Political scandals of the past seem so quaint.

Being chased by a rabbit. A kind of weird yell at a rally. Misspelling potato.

Why are they so much more tame?

I think it's because of the internet.

The information you are exposed to daily sets your baseline for normal, for what is exceptional or stands out from that baseline.^[alb]

Before the internet, most information went through curatorial processes optimizing to make them normal / balanced.^[alc]

The internet makes it so there's infinite channels for information to flow, and also a constant drive to produce things that are "more".

The things that break through the cacophony are memeable, the "most".

That means we're awash in a cacophony of over-the-top, supernormal stimuli and that becomes our new normal.

Now that the baseline is over-the-top, it's the shameless who have adapted to the new reality the fastest.^[ald]

The shameless have realized that even egregious behavior barely registers^[ale], so the downside is much smaller, and it's a much better strategy than before.

Before, doing the right, principled thing, and the thing that was most effective in repeated games were aligned.

Now, they are less aligned, and the shameless reign supreme.

I truly hope we as society figure a mechanism to realign principles even in this new information reality.