Sep 12, 2026
A principle that covers 90% of media training is to relentlessly visualize your audience and speak only to them.
- a political candidate or a CEO bombing an interview is usually because they’re trying to answer the journalist’s question
- “Mr CEO, were the layoffs a mistake or a deliberate choice?” The only way to look good answering this is to visualize your audience and talk to them about amazing products you’re going to build with the great ppl in your company
- “Ms political candidate, given your recent hospitalization is there anything else voters should know about your health?” Yup, visualize your audience and tell them how you’re going to throw your boundless energy at solving their problems
- “ this is nonsense she evaded the question!” That’s because she’s not answering the question. Answering the question looks horrible on video, it's a lost cause. She’s talking to her audience. The question just establishes the topic to speak about, details don’t matter. (And her audience thinks she handled that great btw)
- the reason this works is that people subconsciously feel the world is against their favorite but for their opponent. Thus they expect the opponent to answer the question; they expect their favorite to demonstrate grace under pressure. And since you can't win people who already don't like you, speaking to your audience with grace is all you have to do
- what about ppl on the fence? I once heard @SarahLongwell25 say smtg like "in media you can’t convince ppl from scratch or make them reverse an opinion, you can only unlock what they already think." And so you have to speak persuasively to your audience. Fence sitters will either be drawn to you or they won't
- all this is extremely counterintuitive because nothing works like this in real life. It is entirely an emergent property of media. Debate stage, to a degree court room, video, etc.
- this explains behavior of top accounts on X. That's because X timeline is media, it's a 100% constructed world. (One difference with video is that on X ppl are at home relaxed in their pajamas, so they can generally be more clever than in stressful situations thinking on their feet)
- as always with these things wizards can break this principle and still look good, but don't try that at home