The part I don't understand is, how would the scissor statements be made real?
E.g. The Russian scissor statement machine spits out a statement about a bakery refusing to make a cake for a gay couple.
What happens next? They somehow identify real people who fit the role and nudge them towards ordering a cake?
Or would everyone involved be paid actors?
Or real people who are bribed / coerced?
I know we're in fictional territory, I'm just curious about how this would work in the story's 'universe'. (And in real life, I guess, considering that some of it seemed dangerously plausible).
> people who are fed up with rational cost-benefit analysis and want to wreck their perceived enemies
I've been thinking this for a while, and it seems to be creating some nasty feedback loops.
At least some of the support for politicians like Trump and Boris Johnson comes from the fact that they continually piss off people who are liberal/progressive/left-wing/anti-Brexit (delete as applicable depending on who is 'the enemy').
In the same way, I've seen things written about progressive politicians to the effect of "he is upsetting a lot of angry old white men, so he must be doing something right".
"How much do they piss off the other team" has become something that many voters use as a metric. Perhaps even the only metric, for some people.
E.g. The Russian scissor statement machine spits out a statement about a bakery refusing to make a cake for a gay couple.
What happens next? They somehow identify real people who fit the role and nudge them towards ordering a cake?
Or would everyone involved be paid actors?
Or real people who are bribed / coerced?
I know we're in fictional territory, I'm just curious about how this would work in the story's 'universe'. (And in real life, I guess, considering that some of it seemed dangerously plausible).