Tim Harford: preference

Transcript context

…So any elastic supply improves debates. Fixed amount of time — you can’t talk anymore. Twitter, there’s always someone else to ratio you. But also, everything comes in these bite-sized chunks. Just the other day, I tweeted my most viral tweet, and I didn’t notice. It was a quote from a Conservative MP who had left the Conservative Party and said something very negative about her own party and about Brexit. All I did was quote her, and link to the Financial Times piece that she had written, and went away and played a board game with some friends, and came back, and it had been retweeted over a thousand times, which very rarely happens. Even though I have a lot of followers, my tweets never go viral, I think because very rarely, I’m interested in outrage. But people found this particular expression of contempt — the insider rejecting the organization she worked for — people found that very engaging, and everyone loved that. But I don’t know if anyone’s really the wiser or learned anything they didn’t already know. Now that you bring up Brexit, I do have a few questions for you.…

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