All Hail the Selfie Video

Doomscroll 5.18.2025

May 18, 2025

Welcome back to another edition of Doomscroll - your favorite newsletter covering all things digital on the right. Last week we were on a break, which means we’ve got a lot of catching up to do! So grab your dink of choice (mine is Gatorade Zero at the moment; don’t ask questions), and let’s get to scrolling.

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One Question

Thanks to everyone who answered May 4th’s One Question about having campaign war room X accounts. On whether or not these accounts should now be considered a best practice, 60% of you said “it depends,” which is super unhelpful. But serves me right for adding “it depends” as an option. The rest of you said yes, it is a best practice. Cool, cool. A couple good reader comments:

If a war room account 99% retweets stuff, it's whatever. But if you have a creative team with bandwith, empowered with the freedom to be a bit edgier and / or post things the candidate might not post in real life (memes, online trends, etc) then why not!
Large accounts need one, small accounts don’t
War room accounts are for the base and for signalling what you want to see amplified to organic influencers whereas main accounts need to consider a wider audience

This week’s One Question is about the libs. Thanks to Axios, we learned this week that “top Senate Democrats are challenging their older colleagues to embrace Twitch and Snapchat…” This push is just the latest in a long series of pleas from Sen. Cory Booker (he’s made this his hill to die on) for Democrats to up their social media game because, let’s face it, social media engagement is definitely why they lost in 2024. So here’s the question: What do you think of Democrats getting on Snapchat and Twitch and doing more podcast interviews? Do you agree that they lost because they sucked at social? Is this new media strategy going to help them in the Midterms? Are Democrats (ahem, Cory Booker) putting too much weight on their social media game? Ok, I know that’s a lot more than one question, but I will never rebrand this section! So let’s just pretend - and then let me know what you think!

Spill your guts

One Quote

One Thought

The above quote is from Ryan Gould, Co-President of Ad Sales at Warner Bros. Discovery. Gould made the comment during a presentation this week in which he rolled out (among other things) Max’s return to HBO Max. Anyway, as someone who constantly rails about the need to focus on high-quality creative, that quote resonated with me. Doesn’t matter if it’s streaming platforms or politics. Want to connect with people? Tell a good story and tell it well. Just a thought!

Who’s Doing What

—All hail the selfie video

This week, Georgia Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner John King announced his campaign for Senate with what appears to be a selfie video. In Iowa, State Auditor Rob Sand appeared to do the exact_same_thing when announcing his campaign for Governor. King is, obviously, a Republican. Sand is a Democrat. I want to take a moment to point out how our respective “sides” responded to these videos. Sand’s compadres thought his video was fresh, new, and authentic. King’s video was met, by at least one Georgia Republican, with some blunt criticism.

It seems to me that whenever a Republican candidate does something that’s *not* overly produced or polished we treat it like it’s an embarrassment to the industry. And when a Democrat does the same thing, liberals applaud it for being innovative and fresh. Maybe I’m leaning way too much into this one example, but it really got me thinking this week. As someone who spends a LOT of time picking apart social content and campaign launches, I like to think that my comments provide some value and insight into what I believe works and doesn’t work. In other words: I try not to criticize just to criticize. And fwiw, I’d much prefer a candidate to launch with a selfie video than a video that costs thousands of dollars, is made mostly of B-roll, and doesn’t include the candidate speaking directly into the camera. But that’s just me!

P.S. Speaking of Georgia, Gov. Kemp announced he won’t be running for Senate on May 6. On May 8, Rep. Mike Collins posted this video to X. It’s definitely hinting at...something.

P.P.S. Also: Rob Sands reportedly raised $2.25 million in the first 24 hours of his campaign. Umm…wow? (My prediction: He’ll be the Beto of 2025).

—Golden again?
Let’s talk about Steve Hilton, the British former Fox News host who’s now running for Governor of California. He announced his campaign in late April, and to be honest there’s not a whole lot to dislike about his digital presence at the moment.

His announcement video is on the longer side, but it WORKS. It’s interesting, it tells a good story, and ::shocker:: Hilton narrates the whole thing by speaking directly into the camera! I’ll say this: I watched the whole video and didn’t get bored once. I know that’s a super subjective metric, but it should say something! The website is also nice and fresh, even if the homepage is a little text-heavy. I like how his logo gets its inspo from his campaign slogan: Make California Golden Again. One thing that’s missing? A merch store. Ugh! Also worth noting is the Anedot page that his donate button directs to. At the top of the form is a 2-minute video with Hilton asking for money. Again…it works. Hilton is super authentic and I don’t even mind his use of the sh** word! It just works. Good job, Steve Hilton!

—Crooked Ken

If you know me, you know I love a good microsite - a good oppo site that declares, among other things, that WAR HAS BEEN DECLARED. The one launched by Team Cornyn to go after Ken Paxton certainly delivers…and then some! There’s even an affiliated X account, though no tweets have been sent as of this writing. Look, I know close to zero about Texas politics (sad!) so I’ll let others decide if the accusations have merit. I’m just saying: it’s a very nice-looking site.

Who’s Spending Where

Facebook

Google

P2P

This week’s P2P shout-out goes to the CA GOP. I like to see state parties embracing digital and actually *doing* the work. This copy is fairly simple, but that’s ok. It gets straight to the point. The sender is identified right at the top so there’s no guesswork there, AND it includes clear instructions on how to opt out. Nicely done.

Industry Watch

🛜 Our friend Kyle Tharp over at Chaotic Era did a deep dive into “the massive right-wing network you’ve never heard of”

📈 Meta published a new report touting its positive impacts on the American economy. The timing of this report isn’t suspect at all. Not even a little bit.

2025-2026 Watch

In Oklahoma, State Superintendent Ryan Walters is thinking about throwing his hat in the ring for governor.
Big deal: President Trump endorsed Jack Ciattarelli for governor in New Jersey
Rep. Andy Feenstra is running for governor in Iowa.
Brian Shortsleeve (what a name!) is running for governor in Massachusetts.
Former Kansas governor Jeff Colyer has decided to run for his old job!
Bernadette Wilson is running for governor of Alaska

The Grapevine

Congrats to Nick Elliott for joining L2 (proud wife alert!).
Speaking of L2, they just put out their State by State Voter Turnout report. Read it here.
Eric Wilson had an op-ed in the Washington Reporter this week, sounding the alarm on Republican small-dollar fundraising. Read it here.
Speaking of fundraising, The New York Times covered President Trump’s hold over the “GOP money world.” Read it here.
Democrats are now going after WinRed…::eye roll::. Read Politico’s coverage here.
Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com

Last But Not Least

From the other side of the aisle:

Two shout-outs to Kyle Tharp in one newsletter…WOAH! 👀👀

It’s his lucky day. It’s just…I couldn’t NOT use a recent tweet of his to throw some shade at Jon Ossoff. This is why it’s not enough to just create an account on TikTok or any other platform if you don’t put the effort into maintaining it with consistent content. It absolutely is malpractice to have 500,000 followers and not post anything.

From the other side of the tracks:

Unless you were living under a rock last week, you couldn’t escape the news that Max returned to calling itself HBO Max. And look: When you know you’re going to get smacked around online it’s best to go ahead and embrace it. Lean into it. At least, that’s what HBO did. It seems to have paid off for them, too. Lesson learned! Read more about HBO’s social media strategy here.