even more important, many advocates argue, is how the two reforms together can change how candidates and elected officials of all stripes approach their jobs, by adjusting the incentive structure they operate under. Increasingly, many states and districts are solidly red or blue, meaning the general election is uncompetitive, and the key race takes place in the primary. That’s a problem, because the primary electorate is by and large smaller, more partisan and more extreme than the general electorate. Right now, with politicians worrying more about the primary than the general, they’re more focused on playing to their base than on reaching beyond it and solving problems, critics argue.

By allowing multiple candidates to advance, Final Four/Five shifts the crucial election from the primary to the general. And RCV means the votes of Democrats in red districts and Republicans in blue ones still matter, even if their top choice remains unlikely to win. Together, it means candidates are rewarded for paying attention to the entire general electorate, not just a small slice of staunch supporters. As a result, it encourages candidates — and elected officials, once in office — toward moderation and problem-solving, and away from extremism.

Inside an online platform everything, even reality, is just content and content just begets more content. And in a world run by big platforms, a person’s post becomes discourse, discourse creates memes, memes inspire a fandom, and fandoms become social movements. And over the last decade, as platforms flattened everything into content, most news publishers, hiding behind antiquated ideas about objectivity and made desperate from vanishing ad revenue, allowed themselves to be flattened, as well. And now, even though they don’t think of themselves as a competing news fandoms, they absolutely are.

I don’t think the way people react to news stories in 2023 is all that different from how it’s ever been. Here are two great threads comparing funny mean-spirited reactions to the Titanic sinking to the similar memes everyone made this month about the imploded submarine billionaires. But now, if you don’t like what’s in the newspaper you can just write your own thing and get more readers than it did.

Can’t possibly comprehend that extreme levels of wealth created an environment of arrogance that led to a submarine vaporizing a bunch of guys in the middle of the ocean? Just tweet that that’s not actually what happened. The fact the Russian coup didn’t even last a full day and no one got arrested sounds suspicious to you? Easy. Just make up something else.

Eventually every platform wanted the same kind of content, but to fit specific algorithms and specific demographics, which no one would bother to do, so the same videos just got posted everywhere until none of the networks felt distinct from each other and every site just pivoted away from the whole idea.