Politics: what the left should do about YouTube

What we can learn from David Seymour v John Campbell

I found it pretty jarring watching the “full version” of John Campbell’s interview with ACT leader David Seymour. Say what you like about ACT but they are doing YouTube (and presumably other social platforms I’m blessed not to spend time on) masterfully. They have worked out that in a content-saturated world only the most lizard-brain focused videos and headlines will cut through. Here are some of their recent video titles:

Seymour speaks to journos after RATTLING Labour MPs

Andrew Hoggard stands up for Kiwi farmers against Tree Hugger Green MP

FACE OFF: Dr Parmjeet Parma blows away Te Pati Māori fanatics

“Tikanga is NOT law!”: ACT MP says NO to new law school requirements

A possibly unfair comparison: the New Zealand Labour Party’s most recent video is called “Speech: Labour Party Leader Chris Hipkins - Bringing People Together”.

I once interviewed Simon Rich, who I think is the funniest writer on the planet. He told me that when he was writing for the internet he had extra incentive to get to a punchline fast: “I’m essentially competing against pornography. Sometimes it’s even on the same page.”

ACT have worked out how to sell videos that can compete with pornography, or at least fill some recovery time in between sessions. Whether or not they deliver on their promise, the above videos offer to satisfy some pretty primal urges: including for conflict, humiliation, bullying and come-uppance.

And so to the one of the most watched ACT videos of all. Seventy eight thousand New Zealanders have clicked on a clip called “WEIRD John Campbell Interview: Can the Media Be Trusted?”

The video is a masterclass in the dark arts. Ostensibly a safeguard to avoid being misrepresented in the final edit, it records an entire 45 minute encounter between Campbell and Seymour, beginning with a shaky handheld behind-the-scenes shot of Seymour walking into the room where the TVNZ lights and cameras are already set up. The DIY-feel immediately gives it a subversive and compelling quality, and few with an interest in how the media sausage is made could resist watching mainstream journalism’s biggest star in an apparently candid moment.

It’s unclear whether Seymour has planned to wrongfoot Campbell or whether he just gets lucky, but he opens with some (arguably slightly hostile) banter suggesting that Campbell hadn’t expected him to say ‘yes’ to being interviewed.

Campbell takes this, it has to be said, pretty badly - moving quickly between denying it, justifying it and arguing that he doesn’t recall it. For a few minutes, each time you think he’s going to start the interview, Campbell returns to Seymour’s opening remarks, until eventually Seymour himself suggests they move on. Campbell also seems uncomfortable with the ACT crew filming, and the whole thing adds up to a pretty successful ambush.

“I can see it’s shaken you a little” Seymour says at one point, and though Campbell argues that this isn’t true, you’d have to guess that at least half of the people watching (the half who ACT care about, probably) would agree with Seymour’s assessment.

For an ACT social media manager, there’s clearly enough going on here to post it to the world with “WEIRD” in all caps. “Weird” is a gross, socially isolating, sort of word, but it’s effective. Who wouldn’t want to watch John Campbell being weird?

What happens in the rest of the interview? By now it doesn’t matter.

The YouTube heatmap shows most people only watched the first five minutes, with a few more tuning in for another high conflict moment later in the video when Seymour challenges Campbell along these lines: if poor Maori outcomes are due to colonisation, how do you explain higher outcomes for Asian New Zealanders? They don’t really get to the bottom of this one but it’s an appealing enough gotcha moment that ACT has clipped it up and shared it widely.

The political right has always had access to motivators unavailable to the left: fear of difference, putting self and family ahead of strangers, preserving entrenched inequalities (there are of course strong and good faith arguments for right wing policies too). Meanwhile the left has often been stuck with having to appeal to our higher selves; Hipkins’ “Bringing People Together” speech topic is a classic example of this.

Now the left is stuck with a new problem. Not only are its messages more subtle and wholesome than the vote-grabbing slogans of the populist right, but voters are now getting all of their information from asynchronous broadcasters like YouTube, which scout for videos featuring the most awful aspects of human interaction and super charge their audience reach.

If Labour had ACT’s budget and a social media person who knew what they were doing, would they be better to take the high ground and be happy with views in the low four figures, or would they squash their socially conscious policies into a format ready for the modern world, knowing that they were doing a deal with the devil?

Barbara Edmonds destroys RACIST NZ First leader in fiery debate

YASS QUEEN! Ginny Anderson schools Chris Bishop on what women are worth

Chippy delivers KO punch! The one liner that SHUT DOWN bigot David Seymour

Is this the future? I think it’s deeply depressing.

Most depressingly of all, I’d probably watch these videos.