What I learned after posting on Threads
Doomscroll 7.19.2026
Hello and welcome to another edition of Doomscroll - your favorite newsletter covering all things digital on the right! Let’s get to some scrolling!
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Thanks to everyone who answered last week’s One Question on what lessons we should be learning from the corporate marketing world! I wouldn’t say the responses were overwhelming? But I did get a few interesting comments:
We don’t pay enough attention to the marketing funnel. I did a few years in corporate marketing and god love the user journey. Campaigns want donations and conversions immediately, and I get why. But if you don’t spend time on awareness/name ID, and nurture/persuasion, then your campaign will constantly be scrambling. Invest in the upper funnel, be rewarded in lower funnel activations. Know what’s a great medium for that? Digital.
In the business world, expertly-written sales pages (or letters) are the ultimate tool to win tough purchases. I often think about how sales pages can be used to win votes. So, instead of counting on your 8.5x11 or :30 to persuade and assuage all concerns, direct the audience to a long sales page and persuade them there, where you have the space to handle every possible objection. Prohibitively expensive for anyone not a statewide? Probably. The most persuasive tool to win the hardest votes? (convincing Ds to vote R, or convincing people who never vote to vote now) Seems possible.
1) Employ common sense (difficult for 20-somethings); 2) Don’t annoy; 3) Don’t harass; and 4) Don’t be stupid. Companies occasionally fail on one or more of these metrics, but then get slapped by their customers. Customer-retention and loyalty are at an all-time low, so it doesn’t take much for a commercial customer to migrate to another firm, retailer, restaurant, etc. Translated to the political world, this means not voting for the candidate in question, voting for a primary opponent, boycotting the candidate in question in the general election, not donating funds, and spreading the word about how harassing this candidate is. Hence, a political campaign’s digital operation -- as with all other key aspects of the campaign -- must have adult supervision. Trump himself has been victimized by 20-something Social Media implementers who lack any overall context for what they are doing, who lack common sense, and who have no political maturity or sophistication with regard to how their tweets/submissions would be received, or perceived.
Ok I’ll be REAL honest: to the person who talked about using “expertly-written sales pages,” wtf are you talking about? Like, a website? An online pdf? What are we really talking about here? Because hey, if it works it works, but I’m not exactly picking up what you’re putting down. I missed Sales 101 in college.
Here’s another confession: I too, suck at the marketing funnel, but I don’t think I would if I had more budget to like…make a funnel at all. Know what I mean? Republicans don’t spend early on awareness and persuasion. For all the talk about the right’s amazing content ecosystem, campaigns themselves just don’t invest in this. I understand why even if it grinds my gears. But it’s harder to focus on a marketing funnel when budgets are tight and timelines are even tighter.
High-five to the person who plugged common sense.
OK moving on…
I regret to inform you that I have become...a Threads person? Not like, one of those Threads people. Let’s not get carried away or anything. But I am experimenting in a “let’s see where this goes” type of way. So far I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion: Threads is…kind of nice, ugh, which feels a little bit off.
A few days ago I posted something completely random and innocuous about my toddler’s eating habits. No strategy. No political angle. No attempt at engagement bait. I wasn’t trying push some angle or hop on a trend…
It was, however, something I’d never post on X (doesn’t fit mah brand over there!). I typed it out sometime after dinner and before doing some dishes…and just hit post. Easy peasy.
It ended up getting more than 1,600 likes, almost 300 replies, and 30 shares. And 95% of those replies were earnest answers from people genuinely trying to offer reassurance or advice. And that’s my plug for Threads: it’s interesting over there. X may drive the conversation (and I still love me some X for all kinds of reasons!), but I’m starting to wonder if a lot of it isn’t actually happening over on Meta’s competitor. It’s way less political. It’s more casual. More honest?
Anyway, all this got me thinking - which brings us to this week’s One Question. We spend so much time talking about Facebook, X, and Instagram that we sometimes forget there are entire communities thriving elsewhere. Threads. Reddit. LinkedIn. Snapchat. Substack. Truth Social. Each one has its own culture, its own norms, and its own audience.
The internet has become much more fragmented than it was five years ago (newsflash). So here’s what I want to know: At the end of the day, we’re in the voter contact business. Instead of driving door knocks, we’re driving clicks but that doesn’t erase the same principle: getting in front of the right voters with the right message. And yeah, sometimes the message isn’t tax cuts or border walls. Sometimes it can be your vitamin regimen or the latest parenting hack. The point is connection.
So with all that being said, here’s this week’s One Question: Outside of Facebook, X, and Instagram...which platform do you think campaigns should be paying a lot more attention to this cycle? Which ones do you think campaigns will - or should - experiment with?
The above quote comes from Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, in an essay he wrote this week about how to best regulate the future of Artificial General Intelligence. Are you getting tired of all the AI handwringing? Yeah I know, me too. But these guys (Hassabis, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, etc) are having a moment right now and they’re using it to call for the U.S. government to step up and oversee their industry. Why? Because, as Hassabis puts it, they’ve “essentially found a way to make sand think,” and that calls for some serious legislating already! Maybe he’s right. Maybe his solution (an industry-funded oversight body) is the right one. But when the next phase of civilization is on the line, maybe it’s at least worth discussing. Just a thought!
—Playing with fire?
Right Direction Wisconsin - a super PAC tied to the Republican Governors Association (whatup!?) is dropping some serious dough in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. Not the GOP one. The Dem one. The 30-second spot, which is running in the bluer parts of the state, slams Dem candidate Francesca Hong for being anti-ICE and too liberal. AH HA WE SEE WHAT YOU'RE DOING. The ad itself is pretty standard fare. So will the $2 million gamble pay off? Hard to say. But so far this year it does seem like the libs are getting more liberal so there’s always a chance. And…a race between Tom Tiffany and Ms. Hong would be quite the interesting set-up. But while Tiffany seems to be a good candidate - and I know basically nothing about Wisconsin politics - there’s always the chance Republicans get exactly what they want, only to watch Hong beat our guy in November. And that, ladies and gentlemen, would suck.
—Lahn Land
We are entering prime prime advertising opportunity for the midterms. And by that I mean the General Election ad wars have officially begun! What you want: Ads that stick. What you don’t want: Ads that cause unnecessary controversy, which is perhaps what we’re getting in the Iowa gubernatorial race. RGA Right Direction PAC released an ad back in May that attacked Sand over millions of dollars that went missing during his tenure as auditor. It cited reporting for a local news station that - after the ad came out - did its own story about how the spot “omits context.” Groan. Even the Reddit threads piled on and Sand put out his own response ad. But that didn’t stop the Zach Lahn campaign from releasing its own attack ad on the same topic. They’ve spent roughly $68,000 in the last week or so promoting the spot on YouTube. Hhmmm. Anyway, I actually mostly like Lahn’s ad for what it tries to accomplish: Paint Sand as an unserious guy unfit for the job. But now Iowa political observers are going to be on high alert and ready to nitpick any spot that comes out of the pro-Lahn camp between now and November and that’s not exactly a great place to be in. Just saying.
Anyway, fwiw: Sand is spending heavily on YouTube as well - $210K in the last week - going negative on Lahn. Knives are out.
—Nice stuff
Btw…just saying…I really like this WinRed page from Mike Johnson:
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A new Andy Biggs ad features the voice of Charlie Kirk. Watch here.
A new Politico report calls out how Dems have a huge cash advantage in key Senate races. Ugh.
Looks like Elon and Vivek have made up! The gazillionaire donated $5M to Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial run in May
Looks like Darline Graham is considering running for a full term to replace her late brother in the senate.
Former Governor and Congressman Mark Sanford looks to be making moves as well.
After hinting for days at a run, Rep. Ralph Norman has finally announced his bid for South Carolina Senate.
🙌 X has tweaked its algorithm to make its feed more friendly…apparently in response to what Threads is doing. Interesting!
🤔 Hmmm…Science says AI-generated content gets less engagement?
🕺 Some Instagram Reels stats for 2026. Example: 30-60 seconds appears to be the sweet spot for reach.
🤖 Fact: AI is coming to political texts. Even Eric Wilson says so!
🌎 The NYT did a 20-year retrospective of all of Twitter’s greatest hits. Take a look.
📈 Some tips about how to get more reach on LinkedIn…from LinkedIn. Pretty straightforward!
The MAGA right is going after…Brad Parscale.
Stand Together is hiring a Social Media Manager. Details here.
Big congrats this week to the teams at 1903 and Numinar! I’m not saying Michael Beach is out for world domination, but I’m maybe not NOT saying that, either, if you follow me. The 1903 portfolio is looking pretty impressive, if you ask me. And I like this very much as a sign that Republicans are taking voter contact seriously, investing in relationship organizing, and getting serious about embedding those things into a campaign’s digital operation. Breaking down the campaign silos - one acquisition at a time! I dig it.
Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com
From the other side of the tracks:
If you thought we were done talking about AI today, you were wrong! Sorry! I thought this was really interesting: Anthropic is out with a new ad that has people a little freaked out. Tech Crunch has more here. I’m torn. It’s obviously a thoughtful ad, but the tone is…weird. Not what we’re used to getting from the corporate world these days. I understand trying to position yourself as the company best suited to deal with the AI dilemma, but give us a little hope, right? The ad ends with words on screen that say “There’s hope in hard questions,” but it doesn’t really offer any. It’s…strange. So much about advertising is about feelings. How does something make us feel. Hopeful? Optimistic? Or melancholy? How about weirdly sad for an era that seems to have been lost to the dustbin of history (the pre-AI world)? Is it time to mourn yet again for simpler times? This ad makes me think so. Sorry, Anthropic! You perhaps missed the mark with this one.
From the other side of the aisle:
A lot of Republicans were giving Annie Andrews a hard time for this fundraising text in the wake of Lindsey Graham’s untimely death. Andrews is the Democrat that Graham was slated to face in the General Election in November. Look - I’m NO fan of Andrews and I probably would have advised against fundraising in the direct aftermath of her opponent’s shocking death…but this is uncharted territory and it’s pretty tame copy. Still not a great look, but there are so many libs out there who would have done WAY worse which means the bar for her is so low I guess I’m just not that offended by this. Le sigh. ::shrug::
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