Look Over There! Tactical Obliviousness in Modern Political Communications

This post by VP Vance in the immediate aftermath of the Trump-Musk split is a classsic example of content designed to deflect, distract and obfuscate.

Many of us will have watched these posts happen in real time. A breathtaking revelation drops—expense fiddling, an ugly text leak, a flagrant breach of the rules—and the politician at the heart of it glides online to share a photograph of their dog, a recipe for brownies, or news of a town fair. No acknowledgement, no defence, just a cheerful nudge toward something else. Scroll a little further, and you will find their supporters obligingly co-signing the pretence: Lovely cake, Sir! Within hours, the scandal sinks beneath the timeline.

At first glance, the move looks frivolous. In truth, it is a ruthlessly modern form of message control. Communication scholars have a name for the public’s role in the dance: information avoidance. In laboratory settings, people will literally pay to dodge news that might dent their self-image or moral comfort. In the wild, a friendly diversion from a favoured figure supplies exactly the excuse they need. If the politician is posting about Labrador puppies, surely nothing is truly amiss.

Digital architecture supercharges the manoeuvre. Pew’s long-running media surveys show a steady decline in the number who follow hard news closely; scrolling now serves more as mood regulation than civic duty. Algorithms reward steady posting and emotional resonance, not stumbling confessions, so the off-topic post elbows its way to the top of the feed while the awkward headline drifts.

Politically, strategic obliviousness is almost irresistible. Gallup’s 2024 ethics poll recorded the lowest trust in members of Congress and senators since the series began. Under those conditions, an apology can alienate one’s own coalition without convincing sceptics. By contrast, anodyne chatter about gardening keeps the tribe together and denies critics the oxygen of reciprocal combat. Interview experiments reveal that audiences often fail to notice outright question-dodging when the conversation moves quickly; social media accelerates that tempo to the point where evasion feels like background hum.

In the case of content like the post by JD Vance, there is a nudge and wink to the audience, acknowledging indirectly that something significant has happened. Rather than ignoring the uproar entirely, here we have a jokey reference. The manoeuvre satisfies two audiences at once: critics see a fleeting flash of self-awareness, while loyal supporters read the glib aside as an in-group signal that the story is not worth serious attention. In psychoanalytic terms the joke becomes a shared fetish object; the embarrassing Real is admitted only to be neutralised through laughter, allowing the collective fantasy to continue unruffled.

We can broaden the psychoanalytic angle. Slavoj Žižek, updating Lacan, speaks of the cynical subject who knows the uncomfortable fact yet behaves as if he does not. Feigned obliviousness gives that posture a concrete, public ritual. The damaging information is neither refuted nor hidden; it is rendered socially irrelevant. Supporters participate in what Lacan might call fetishistic disavowal: I know very well, but still… The price of entry to the group fantasy is a small performance of looking elsewhere.

What, then, for those trying to puncture the spell? Fact-checking alone is not enough; the battleground is attention, not accuracy. Campaigners who wish to keep a story alive must supply fresh, vivid hooks that rival the cute dog and outperform the brownie recipe. Timing matters as well: if you know a report is about to land, stack up your follow-up angles in advance, ready to reclaim the agenda when the inevitable deflection appears.

There is, however, a long-term cost. Behavioural work on avoidance finds that when individuals are finally confronted with the unwelcome truth, they feel more betrayed than after a straightforward denial. The short reprieve may compound the eventual fallout. Political storytellers would do well to remember that the digital crowd has a long memory, even if its daily gaze is fleeting.

For the rest of us, the lesson is plain: when a public figure abruptly changes the subject, pause before you scroll on. The silence around a scandal may be louder than any admission. Once you recognise the choreography, you are far less likely to dance to it.