Television’s simulated intimacy made Trump feel personally known to voters

Evidence

This form of populism depends upon television’s simulation of intimacy and familiarity — McLuhan remarked that when people see a film star on the street, they recognise them, but when people see a TV star, they typically think that it is someone they know. Trump’s presiding over The Apprentice, his willingness to appear on shows such as The Roast of Donald Trump, means that he feels like someone audiences personally know. As a representative of this “professional elite”, Clinton was too close, too familiar. At the same time, Trump’s position in the media ecology means that, in some respects, he could seem less remote than Hillary Clinton. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2041

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the book’s media-ecology theme from ch54, ch73 and ch98. — connects to: A reality TV persona fabricated by producers launched Trump’s political career — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 422; TV talk shows deliberately engineer an illusion of intimacy with audiences — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 774; TV familiarity made Trump feel personally known while Clinton seemed remote — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2041

Broader Connections

• TV talk shows deliberately engineer an illusion of intimacy with audiences #expands (0.88) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 774
• A reality TV persona fabricated by producers launched Trump’s political career #corroborates (0.82) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 422