When they take photos of Obama playing basketball, Trump golfing, etc. the subjects are still actually doing those things and actually do them off-camera as pastimes. The comms people are taking real interests and skills of their clients and casting them in the best possible light. The circumstances are staged, but the pastimes are not.

Mussolini never harvested any wheat and Trump never worked at McDonald's. The comms people are completely fabricating their client's interests and skills.

It's not even Dirty Jobs levels of slumming it where they actually do the job but get paid thousands of times more and go to a fancy hotel at the end of the day. They're just models.

[–] sweetpotato@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Everything they say, everything they do, every interaction with another person, every camera shot taken, everything is staged and planned ahead by teams. Their character is staged, their expressions are staged, so what's different? The fact that they may do something like that, though differently, once in a while? The goal is still the same, to connect with voters and to create a more likeable and relatable image of them. Regardless if other candidates have not explicitly dressed up as workers of a field they've never worked for. They film themselves going to factories listening to people, talking to people in the streets and all of that is 100% controlled, so I don't see the difference. It's not like anyone claims Trump works in McDonald's for years, they don't fabricate anything more than any other campaigner does.

The distinction you make doesn't have a tangible meaning to it, all of them are showing something staged based on data science, psychology and communication and nothing else.