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How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit
- kawera 9y agoAn interesting book on the subject is "The Science of Fear" by Daniel Gardner: https://www.amazon.com/Science-Fear-Culture-Manipulates-Brain/dp/0452295467 https://www.amazon.com/Science-Fear-Culture-Manipulates-Brai...
- maxxxxx 9y agoI don't understand why so many people are addicted to outrage, anger and fear. For a while I played along but then I quickly realized that all this stuff is manufactured to manipulate people. Now I can't even stand watching CNN or watching a campaign ad.
- awkwarddaturtle 9y ago> I don't understand why so many people are addicted to outrage, anger and fear. I know right? It's outrageous how people are so addicted to outrage, anger and fear. :) > Now I can't even stand watching CNN or watching a campaign ad. I stopped watching cable news a long time ago. I also canceled my subscription to useless things like NYTimes, NPR, etc. It's amazing how much media influences the way you think and contorts your viewpoint to their extremism.
- maxxxxx 9y ago"I know right? It's outrageous how people are so addicted to outrage, anger and fear. :)" Knowing that these people are around makes my blood boil!!!!
- icebraining 9y ago"I'm sure we all agree that we ought to love one another and I know there are people in the world that do not love their fellow human beings, and I hate people like that!" The great Tom Lehrer: National Brotherhood Week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPNsr0mhcrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPNsr0mhcrY
- api 9y agoI suspect fear and outrage releases some natural addictive brain chemicals. The fear and outrage porn industry certainly resembles an addictive substance scene.
- maxxxxx 9y agoAt some point you should start getting bored with it. Same with porn. For a while it's interesting but then it just gets boring. Obviously I have no first hand experience watching pron. I only repeat what I hear from others :-)
- jononor 9y agoThing is that while the addictive use becomes 'boring' after a while (desensitized), an addict will still continue doing it. Often will go more extreme trying to compensate. Goes for porn, heroin, adrenaline and probably social media.
- rubinelli 9y agoThey do! Fear, anger, and outrage create a rush that stimulates your reward circuits with dopamine, in the same way that a thrill ride or a good workout do: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/culture-shrink/201508/angers-allure-are-you-addicted-anger https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/culture-shrink/201508/a... They also cause the release of cortisol, that depresses your immune system, unlike healthy behaviors like spending time with your friends or taking a good walk in a park.
- jameskilton 9y agoHumans are at their core emotional creatures. You don't get engagement with logic and facts. Instead you go after emotional stories. It takes immense mental effort to see through these stories and to hold back the immediate emotional responses. Many people have no clue that they are being manipulated in this way.
- maxxxxx 9y agoI came to the US in 2000. At first I found the constant excitement in TV news interesting but after two or three years I noticed that I couldn't handle it anymore. It just wasn't comfortable for me. Is it maybe that most people have checked out too and only a small but loud minority is addicted to all the nonsense? On Facebook it seems it's only a few people that constantly post web links or engage in flame wars. Most people I know are very quiet.
- fireflash38 9y agoJust because they are quiet doesn't mean they aren't impacted. I know someone who only ever posts about gardening, and yet I know for a fact she reads almost everything people post. Her husband on the other hand is constantly posting and commenting on far-right posts. They are still influenced the same way, they just express it differently.
- ShabbosGoy 9y ago> Most people I know are very quiet. That's by design and intentional. Anything you say online can be used to convict you in some obscure court of public opinion where your viewpoint didn't align with the mainstream viewpoint.
- javajosh 9y agoThere is also the symmetrical problem of not reacting strongly to a story that deserves it. Plenty of people, it seemed, were quite non-reactive about the Snowden disclosures. It just wasn't an exciting news story, whether you were for or against him. (This, I think, is the real lesson of computing in the modern era, that subjects will not object to being surveilled if they don't notice it. The abstract argument against it is predicated on possible future action, and the inability to stop it.)
- SkyMarshal 9y agoB/c we haven't completely evolved beyond our animal instincts yet. Merovingian said it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHW0FgiB7TI&t=4m16s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHW0FgiB7TI&t=4m16s
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago1) It's very much easier to be negative than to be positive. 2) Negativity is more contagious.
- graphitezepp 9y agoI agree with 1, but positivity can be contagious too, just gotta keep fighting to stay positive in the face of others negativity.
- xiaoma 9y agoThis has its roots in our evolutionary history. Missing something positive might have meant missing dinner. Missing something negative might have meant being dinner.
- QAPereo 9y agoI feel the same way, but it took time to get there. At first, it was more exciting to be plugged in... then you start to notice the patterns, and the lack of anything substantive. For some of us, that leads to disengagement, but maybe that's because we already prefer to focus on other issues?
- sgt101 9y agoI formed an opinion on a political event this year. I was right, but I didn't back my call and it cost me $40k - in the sense that I knew what to do (sell, shift to $) and I had the opportunity to do it, but I had a "doesn't matter to little guys like me" perspective. Last time I'm going to be disengaged....
- sqeaky 9y agoHow long until a critical mass of people forms to allow some more useful form of news to gain economic momentum? Will it ever happen? If not will the economic repercussions leave us with a decent world or some kind of dystopia?
- anigbrowl 9y agoNot long. We're at the stage where virtual assistants are being deployed through the population. As soon as people find reliable ways to ensure their loyalty, a strategic turn will make them unstoppable.
- stcredzero 9y agoHow long until a critical mass of people forms to allow some more useful form of news to gain economic momentum? Such things started forming on YouTube (with some problematic elements) but were defunded with an eye towards attracting more old media ad money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfHXXV45EjE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfHXXV45EjE Phillip DeFranco isn't perfect, but he's graduated from YouTube punk to what passes as a "moderate" there. (I think he's a good way to keep track of the middle of opinion in new media there.) He's also decided to start his own online news network.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dageshi 9y agoI don't think they will, they'll turn off the news completely and follow "news" about other stuff instead. Sports, video games, hobbies, they'll ignore current events and politics or anything else they might find anxiety inducing. That's what I do anyway, I'm much happier for it.
- sqeaky 9y agoI suppose it is possible that a critical mass of people will give up. That seems unlikely to me, too many care for better or worse. The people that care will either remain poorly informed for gradually get more informed and by our electing of Trump it seems quite likely misinformed with reign for some time. (I am not trying to politicize this, but trump got huge help from crazy news sources like breitbart)
- anigbrowl 9y agoDopamine. We market excitement and adventure to children like sugar (along with sugar, which is what's actually being sold a lot of the time), then most of them get into the workforce and discover that most jobs are bullshit and while the political system is nominally a democracy, most corporations and public institutions are authoritarian dictatorships. Some people accept this and can be bought off with holidays or being consumers, more intelligent ones who can't can be redirected into being angry at Those People.
- tlogan 9y agoIn general, you can sell 3 things: 1) fear, 2) greed, and 3) sex. 30% percent of Internet content is porn. So you have number 3 covered. Selling greed is hard, so lets do fear.
- zentiggr 9y agoWait... index funds, e*trade, 'you can day trade your way to retirement at 29!'... quants and HFT, the fact that there is a Wall Street after 2008... Money still sells most of all. Fear is just catching up now that the "news" is instant.
- mitchellshow 9y agoDesire for money is still driven by fear, greed, or sex.
- nostrademons 9y agoAlso, almost all of the B2B sector is selling greed (cyber-security being a notable exception), as is every ad-supported business out there. The whole financial industry as well.
- throwaway47861 9y agoBecause they have no lives and posting emotional responses on the internet makes them feel important. Pretty simple. And of course they'll rather challenge you to a duel with kitchen knives before admitting the real reason. So yeah, emotional creatures. Most of the "humans" are more like "animals in human body form".
- dkhenry 9y agoCCP Grey video on this topic, but from a slightly different perspective https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc
- erikb 9y agoIs it a coincidence that just yesterday we discussed a similar topic with fear being a product sold to us? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843080 (This is to increase the discussion spectrum, not to shut down the one started here)
- sevensor 9y agoI encourage everyone to read the Lapham essay. The medium article under discussion here presents details, Lapham's essay talks about the historical forces driving the culture of fear. The problem I have with this meta discussion is that it also inclines to make one fearful. At least in this instance we're talking fearfully about fear itself. For my part, I've begun to recognize that any news that provokes me to outrage was designed specifically for that end. This at least converts anger and despair at the state of the world to annoyance at the media outlet that would stoop to courting outrage. It leaves me with precious little news to read.
- kurthr 9y agoExactly, I can't believe how meta the whole "This Is How Your Fear and Outrage Are Being Sold..." tile is. They are using your fear and outrage at other peoples fear and outrage to sell your clicks or attention to someone else. It's about like the, "my narrow media sources tell me that you live in a media bubble that isn't like my own!" argument de absurdum. https://itscoffeeti.me/secrets-of-monetizing-a-medium-blog-d9b9acc85be2 https://itscoffeeti.me/secrets-of-monetizing-a-medium-blog-d...
- hprotagonist 9y agoWorship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible-- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing. DFW, 2005.
- laretluval 9y ago> The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. What is the argument for why this is better than the alternatives? Self-sacrifice can also be a worship.
- introspectr3 9y agoHe is positing here that the alternative is being enslaved to the systems of the mind. He is not arguing that you be a doormat. He is arguing that you be attentive and aware of your own mind's biases. The supposition being that when you are free from these controls, you will be able to see others as more than just means to ends.
- laretluval 9y agoThe narrative that information distribution was more accurate in the past because of "traditional journalism" has always struck me as self-serving. > Journalism — the historical counter to propaganda — has become the biggest casualty in this algorithmic war for our attention. Is the best solution really to fight propaganda by leaving our information distribution to a selected elite that we have to trust to follow some standards? Journalists are humans just like everyone else, although we've been taught to think of them as super-moral heroes. Is there a trustless way to implement journalistic standards such as sourcing?
- smacktoward 9y ago> Is the best solution really to fight propaganda by leaving our information distribution to a selected elite that we have to trust to follow some standards? Compared to leaving our information distribution to anybody who's out to make a quick buck?
- marcosdumay 9y agoYes, basically. You said it like if the answer was obvious, but I can't see anything obvious about it.
- rosser 9y agoI think the only obvious thing there is that leaving it to people whose actual motive is their profit, over your being well-informed, is obviously not the way to do it. It serves their ends to manipulate and monetize your attention in the ways The Fine Article describes.
- smsm42 9y agoThat's how food is distributed, basically, in every Western country. So far seems to work pretty well.
- laretluval 9y agoNot so much from the health perspective.
- WalterBright 9y agoThat article makes me outraged!
- raverbashing 9y agoAnd articles like that miss (or just ignore) that there are reasons to be worried, as small as they might be A person having Ebola seems to me like a significant fact even though it doesn't represent any danger These articles want to play a holier-than-though nihilist/"we know better" image but just come across as idiotic. Overreacting is stupid, but underreacting is naive.
- egwynn 9y agoThe article isn't arguing for underreaction. It argues that overreaction is worse now than it was before because the new platforms for publishing have dispensed with a number of editorial checks that would have tempered the sensationalism. Its main aim is that overreaction is more expensive than many realize.
- convolvatron 9y agothe issue of what one should report on, and what it might mean to be unbiased is broader than the one at hand. all discourse, whether well founded or not, is being shaped my a machine whose entire function is to optimize ad revenue. which is kind of sad, but the part that seems to be really egregious is that by co-opting communication, its not just feeding on us, its shaping us.
- Mefis 9y agoThe issue with the ebola articles is that they all omitted to say how all experts agreed that there was no risk of epidemic.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- felipeccastro 9y agoGreat article! And oh, the irony of having a very engaging title... It seems it all boils down to incentives: if the only available way of making money is ads, news agencies will optimize for that. I wonder if new techs like blockchain/ethereum may provide alternative ways of making money with different kinds of incentives (i.e. not optimized for more clicks, but for something else).
- frankydp 9y agoI would be happy with just opinion free and divisive speech free headlines. If the big outlets could simply start with that, it might be attainable. Words matter. In the meantime. https://legiblenews.com/ https://legiblenews.com/
- ouid 9y agoThis doesn't seem to be all that much better. the "war" section is A at the top, and B the only headlines there explicitly generate fear and outrage.
- frankydp 9y agoIt is alphabetical. Also it is wikipedia edits from the previous day, some days do not have that section, but I would say that is rare. The blurbs do seem to be more statement of fact than op ed especially compared to media outlets. Also humans are messy.
- hkmurakami 9y agoThe Economist, while not devoid of biases, is as close as we have to this.
- frankydp 9y agoI would also suggest that the LA Times does seem to apply a lot of effort into separating OP/ED and news. They do publish a lot of op/ed, but it is decently separated.
- stass 9y agoWall Street Journal is still very good as well. I wonder if the fact that their articles are not available for free is one of the reasons?
- icebraining 9y agoThere's no such thing as "opinion free". The events you choose to cover, the facts you choose to highlight, the people you interview, even the timing, are all based on opinion. Opinions and ideology are what guide us. A better policy, in my opinion, is to explicitly acknowledge one's opinions and ideologies, and to have some humility, recognizing at all times that one may be wrong.
- gmarx 9y agoI noticed his violent crime graph stopped around 2013. Convenient. Yes violent crime is down by the standards of the previous 50 years but I'm pretty sure it has been inching back up over the previous two, at least in cities. Nothing to panic about yet but also nothing to be dismissive about. Also, though I too long for the old days of journalistic standards, let us a remember one of the side effects what creating the assumption that there is one correct mainstream view of reality and that anything that deviates too much from it is extremism (or today "fake news"). There is almost no such thing as a bias free reporting of facts and events in the news. Many of the things which were in the past dismissed as the views of cranks are now accepted as normal. Surely some of the views expressed in the darker corners of the internet today will someday be considered mainstream and many of the views expressed by the mainstream real news will some day be considered nuts.
- eridius 9y agoThe source for that graph is Pew, and if you look at the linked source, it looks like violent crime did in fact keep going down (at least until 2015, Pew's graph doesn't go past that) - http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/16/voters-perceptions-of-crime-continue-to-conflict-with-reality/ft_16-11-16_crime_trend/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/16/voters-perce...
- anigbrowl 9y agoThat's a bogus objection that ignores the yawning gap that opened up between perception and reality around the turn of the century, which is the author's point. As for the argument about there being so such thing as bias-free reporting, you're extrapolating from that to a position of epistemological abdication where you use that narrow fact as a justification for believing whatever you want to believe. While bias is inevitable, it is also to a large extent measurable, and the quality of news reportage can be measured in terms of its predictive power by comparing contemporaneous reports with knowledge gained in hindsight and ranking news sources by their reliability over time.
- blizkreeg 9y agoThis is what we've sold for millennia. Right from Roman-era gladiatorial fights (for pure entertainment) to CNN, Fox, or Breitbart disguising entertainment as news, telling you the world is coming to an end. While we can and should certainly aspire to a different way, plainly presented news and information has few(er) takers in comparison to shock and awe. Humans love drama.
- anotherbrownguy 9y ago>Journalism — the historical counter to propaganda "The good old days", except that never existed. Journalism has always been the tool for the powerful to paint a positive picture of themselves to the general public via "unbiased agents" called journalists who are "free to write anything" as long as it serves their masters. Now that almost anyone can publish their opinion and share it with everyone, the ones who have been doing their thing for hundreds of years are being exposed.
- anigbrowl 9y agoThis ignores the fact that many journalistic endeavors have been borne out by historical factors, although perhaps in your model of the world all journalists and social change occur only at the will of powerful forces which manipulate things from behind the scene. But not you, of course.
- ameister14 9y agoIf you're trying to say that journalistic endeavors occurred because of multiple historical factors and not just a shadowy cabal, which is what I think you were trying to say, you may mean borne out of, not borne out by. 'Borne out by' essentially means 'proven by,' whereas 'borne out of' means 'came about because of.'
- anigbrowl 9y agoI mean by. I typed factors when I meant events because I was half-listening to someone talking at the time :-/ To be clear, my point is that journalism can be evaluated by how well it predicts outcomes, or how reliably it documents things that are subsequently judged to matter.
- egwynn 9y agoJust because we’ve removed a perverse incentive from the past (the oversight of the wealthy) doesn’t mean we haven’t replaced it with an even worse incentive (engagement-first monetization).
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- travisl12 9y agoI've been feeling that most "news" outlets these days (for a while?) seem like propaganda. But I think I realize now that this propaganda feeling is just a side-effect from trying to sell shit.
- ErikVandeWater 9y agoI think it's both. If you're interested, I suggest starting by watching the documentary Spin: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/spin/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/spin/
- mcappleton 9y agoI'm very glad I found Hacker news. Sometimes I read the news just cause I'm bored. Now I can just read hacker news which helps me be a better coder instead of draining me of emotional energy
- hkmurakami 9y agoHN is hardly devoid of fear and anger and biases and prejudice and self interest. In fact it's pretty much filled with it -- but not quite overflowing with it like many other popular textual outlets. And with all due respect, this thread isn't helping you become a better coder. If anything it's stoking our emotional needs, just in a different manner than say CNN.
- mcappleton 9y agoLol, what you are saying is true, but I actually do find some content about coding here! Also I appreciate the discussions. Instead of one agenda rammed down mu throats, I get to see the honest opinions of a lot of people.
- stcredzero 9y agoI'm going to spread this link as far and wide as I can! Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
- eludwig 9y agoA nicely laid out and illustrated article that's well written. That's about the best I can say. The worst is why? Who is the audience for this? I firmly believe that if you found this article by clicking on a link on the HN homepage, then you already know all this. It's exactly the kind of article we've been reading about in one form or another for 20 years. If you didn't find this article on the homepage of HN, then the odds are that you will never read it. Why? Because of all of the noise that the very article itself points out! This is a type of preaching to the choir, imo. Reinforcing to the wrong audience. The points made are fair, but obvious. But it is pretty! :)
- ereyes01 9y agoI shared the article in my Facebook feed. It will reach at least a couple of friends that are habitual troll victims. I guess to your point, that probably won't stop them from being victims/easy bait. At least they'll read it, hopefully.
- bmelton 9y agoI highly doubt it will matter. I was at the dentist's office about 6 months ago, and as I'd had a few dental procedures done over a spread-out timeline, I'd made friends with the dental assistants. We were talking about the news (which was on in the background) and I cautioned the lady at the desk to not put too much stock in it, and to wait around for updates before drawing any conclusions. She asked why, and I explained that the 24 hour news cycle often drops facts -- a couple of segues later, and I made the point that everybody thinks America is more dangerous than ever, largely because of the constant fear-mongering in the news, but crime statistics actually show falling crime rates over the past few decades. She didn't believe me, so I asked her to Google it on the computer in front of her, which resulted in a search result something like this[1], but before she started giving too much credence to it, she Googled a few more times until she found an article about Baltimore crime rates going up, even though we weren't in Baltimore, and neither of us lived in Baltimore, and she'd previously admitted to not having been in Baltimore in more than a decade -- none of that mattered, because her confirmation bias was slaked. [1] - http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/141209_Charts-Homicide-Rates-US-England.jpg.CROP.promovar-mediumlarge.jpg http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_pol...
- Mefis 9y ago"Regardless of the dramatic drop in crime over the last 30 years, more than half the population believes crime is worse than it was in years past." "The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise." - Socrates This argument keeps popping up. To confirm it we would need a control group. It is likely that even before social media people believed the state of affairs worse than it actually was. Maybe people are more prone to believe that our condition is deteriorating rather than improving.
- caseydurfee 9y agoIsn't the control group the part of the graph from 1993-2000ish, where perception and reality are fairly closely correlated? I guess that raises more questions than it answers. What about the rise of cable news? That tracks the change in the graph more closely than the rise of social networks. What about 9/11 and the war on terrorism? A significant portion of the US population lost their shit and never got it back. I'm not sure we should pin all or even most of the change on social media. I think you have a point that the "good old days fallacy" has been around since forever. But it also seems like something dramatically changed 15 years ago or so.
- mdpopescu 9y agoAs far as I can tell, "things are worse now" (or put the other way, "everything was better in the past") is a generally accepted thing throughout time and space. Including absurdities like "people were happier" or "there was less pollution".
- AdeptusAquinas 9y agoI and I am sure a good percentage of the internet population always struggle with articles like this. I don't have an ad blocker, don't have any 'ad-free' subscriptions to anything, yet I never click an ad while at the same time am not particularly bothered by them. They're just noise, and since they register as basically whitespace in my head, noise easily ignored. I don't feel 'at war' when I go online, and even if my attention is 'captured', it certainly doesn't translate to any purchased products or revenue for the 'aggressors'. That being said, I don't dismiss that it does occur: as Max Barry the author said, 'the industry is making multiple billions a year - that money comes from someone' (paraphrased). Just not from me.
- wu-ikkyu 9y agoJust because you don't click on an ad or think you ignore them doesn't mean you're not being manipulated by them. Subconscious influence/manipulation is more powerful and prevalent than most people realize. The most skillful forms of influence are invisible to the target.
- shostack 9y agoNor does it mean advertisers can't track your behavior after the fact. A conversion event post ad impression without a click is called a "view-through conversion" and is a cornerstone metric of most display advertising because the bulk of performance from display is likely to be view-through vs. click-based. Advertisers without "hard" conversion metrics can still measure uplift just as easily.
- AdeptusAquinas 9y agoI would like to think that no, my spending tends to be largely on things that do not tend to be advertised (craft beer and bills, mainly). But no doubt you are right. Still, if its so passive that I can barely detect it happening, all power to them.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
- karllager 9y agoAs a kid, I grew up in a country with almost no advertising. Repeat after me: No ads in the streets, in the TV, in the radio, nowhere. One day we found a magazine (from another country), which contained ads. Two people smoking cigarettes in a strangely alien world, some kind of jungle - or a safari, maybe. This image was so strange in many ways: Why is it there in a magazine, that was about something completely different? Who does it speak to? What is this strange world depicted there? Why does it feel a so - unreal? And why do the people smile in the picture, even though it is unreal? Image a day in your life without coming across an ad. Or a week. Or a year. Take a breath and imagine what the world would feel like. The need for advertising is deeply rooted in a society, that overproduces things and where a large part of your survival depends on your skill to sell. My deepest hope is that this world will be regarded just as strange as my kids eyes stopped before the strange picture of the two smokers.
- moduspol 9y agoAdvertising is a fact of life, though. Without it, there's no way to inform potential customers of a new brand or product. I mean, imagine if it all disappeared tomorrow. Wouldn't people just stick to the megacorps and established brands they already know? Wouldn't this make it even that much tougher for a Netflix to compete with a Comcast, or an Uber/Lyft to compete with an entrenched taxi industry? How would Dollar Shave Club possibly compete with Gillette? I don't like ads, either, but the alternative is worse. It just seems unrealistic. I know it could be done--I just don't think it'd bring about some post-materialist society. It'd just allow us to pat ourselves on the back while making it that much tougher to start a business and compete against existing businesses.
- abhi3 9y agoIt seems to me that the solution is not to ban advertisement but only certain kinds of them such as ones containing strong emotional (Ads guilting people into buying insurance) or aspirational content (won't you look so cool if you lived 'The Marlboro Life')
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- iratewizard 9y agoJust an FYI - you will probably cringe when you look back at how you used to type and form sentences.
- rosser 9y agoCan you please clarify the point you're making here? Because this is a complete non sequitur to me.
- devilsavocado 9y agoI have no idea why you are italicizing types of logical fallacies. I can't think of a good reason to do that. And just pointing out that you believe they are committing a logical fallacy without any explanation is a very lazy discussion technique.
- kazinator 9y ago> I have no idea why you are italicizing types of logical fallacies. If I were to guess, it is because it it is a term from a foreign language, in this case Latin, not because it is the name of a logical fallacy. There exists an orthographic, or perhaps typographic practice in English to italicize words and phrases borrowed from other languages, like à la carte, du jour, sine qua non, ...
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- rosser 9y agoIt's customary in some contexts to italicize "loan words". The terms for the fallacies come from the Latin. Ergo... As for your second point, I think it's pretty clear from both my comments and their context why I'm pointing out those fallacies. That said, in the case of "non sequitur", I was actually referring more to the literary sense of the term — "Where the hell did that come from?" — than the fallacious "does not follow" sense.
- 9y ago
- eapotapov 9y agoI think the biggest problem is that the media got dissolved within social networks clickbait titles were existing before - just remember tabloids. the thing is that when you see offline media you see: 1. the brand 2. you know how reliable is this media 3. you usually know the audience and think if you're part of it and trust the media so in offline, they don't afraid that their reader will buy something else (well they afraid, but it's not a matter of click) in facebook it's all just titles when reposted and people don't check where exactly it was published before clicking so it's just like "national examiner" will have a version published in the design of nytimes or anything else - so they will not only have their audience but will try to get a slice of other media's audience it could have been a quite complex thing to do for offline media as you need to actually print the edition, and pay money for it, but it's free for online, and you get money per view/per click so i think it's definitely a war between media for this new spread audience on social, there should be a new way to re-establish reliability
- abhishek0318 9y agoThis article's headline is ironic.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y agoAs the article mentions, this sensationalism was also a problem in the past. I think the big change is the subscription model vs the one-off model. A one-off model whether sold on the street or on the Internet favors a sensational attention grabbing. A subscription model favors long term value which is insight and honesty. I am happy that some of these traditional newspapers are going back to a traditional model. I would guess that if you compared headlines from newspapers that are subscription vs ad based, the ad based ones have significantly more sensational headlines.
- partycoder 9y agoIn the US, people from places that not even a scholar with a geography major can find on a map are afraid of being attacked by people that don't even know their town exists, and even if they did, I highly doubt they even bothered to go all the way there to just to harm an average rural guy that nobody knows. It's nonsense.
- alexb858 9y agoPeople click on this because they are scared(fear) and outraged about fear and outrage being used for monetary purposes. How ironic!
- equivocates 9y agoIs this article not an example of the very thing it complains of?
- icanhackit 9y agoThis was touched on by the study mentioned in the article which researched millions of headlines -- there was a interesting study from Wharton School of Marketing titled What Makes Online Content Viral [1] that demonstrated which emotional valences led to readers sharing content, and the biggest predictor was anger. Interestingly the valence that led to the least amount of sharing was sadness. [1] http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~kmilkman/2012_JMR.pdf http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~kmilkman/2012_JMR.pdf
- transposed 9y agoI'm pretty good at not falling victim to this. I don't check facebook. I don't watch TV or the news. I don't listen to the radio. I have a suite of ad-blocking technology. My attention is entirely mine to direct. Instead I read, listen to podcasts (which are sponsored oftentimes, but it's more relevant and less intrusive), watch recordings of episodes/streams without commercials. I believe I feel better because of this, and have more knowledge and skills. But I also sometimes feel like I live under a rock when I miss facebook reminders of birthdays, and "haven't heard" about current events that are blaring across all channels.
- smsm42 9y ago> This is not your fault — it is by design. Here's where I disagree. It is your fault. You don't have to watch youtube videos. If you do and the result is not to your liking - it's your fault. Nobody stood with a gun to your temple, nobody injected you with mind-suppressing drugs. You just like silly Youtube videos. Own it and stop blaming somebody else, or install site-blocking extension into your browser. Your life is your responsibility, and so is your time, whatever you do with it, including wasting it on silly youtube videos.
- defined 9y agoObligatory xkcd webcomic: https://xkcd.com/1283/ https://xkcd.com/1283/
- artur_makly 9y agocoincidentally i just discovered NYTimes's survey of a multimedia article about the jordanian debacle. they sre asking some deep questions of me: screenshot : http://imgur.com/a/uzqXR http://imgur.com/a/uzqXR survey : https://nyt.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4INloKlK2qDNyfz?source=https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/world/middleeast/special-forces-jordan-shootout-survivor.html https://nyt.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4INloKlK2qDNyfz?source...
- Budweiser 9y agoIt all boils down to incentives, as with many things in biological life: if the only available way of making money is ads, news agencies will optimize for that. I wonder if new tech will provide alternative ways of making money with different kinds of incentives.