harsh your buzz, snitch tag your post, or “well actually” your take.
Over on BlueSky, they’ve had a week-long roast of Nate Silver that culminated with him dropping what they think is the single most absurd, pedantic debate talking point society’s ever seen.
(Of course, they may be speaking hyperbolically, what with minimal conservative and centrist governors in the discourse there.)
Silver has long been a left-wing punching bag, ever since the 2016 election, where liberals believed he utterly failed in predicting the outcome.
Silver maintains he actually gave Donald Trump more of a chance to win than other models, but he’s been cast out of mainstream left-leaning posting society for doing some sort of accidental Trumpism.
Lately, he’s been getting shit after he dropped his latest model, which put the odds of a 2024 Trump victory much higher than other sites.
And while saying Trump is going to win is different from wanting Trump to win, Silver was criticized for seeding the possibility of a Trump victory—even though that’s already a possibility.
Part of it stems from Silver’s deal with a new site, political betting market Polymarket, which was funded by venture capitalist and online boogeyman Peter Thiel, and together, they (allegedly) are pushing out a new model to shift things in Trump’s favor.
“Nate Silver is skewing data to show [Trump] is winning, just so [Trump can justify another insurrection ([Trump] posts already laying.groundwork). No surprise… Nate Silver, just like J.D. Vance, is paid by billionaire tech-fascist Peter Thiel.” one person wrote, without citing data Silver might be skewing.
Silver for his part, noted on X in response to other, similar criticism that Thiel’s Founder’s Fund was just one of “many investors” in the site.
But when Trump fans started enthusiastically touting the results, Silver was accused of not only affecting the outcome but, looping in the Tenet Media drama, secretly working with Russia to push the discourse… to change the outcome… it’s unclear what Silver is doing without building a four-part play in your head.
“So the gambling company owned by Peter Thiel that uses Nate Silver to put his thumb on the scale is being promoted by a Russian Agent. The 2024 Presidential Election!” said one user.
‘”WARNING. Nate Silver works for a rightwing crypto political BETTING organization funded by Peter Thiel. This is NOT a poll but widely exaggerated pro-Trump betting odds. Their results are used by Russian asset Tenet,” added another.
It’s an elaborate fantasy belied by the fact that in 2020, Nate Silver predicted Biden would win.
But then Silver wrote up his instant takes on the debate—and, devoid of context—sparked another spate of outrage on the site.
In a piece where Silver said he was “mostly bullish” on Vice President Kamala Harris’ performance, he wrote that ”the stature gap in terms of physical size was also notable, especially with Harris having a shorter podium. Sometimes you’ll hear people say that you should watch the debate with the sound off, and by that measure it was much closer than with the sound on.”
In Silver’s telling, where he’s looking to give Trump any possible points in a pro-Harris piece, pretty much the only one he could conjure was that if you muted it, you might think Trump competed with her.
It isn’t, in any way, a tremendous, ringing endorsement for the former president.
But, hoo boy, did screenshots of that blow up on the blue.
“ok this quote from Nate Silver is killing me” said one viral post.
“How can you say ‘taller people are better presidents; with a straight face in 2024,” added another.
Many made very basic name jokes.
“Gonna get demoted to Nate bronze at this rate” wrote one.
“Nate Silver is being demoted to Nate Bronze after an extended streak of dipshittery,” chimed in another.
Others again reiterated the claim that Silver wanted to skew the entire election for his own personal gain.
“Holy shit! How much money does he have on Trump to win this election???” asked a user.
But while the take spawned further conspiracies, it also did give us Futurama memes, as people riffed off a scene where the alien king Lrrr asks his wife, Ndnd “Why does Ross, the largest friend, not simply eat the other friends?”
“why does TRUMP, the largest presidential candidate, not simply eat the others” -Nate Silver, human political pundit,” wrote one.
And while optics matter in elections, that paragraph is about the only praise Silver could conjure up for Trump.
Meaning if he is pushing a secret plan to hype him up, it’s only relying on the users of BlueSky to take the most tepid of praise and turn it into a conspiracy.
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