can I vote for the writer?

Apologies to Marcus Brown and the people who've already seen this on his blog weeks ago. Just couldn't bear not having this around somewhere of my own.

Political ad for Argentine politician Ricardo López Murphy. But the guy you want to vote for is the copywriter:

Spoiler alert: don't read further until you've seen it. I'm dead serious about this. Click it. Clickity-click. Well done.

Ok, so once you get your chin back up, you realize it's really not that complicated. It's a very simple structure, and in hindsight it's quite obvious that any structure that goes, put as a formula, "I think / something negative / I don't think / something positive / I think (etc)"   will, of course, read the exact opposite when reading it backwards. Rocket science it's not. Still beautiful copy, though.
However, it's a fabulous illustration of how effective symmetry is on our brain. The discovery of a (formerly hidden) symmetric structure just hits like a hammer. Or an epiphany if you want to play fancy.
There are some remarkable examples in music, like Mozart's inverted canons, where you just turn the sheet music upside down to get the second part. Some of, say, Bach's fugues are way more complicated structures - but there's just something about that perfect symmetry that seems astoundingly impressive.
Seem to recall that Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach has some good stuff on that subject. Got to check up on it, I guess.

Comments

[Marcus Brown]

Apologise? Don't be silly, this can't be posted enough.

[Nicholai]

that's what I was thinking...

Don't know how effective this is election-wise, though.
I mean, it's clearly too clever, artful and crafted to have anything to do with the candidate. Can't imagine him having input beyond "yeah... that. was. brilliant."

So what's the message really?

"Vote for me, I have exquisite taste in copywriters"?

Well, I suppose that's a better reason than most, when I think about it. I guess that being able to acknowledge excellence in other people's ideas and accept them as your own is not the worst quality for a politician.