Your real audience is not everybody, but a large subset: students, instructors, and people interested in education. Someone who has been affected by tech changes in domestic life may not be your audience.
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Moreover, humans connect to strong emotion and/or specificity. You can say that the killer stabbed fifteen people, and that's not going to move your audience as much as starting with the story of one person and expanding to include the other 14. We don't connect to numbers. "Everyone" is a number.
aug 30, 2025, 6:40 pm • 35 2 • view
So, back to the tech essay and then to Democratic strategy. Specificity finds your real audience. You could go for an actual hook using anecdote, but for your actual audience, because they already care about the topic, just telling them specific should be enough.
aug 30, 2025, 6:43 pm • 27 1 • view
Plenty of published and much-cited academic essays start with something like "This is a paper about students and how the last thirty-five years of ed-tech has changed their behavior." No hook, just a clear description of what you're going to talk about.
aug 30, 2025, 6:46 pm • 29 1 • view
It's more engaging to a broader audience to start with anecdote, and personally, that's what I'd do, but if people are interested in ed-tech and student behavior, they're probably interested in the paper even without a flashy opening.
aug 30, 2025, 6:47 pm • 28 1 • view
However, almost every Democratic strategy I see is the equivalent of "In recent years, technological changes have affected everyone." Boring, broad, and appealing only in averages, never specifics. No passion inspired or demonstrated.
aug 30, 2025, 6:49 pm • 29 2 • view
No one is excited about meeting in the middle, about getting a very little piece of what they want. People care about issues and care deeply. So, let's say recent polls say that talking about COVID vaccines tends to irritate people, but your candidate has fought for vaccine access.
aug 30, 2025, 6:50 pm • 27 3 • view
First, there's already a passionate audience you can grab with that. Second, there's an opportunity to educate. By being passionate and specific, you grab the audience who is already on board and you may interest people who don't yet know they agree with you.
aug 30, 2025, 6:51 pm • 26 3 • view
What doesn't work is something like "I support vaccine access so that everyone can make their own choice." You are undermining your candidate's beliefs and benefits when you undercut the benefits of vaccines by framing them solely as a personal choice.
aug 30, 2025, 6:52 pm • 33 3 • view
You are losing the passionate audience your candidate could have gotten through specific support of the cool thing they did. People who care a lot about vaccines like that you did that, but they hate the way you just framed vaccines as personal. People who hate vaccines also hate this message.
aug 30, 2025, 6:54 pm • 24 1 • view
People in the middle are probably fine with it, but they're not excited, because the middle is not an exciting place. You've just told excited vaccine supporters you don't really care about them and excited anti-vaxers (fuck the double x, it makes no sense) that you don't support their goals either.
aug 30, 2025, 6:56 pm • 24 1 • view