4 ms·

We've been subject to the fear-cannon for two decades. They had to sell many disastrous wars, and after all brown people are scary. A fatigue has set in. At thi

We've been subject to the fear-cannon for two decades. They had to sell many disastrous wars, and after all brown people are scary. A fatigue has set in. At this point they've turned the knob so far they're worried they may have broken it. They hype up tanker explosions and everybody starts googling "Tonkin Gulf". Significant numbers of Americans actually remember dumb advice they got from leading health officials an entire year ago. Now that we've had a 9/11 every day for a year, a new 9/11 won't land the same. If e.g. Xinjiang and Hong Kong were both leveled by atomic bombs tomorrow, the average American would change the channel. Popular news just doesn't have the effect it used to have; it's back to the drawing board for the media firms and their owners.

aww_dang 6y ago
Let's not forget the well documented Iraqi WMD debacle. >it's back to the drawing board for the media firms and their owners. Enter social media. All of your "friends" believe in precepts x, y and z. It is popular. Don't be skeptical. That's fringe. Do you need a fact check headline? It isn't difficult to imagine how the WMD story would be sold today.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Apologies for the late reply. You're right about what they've attempted and will continue to attempt, of course. There is reason for hope, however. They had decades of experience manufacturing consent via print and broadcast media, and they got pretty good at it. Clearly they want to wield social media as deftly (see all the wishful thinking about the obviously-bullshit-from-day-one "Russiagate" theory). I don't think they have that skill yet, however. The current thinking is that they'll get it if they just deplatform the right people (and, it seems, the right platforms). That's a dead end; it runs counter to the way that social media works. Rather than swimming upstream, eventually they might develop effective mass communication methods via social media. I don't know what form those will take... maybe trolling-at-scale? They don't have it yet, though. Another thing about "fear sells"... some fears are more comfortable than others. That's why it has taken so much work to get a tiny minority of Americans worked up about global warming, but they've easily stoked a series of stupid wars. It's comfortable to fear brown people, but it is less comfortable to fear things that seem fundamental to our own lives like the current form of our economy.

aww_dang 6y ago

Let's not forget the well documented Iraqi WMD debacle. >it's back to the drawing board for the media firms and their owners. Enter social media. All of your "friends" believe in precepts x, y and z. It is popular. Don't be skeptical. That's fringe. Do you need a fact check headline? It isn't difficult to imagine how the WMD story would be sold today.

jessaustin 6y ago
Apologies for the late reply. You're right about what they've attempted and will continue to attempt, of course. There is reason for hope, however. They had decades of experience manufacturing consent via print and broadcast media, and they got pretty good at it. Clearly they want to wield social media as deftly (see all the wishful thinking about the obviously-bullshit-from-day-one "Russiagate" theory). I don't think they have that skill yet, however. The current thinking is that they'll get it if they just deplatform the right people (and, it seems, the right platforms). That's a dead end; it runs counter to the way that social media works. Rather than swimming upstream, eventually they might develop effective mass communication methods via social media. I don't know what form those will take... maybe trolling-at-scale? They don't have it yet, though. Another thing about "fear sells"... some fears are more comfortable than others. That's why it has taken so much work to get a tiny minority of Americans worked up about global warming, but they've easily stoked a series of stupid wars. It's comfortable to fear brown people, but it is less comfortable to fear things that seem fundamental to our own lives like the current form of our economy.