What was the point of Ted Cruz tweeting that fake news story anyway?

[Nevilledog]

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Philip Bump
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Cool system where a senator is incentivized to tweet fake garbage about the media to show how down he is with the cause and the negative effects are all felt by a random person who had nothing to do with it.

washingtonpost.com
Analysis | What was the point of Ted Cruz tweeting that fake news story anyway?
Does a sitting senator really need to score internet points at the expense of a tech journalist?
11:04 AM · Oct 14, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/14/cruz-fake-news-article-social-media/

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https://archive.ph/64ReT

Nine years ago, I worked for a website called the Wire, having been recently rebranded from the Atlantic Wire. It served as a sort of breaking-news blog that sat alongside the Atlantic magazine, and when the Wire eventually folded, its archives were moved under the broader Atlantic branding.

This, I assume, is why one of my former colleagues at the Wire — having departed that institution herself a bit under a decade ago — suddenly appeared as the author on a screenshot of a fake Atlantic article that made the rounds in the conservative social media universe this week.

A weird series of job changes and branding shuffles resulted in someone who was looking to cast the media as a bunch of woke liberal losers seizing upon her name and the Atlantic’s logo as the conduit for their misinformation. They likely didn’t care who she was; they probably cared slightly more about using the Atlantic as their foil. All they really cared about was ginning up outrage at one of the right’s myriad enemies, the media, and if my colleague — my friend — took some heat, so be it.

After all, it worked. The screenshot got broad pickup — including by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). Despite being entirely and quickly provably fake.

*snip*

[LonePirate]

1. Virtue signaling and stoking the base are all the motivation he needed.

In fact, only one of those reasons would have sufficed but he was able to utilize both of them here.

[underpants]

2. They egg each other on. Daily competition to be the most raconteur

Like Happy Columbus Day popping up on Monday.