“Reality politics” echoes the “reality news” moniker the pro-Trump media used for itself around the time of the president’s inauguration. At the time, Mike Cernovich, another pro-Trump media personality, described it as “raw, low-production-value/high-entertainment-value content.” “They want it GoPro’d and Facebook Live’d — they want it unfiltered,” he said. The appeal, he and others explained, was twofold: First, this content is not a simple sound bite, so there’s little fear of being taken out of context. It feels genuine and transparent, particularly if you’re livestreaming all the time. More importantly, it’s agenda-setting. Constant content creation forces your opponent to respond to you.

It’s a strategy that’s working fantastically well for Ocasio-Cortez, who’s pulled off the rare Trump-era feat of dominating online and cable news cycles virtually every day since she was sworn into office last week.

And she’s leveraging that coverage to float trial balloons on various policy topics, like a Green New Deal or a progressive tax rate. Tweets, dunks, and livestreams beget media appearances and coverage; the media appearances and coverage beget more tweets, dunks, and livestreams. The cycle repeats. And it works. As Cernovich tweeted last week, “Everyone is talking about AOC’s tax plan….and she’s 29 and got sworn in a day ago. Lololol do people even understand this all?”