The average hug lasts three seconds. In a study of human behavior, researchers watched videos, frame by frame,
of the 2008 Olympics athletes hugging in celebration, remorse, and courtesy. Although the extrapolation may be
shaky, sociologists and anthropologists have also supported this finding. Three seconds is an inherently
significant unit of time; many gestures, interpersonal moments and internal bodily functions operate in a three
second rhythm.
Three seconds before the natural impulse to blink.
Three seconds to smile and nod as you walk past an acquaintance on the street.
Three seconds to let out a sigh in frustration.
In our body, three seconds feels at home.
In online ads, three seconds is considered a successful view for a video. For ad placements, the same three
seconds seen 8-10 times is considered enough for someone to remember. If they’re interested, maybe
they’ll watch for 10 seconds, 15 would be incredible.
In 2004, researchers started studying attention spans with stopwatches. They found that office workers, on
average, could achieve focused attention for 2 and a half minutes. In 2012, it shrunk to 1 minute and 15
seconds. The most recent data suggests we’re now at an average of 47 seconds—perhaps that’s
generous.
Video on social media has mostly abandoned structure or story, only having one-mississippi two-mississippi
three-mississippi guaranteed. Shorter, it should always be shorter. The viewer is anxious to see the next thing,
the next thing, the next thing—there’s a never ending supply of content. Perhaps people’s
anxiety is fueled by the knowledge they can never watch it all, so they’re intuitively chasing a video
that fits their particular niche interests and insecurities… for certain videos, the odds are forever
stacked against that happening. The viewer can smell a political advertisement in the first second, something in
the color combinations and tone of voice. They scroll through… now they’re seeing an
influencer’s reaction video, a friend at a party they weren’t invited to, an advertisement for
specialty dog food.
—
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court made a ruling that we now colloquially call “the Dobbs
decision.” The case was Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and the question that came
before the Supreme Court was this: Did the state of Mississippi violate the constitution by enacting a state law
that banned “most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for medical emergencies and fetal
abnormalities?” This question challenged the federal precedent, the 1970 ruling of Roe v. Wade. The
ultimate Dobbs ruling overturned abortion access at the federal level, culminating a 50-year sustained,
strategic effort by anti-choice lobbyists and special interest groups.
Three seconds to open a new tab and begin typing in the search bar.
Google Ads Transparency Center is Google’s attempt at repentance for the harm they’ve caused in
political advertising. You can now use the technology that uses you to search for money and messaging spent to
its greedy hands. I search ads placed June 24 - August 2, 2022, political, shown in Kansas—the most
important election for abortion access since Dobbs.
At that time I was living in Kansas City. Although technically in Missouri, my apartment was just two blocks
from State Line Road, which I walked down to get to my doctor’s appointments, at Kansas University Medical
Center, just a half mile away. In June - August of 2022, you couldn’t walk one block without seeing a yard
sign, banner, or bumper sticker about the abortion referendum, bright blue and dull purple rectangles dotting
the city’s yards, windows, and cars. To paraphrase the question up for vote: Should Kansas protect
abortion access at the state level? The amendment was called the Value Them Both constitutional
amendment—a YES vote was against abortion access and a NO vote would protect abortion access. Confusing on
purpose, of course.
I had been working in politics for seven years at this point. My first federal election was 2016. Donald Trump
was elected president and almost all of our state-wide clients lost; my coworkers and I spent most of the night
ducking out of the office election night watch party to cry into our wine glasses. By 2022, I had fully
acclimatized to that environment. I had learned how to swim upstream, keeping my head above water, despite cause
for overwhelming dread and despair. There had been big wins and big losses, and I had learned a lot from my
coworkers–a hardened group of young adults ranging from progressive to radical, all faced with the
reality of living in a very red state. We moved like a well-oiled machine [1] most
of
the time, and I found my
place. I often disagreed with platforms or tactics, but progressive politics in Kansas and Missouri isn’t
a great place for idealism.
The larger the race the less exciting or rewarding I found the work—working in federal races started to
feel horrible and slimy, coated in millions of dollars of lobbyist money and overworkshopped messaging language.
I found my hope and dedication in working for smaller races and groups: state congressional districts and ballot
measures, city council races, unions and coalitions. I created ads that alerted voters to a ballot measure that
would improve funding for the Minneapolis park system. I helped educate Missouri voters on the lack of sunshine
laws in the state government, and how it is one of the most corrupt in the country. I plodded forward, wondering
if I was actually doing anything, but feeling that at least this work was more worthwhile than making ads for
Gatorade and Nike.
In the summer of 2022, all of my work shifted to abortion access preservation and protection. I was working for
Kansans For Constitutional Freedom [2], the
coalition leading the charge. My
colleague,
Meg, had designed the yard
signs strewn across the city. My manager, Ryan, a longtime Midwestern political analyst who had become a great
friend, called me once a day to talk in therapy-style ramblings about the latest polls and numbers and what that
might mean for the election. Most of it went over my head, but I listened to him like his hope could affect the
outcome. My natural tendency to optimism helped us both. We sent out ad after ad, messaging dialed in tightly, a
downpour sloshing into the algorithm of Kansas voters. The other side did the same. We waited, seeing what would
rise to the top. If three seconds is precious, if hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent — what words
were said?
This confusing constitutional amendment is a slippery—
If cars ran on excuses, Joe Biden and Sharice Davids—
Don’t be mislead, abortion is already highly regulated—
On the constitutional amendment, here’s what you—
The abortion industry and radical left are spending millions—
The radical left gave us high gas prices—
Kansas has become an abortion destination—
Hey, it’s Harrison Butker, kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs—
We were expecting our second child when we learned—
Do no harm. That’s the oath we—
I’ve read the Value Them Both Amendment—
Which Kansas will you choose? Biden and the radical—
Whatever you’re doing, stop and listen—
On the constitutional amendment, here’s what you need to know—
Politicians are trying to confuse you —
I won’t support putting a woman’s life at risk—
Opponents of the Value Them Both Amendment are misleading you—
Growing up Catholic, we didn’t talk about—
Confused about this amendment? It could ban—
Some of those are my words, words I typed. I rattled off the approved language to explain the horrors of a
person forced to give birth. I searched for the words that keep the message 1) condensed for time, 2) dramatic
for efficacy, 3) not offensive for approval.
I think of what I want to say—
“Keep abortion legal.”
1 out of 3, not approved. In the midwest, it has to be more dramatic, and the word abortion can be considered
offensive. Try switching to “reproductive healthcare”—now it’s too long. For more
attention, it has to be about a woman suffering, or a doctor going to jail. The algorithm doesn’t crave
nuance or clarity, just put the iStock image of a jail door slamming, a woman crying in a hospital bed, add text
on screen. Hammer to skull, scream with your text—
“DOCTORS IN JAIL?”
—
In 2019, I hiked a section of the Appalachian trail by myself. I planned a five day hike that would take me
across roughly 40 miles of the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. The second night, as I stopped at a backcountry
tent site and began heating up water for my dehydrated food, I was approached by three men in their early 20s.
They were handsome, clean cut, inexplicably grinning at me. They shook my hand, then asked me how my hike had
gone. Their second question was, had I accepted Jesus into my heart?
Three seconds to pause, smile, formulate a response. Light, firm, breezy, polite.
I wasn’t raised religious. In midwestern America, that meant Easter was a holiday about candy and bunnies.
In English class, literary biblical references would go over my head (what is a millstone and how is it around a
throat?) [3] The summer of 2008, I
accidentally took communion while nannying for a
family’s children at
church. I’ve never understood the extreme conviction that religion inspires, the unwavering and
unforgiving rules, and how it can turn someone into a single-issue voter. [4]
It takes less than three seconds to reference the bible, and perhaps that’s the secret to conservative
groups’ eternally sharpened edge. Jesus is their messaging director and it’s airtight. Who wants to
argue complexity if there’s sin on the line?
The technology has outmatched our attention span, our phrases no longer function in the mode in which they now
exist, we’ve boxed ourselves in. The key ingredient is attention, not understanding. I made ads featuring
iStock photos of pregnant women crying, trying not to think of my pregnant sister, who had indeed called me
crying most days. My niece is almost two years old now. My fingers typed “with no exceptions for rape,
incest, of the life of the mother” but I couldn’t think about what that could actually mean for
myself or my friends. Instead, mind elsewhere, I waited for the campaign’s approval. 50k went behind that
ad campaign, a 60 second video following a true story of a woman who miscarried her planned pregnancy and needed
abortion access as healthcare. Her story is very sad, it’s hard to watch, you probably wouldn’t stay
longer than a few seconds.
1 - Albeit a very
loud machine. Men in politics
love to hear themselves yell, even when they are on the right
side of things. 2 - A name so
Republican-sounding it should come as no
surprise that the main messaging goal was to appear
as
bi-partisan as possible. In their own words, KCF was a “bipartisan coalition of reproductive rights
advocates
and allied organizations committed to protecting the constitutional rights of Kansans and the right to safe,
legal abortion.” I pulled that language from their website. 3 - Oliver
Twist 4 - My maternal
grandmother was a single issue voter. She
was an incredible, independent woman with a sharp
sense of humor. She was a nurse in WWII and raised nine kids on her own after her husband died very young.
Although a feminist in many ways, she was also a devout Catholic — she just couldn’t stomach voting for
someone
who wasn’t pro-life.
Molly Garrett (she/her) is an animator and designer. Her creative work intersects with politics and social
justice, and has included clients like Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, Jobs with Justice and The Midwest Innocence
Project. She is also a member of the Nicolas Gogan Foundation, a mutual aid fund that supports the trans+
community. Her personal practice includes hand-drawn animations and pondering what a book can be. She is
currently an MFA candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University.
