Hamsters live

Things should be heard as they are said, read as they are written, and considered as they are. That's what we were taught. But in public matters, that's no longer the case. We journalists are not innocent either.

Let's take President Aleksandar Vučić's "programme text" for "Kurir". There, he was the first among us to present his "five points", of which this columnist's favorite is that more needs to be done and that the president will show by his example that this is possible.

These five points are not binding. Marketing mages would say that they are missing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), that is, measurable indicators by which we will see whether the president is implementing the plan.

Since he has both a knife and a cake - and forty televisions - the president's KPIs are stretching like gum. Our government, for example, explained the fact that we have the most polluted cities and the oldest cars in Europe - by the growth of standards. Everyone has a car and drives around all day! So to speak, first world problems!

It's not just that the "program" is reduced to promises that can be forgotten or replaced with others the day after tomorrow.

The "five points" were included in the sandwich of the main message the president wanted to convey, namely that we have become short-tempered, rude and arrogant in power! As the first among us is characterized by modesty, from clothing to food, he admits here: "We have not managed to free citizens from the arrogance and arrogance of the government."

As a careful reader of the presidential text, I have at least two questions. First, who is hiding behind the first person plural? Which "we", which includes the president, failed to suppress the arrogance of the authorities? Does he mean himself and his brother? Himself and Đuro Macut? Himself and the people? Or is it still a royal plural, where His Majesty is referring to his person in the plural?

And secondly, who is the president telling that he will teach the government's rascals a lesson? Maybe an uninformed citizen who doesn't know that the president is at the head of that government? Or a stupid citizen who thinks the president is good, but doesn't know what those around him are doing?

I say, we are taught to read as it is written and take things seriously. In another time and in another country, a politician could be taken at his word. One could write seriously and discuss how to suppress the arrogance of local apparatchiks.

There can be no talk of that here. But we are still trying to interpret the matter at the level of a populist message - who is the president flattering? What else could he be covering up? Will he manage to completely emancipate himself from the hated party? For example, he meets Milenko Jovanova on the street and throws eggs at him together with the people?

And that's the wrong approach. Namely, our president is, when it comes to his political style, completely on trend. Just as Donald Trump is known to post over 150 (!) messages on his social network every day, so too is our president making pilgrimages to television, Instagram, TikTok, and now even "program texts."

The very pace serves to break, to bury, to bombard - and not to make this or that promise or message a brilliant chess move. A colleague from the Süddeutsche Zeitung notes that many of today's politicians are doing live A/B testing.

This is when you advertise the same product in two ways, to see which works better. The reader should know that on most large Serbian portals, not everyone sees the same title, but titles are given in multiple versions, so the machine sees which one attracts more clicks and decides on it.

That's how Vučić is - low-level messages, various, sometimes contradictory, seemingly or really crazy, he extends a hand of reconciliation, threatens, then acts like a Buddhist, then plays the hero, laments that he will lose the elections, cheers that he will crush them in the elections, and so on.

And he's constantly testing what will be received in focus groups and polls. What story to push in the campaign, which can be thrown to the tabloids like a three-day miracle, and which should be forgotten the same evening.

And which will be gnawed by the critical public. And we, accustomed to reacting to what the president of the country says, accustomed to criticizing it, gnaw at those bones. Paradoxically, this is how we help the president to better conduct A/B testing, to watch the hamsters behind the glass in his experiment.

In this game, he risks almost nothing because the pace of the attention economy makes everything forgetful overnight, lasting as long as a single TikTok video. That's why the president is only disturbed by the focus of his critics - for example, on the case of the canopy collapse, on student protests. Because when a person is focused, then he doesn't gnaw on the bones thrown at him.

I say, we have learned to interpret words, not ignore them - that also applies to us journalists. And perhaps we should ignore them in this age of inflation of test balloons for likes and focus groups. Perhaps journalists should be prohibited from writing that the president "said", "assessed", "announced", "considered" and "stated" something.

Instead, look for real topics around you, among people. Real struggles, of which there are many. And write about politicians in power only when they do or don't do something, and that's what should have been done.

(danas.rs)