Lost Narratives
Israel Stevens
Losing Control of the Narrative
This is not meant as a criticism of anyone specific, and as a President, it is certainly something that I have fell into before. But I’ve had a few beers, and this article has been brewing in my head for a bit. So time to put fingers to keyboard and bring it home.
One of the many problems that we as a country have, is that our leadership frequently loses control of the narrative of not just the country, but of their own agenda.
We have a group of roughly 25-35 people that are involved in the highest levels of government at any time. Most of them are part of the President’s Cabinet, plus a few other high ranking Congresspeople that get to know stuff. Add in the people that always know what’s going on, and you get to that 25-35 number.
The problem is, that the highest levels of government become highly insulated to whatever is happening on the outside. The plans that they are making, and the agenda that they are pushing make sense, and (in my opinion) are usually the right one. But they do such a terrible job of conveying their plans and ideas to the masses, that their idea ends up being some bastardization of what they originally wanted.
They don’t spend enough time getting the message out so that they could receive the broad support of the public that they get from their cabinet. There is too much time spent bantering with their fellow cabinet members, and assuming that a three sentence blurb in the WHPR will be enough.
It’s not.
Even worse, is when their adversary, whether foreign, domestic or political is able to hijack the narrative for their own. We see this frequently in insurgent parties and groups. Whether it’s SFP or the former AFA, or iNCi or any number of other groups that have held varying levels of power in our history.
We have often seen the establishment government get beaten to the punch when it comes time to release details to the public. When this happens, they lose control of the narrative, and they are forced to play catch up. Whatever they publish or post looks like it is in response, and that they’re scrambling to recover.
What should have been an easy sell to the public, turns into a bumbling affair, and occasionally a full blown eRep Scandal (those are my favorite, btw).
There is no need for it, truthfully. And if our leaders were doing their jobs, this would be a rare occurrence. But it’s not, and we see it every few months where a good idea goes astray because it gets pushed out too quickly by the wrong people. Or, is simply used to further the opposite political goal.
Some of this can be attributed to laziness, and some to RL problems.
But in my opinion, most of this falls at the feet of those aforementioned 25-35 people that are so wrapped up in running the country, that they forget that there is an actual country beyond the walls of their high castle. They forget that there are people playing the game that aren’t in Congress or the Executive. That there are actually people out there that don’t understand the finer points of a DoD reorganization or our foreign policy towards Moldova.
It’s arrogance on their part, that the country will fall in line with whatever they want, simply because they are in charge.
So what can be done?
The answer is simply more articles from our direct leaders.
I’m not calling for less secrecy, or even more transparency. Simply more communication from those that we elect to lead us. Whether it is the President directly, or their Vice President, or even a Secretary sharing their personal thoughts in a newspaper. Shorts bursts of information in the WHPR is not enough. We need to be hearing from our leaders directly.
A push for more articles, and holding our leaders accountable to those articles would help to solve this problem. And it would have the added benefit of making the agenda that our leaders want to push that much easier to get accomplished.
Comments
Pertamaxxx Secured
you ran for your latest CP medallion with this same message (asked for input that your cabinet ignored)
stole a lot of cc afterward, which another CP paid RL monies for (easy for you to enjoy, but also set a bad precedent for future CPs, like when Gnil single handily won a war started by Aramec at the beginning of Gnil's most recent CP run)
plenty of narrative to go around, it is more convenient for the forum dwellers to play with themselves than look for social intercourse with the larger community (that actually still plays eRepublik), that is the problem
If you have such a problem with it, write an article about it. Do better.
I couldn't agree more. eUSforums.com is like a parallel universe.
don't be puttin' down our WHPR blurbs.
sometimes it's like amateur dentistry to get even a couple key quotes from people, and we build a segment around those scraps.
on the positive side, except for yesterday's "extended vacation" edition of the WHPR, my team has been publishing, on average, seven or more times a week. two WHPRs, a USAF paper, a Speaker's Word, and Press Briefings almost every day.
we do the best we can with what we've got, and we do damn well with it.
as for the Big Heads communicating more with The Peeps.. have you noticed how little is actually happening in this game? what do you want, Wild Owl's favorite color (I'll make sure he includes that in his State Department article on Tuesday), or rainy sunday's dog's favorite chew toy? how about Oblige's business trip itinerary-- that's been the hottest topic in the PDBs for days now.
there's just nothing happening to talk about.
I'm not putting down the WHPR. Not at all. And this isn't a criticism of Yui. Many Presidents fall into the same trap. But even if it were, there are ways to spin nothing.
I must be getting old, then.. I can spin a little into a lot, I can spin messed up into heroic, I can even spin shit into gold.. but I gotta have something to start with.
i think ppl aren't all that interested in fabricated activity anymore.
Yes Custer but there is ALWAYS something to spin. There is also fun that can be had with articles. Remember the revolution? That was spinning nothing into fun for the sake of content. Something can always be said even if it's basically nothing but amusing.
There is, it's just being OPSEC'd as fuck from even the PDB. Things happen when they happen and usually the most important things cant be announced well in advance.
"Hey guys we're going to AS Lithuania next week to free Latvia please support us all alright?!"
I think mil guys have the hardest time with this.
I'm not saying my CP term was the best by any standards, but the one thing I did know how to do and made sure of doing was write. I tried to convey what was going on, and I learned that from writing for and against the greats like PiZ, Josh Frost, and Emerick. You wanna talk about a guy who got the narrative part of being a POTUS down? It was Josh Frost.
And this is why, in my opinion, you see guys like Deepchill not capture the public eye as well. Mil stuff, the sort that Yui has done this last month, is almost exclusively now done in threads, in things like Slack, and purposefully quiet. It's a very big change to then flip the switch and become vocal about everything you're doing. Maybe part of it is psychological? I dunno. But it's definitely a problem.
There are also two major issues right now that I think you didn't touch upon that I'd like to bring up. First, it's the summer, and that's always a sort of weird slump in a lot of ways. Or at least it has been the last couple of years. Lesser activity, lesser things to do and people to do it with.
And second, we just got out of Resource Wars. Last month was busy, strategically, in huge ways. This month, I think everyone's a little bit burnt.
Put these two things together and we have very few people with very few things to do who are tired. No clay for our bricks, so to speak. No story for our narrative. I can tell you I've had a hard time scraping together Press Briefings this month and last month. This month is a little bit better, only because it's not RW strategy talk 24/7, but not by much.
I dunno, maybe this is the way the game ends finally. No bangs, not even really a whimper. Just a sigh, or a shrug. It's getting thin out here, man.
And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves.
I agree 100%, but i see in the orther countries, the media module is dead like here, everywhere.
Anyway, in more than 7 years I play here, I assure you those 25-35 people slowly change, sometimes an old player go out and a pretty new one join the "rulers". In real life it's the same, after all.
You don't talk about fight club....
Also whprs are hard and fairly soul sucking and generally by format boring and uninformative, even when done well (which custer always does), CPs and cab members need to just actually write themselves. but they don't because nobody cares about the media. oh well.
I know stuff. I just don't do anything about it any longer. Because reasons.
Or. Reverse the entire dynamic. Assume one WANTs the general public involved in the game, and build institutions on the basis of participation, equality, education/encouragement, progressive change. Like: work to develop a social ecology that lifts up the entire citizenry. Consciously deconstruct hierarchy and (re)invent mechanisms of power-from-below to replace boring/default/oppressive power-from-above. "Kill off 'The Man'."
Like for example when the YPG and SDF liberated Manjib (in northern Syria) over the past couple of weeks in real life, (as part of the overall campaign to push Daesh out of Raqqa), they not only organized a smart military offensive and killed a whole bunch of jihadi gangsters, they also immediately started forming local councils, economic cooperatives, peoples assemblies and schools run by and for the local people. This way it is clear that they are not just another group of gangsters, but are instead actually working to lift people up. (A bit overly optimistic on my part, probably, but it is an example that we really don't have to just go on in the old way...)
@:... "become highly insulated..."
Yes. Typical way of those at the top... insulated from public, from associates, friends and often FAMILY.
Sick? Sure... but to be expected by ANYONE who becomes 'aloof' from their own SELF. Typical, sad... but REPAIRABLE.