"Trust Scales Through People Now" — Amanda Brink on Why the Old Organizing Toolkit Is Breaking

Well, you wrote very recently a fantastic essay called The Rules of Engagement Have Changed.

And that really struck me because you grappled with how this current attention economy works, the fatigue that people are facing with this constant input, and also pointed out that much more persuasion and organizing is actually taking place online.

Much like if folks who are familiar with the book and movie Ready Player One know there's an offline world and then the online world, but much more actual life is lived by people in the online space.

I thought that was a good analogy because And that is where so much of public opinion is now shaped and molded.

And can you talk about that? Because I think that not everybody's realizing that so much of what is emerging to drive our politics is basically being shaped in comment sections and chat rooms.

I think it's all being shaped in

comments, comment sections and chat rooms, to be honest with you.

I think that, so if you haven't read the book, it's Ernest Cline's Ready, Clear, One.

In 2018, 2019, Steven Spielberg turned it into a movie.

And in the movie or in the book, this is where they go to school.

This is where they get married.

This is where all of these things happen.

And I think we are...

We're not quite there yet.

The robots haven't fully taken over.

But we are heading in that direction.

And we were heading in that direction.

And then it was, like, sped along slash expedited by COVID, right? We couldn't go outside.

And so people... who were searching for community out of loneliness and struggling privately, started engaging online in a much more significant way.

It was, you know, it was always happening, but COVID sped it up, right? And I came from organizing.

I have very, very fond memories of going out and door knocking in Iowa for fund banking.

And the reality is that now people who come to your door, That's weird.

It just is.

It's weird.

There's no kids that come to sell candy bars.