6 ms·

I know about 40 retired people who watch CNN religiously. It's always on in their house. They are uniformly obsessed with the pandemic. Frightened. Paranoid.

wffurr 5y ago
24 hour cable news is awful. They work hard to keep you afraid or angry and tuned in.
- xeromal 5y ago
  This is the proper take. It doesn't matter which channel it is. It's instigating fear. The type of fear is the only difference.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - AndrewBissell 5y ago
    I once heard my mother-in-law say, "I have a balanced set of sources, I watch both CNN and Fox News to make sure I hear both sides." shudder
    - 1cvmask 5y ago
      I know it's true but I couldn't stop myself laughing. They are two sides of the same corporate media and are especially dangerous when they agree on matters like Iraq WMD and the faked Syria chemical weapons attack in Douma etc.
      - blendergeek 5y ago
        I'm interested to see your sources that indicate the chemical weapons attack was faked.
        AndrewBissell 5y ago
        Seymour Hersh basically nailed it at the time and then it was confirmed with the WikiLeaks OPCW dump. All quite easy to find with Google.
        blendergeek 5y ago
        I though @1cvmask was arguing that chemical weapons weren't used in Syria. After reading the replies, it seems that they were arguing that the chemical weapons attack was carried out by someone other than Syria. I misunderstood "faked" to mean that no chemical weapons were used rather than that Assad was framed for using chemical weapons.
        jessaustin 5y ago
        Yes those magical bouncing chlorine bombs were another fake story that immediately failed the cui bono? test for anyone who pays attention... so, like, 5% of Americans. https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/18/at-un-aaron-mate-debunks-opcws-syria-lies-and-confronts-us-uk-on-cover-up/ https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/18/at-un-aaron-mate-debunks-...
        notriddle 5y ago
        Because the “who benefits” test isn’t sufficient to prove anything. It’s a starting point, at best.
  - daniel-cussen 5y ago
    It's fear, that's part of it, and they know how to rattle them by say talking about Social Security payments getting cut. But they also instigate powerless anger, and a good bit of hatred, too. With the anger, it's about framing it as an inescapable injustice, rather than something you could make a dent in by eg going to jury duty, voting every single time (even blank) because it's so easy, even making a financial contribution to a politician you think very highly of (and with the campaigns I contributed to, pocket change basically, but I'm really happy I did, those politicians truly came through for the common good over their whole career since the contribution). But CNN doesn't want to talk about actions you can take to fix problems they tell you you have, because if you do you will be carrying out actions and doing verbs instead of watching television. It's basically an attention thing, advertising only works if people are paying attention, and different shows get it in different ways. Comedians get attention by telling jokes. Action movies get attention by (generalizing) showing a single hero or heroine take down a conspiracy of over 50 people. I'd estimate 90% of action movies involve a struggle against a conspiracy. The exception that proves the rule is No Country for Old Men, because the bad guy was a lone wolf, but I can't think of any others. In fiction it allows for plots where it makes sense for a single star to be in fight scenes against "henchmen", which is of course a conspirator, especially in fights where he's outnumbered. This gives more drama and sense of risk, over and over again. And I sense that people really find the struggle against conspiracies gratifying to watch, there's some really profound identification there. And news channels get attention by rankling you. And it also involves conspiracies, without actually using that word because it's super taboo. When Biden went into office the news channels had problems coming up with enough "content" because they could no longer put negative coverage, and fake news, and lies, and occasionally some little nuggets of truth too, about Donald Trump around the clock. He was keeping them in business, very good for their bottom line. There's an element of hatred here, too, they absolutely desire that. They want you to refuse to cooperate, and always oppose, the bad guys of the movie that is CNN, which is really the basic biological function of hatred. The bigger picture is, what is CNN selling? Well, they barely have any formal ads. I believe their ads in Chile are for that Emirates airline, and occasionally they have a "technology" feature which is pitching some electronics. So what are they selling? I think the viewer's votes. They have ways of measuring how many brain stems they have hooked up to their Matrix, they can give credible estimates of how much they can swing an election. Eyeballing it, I'd say CNN can swing a presidential election by .1%, which is a huge amount.
mlazos 5y ago
It’s been well established that covid is dangerous for unvaccinated older people. I don’t think cnn is the reason for being afraid of a global pandemic which kills older people, especially if this was before the vaccine was available.
iJohnDoe 5y ago
As opposed to those that only watch Fox News, and anything else, including the Communist News Network, is just wrong and fake news?
- midev 5y ago
  The parent didn't say anything close to this. You need to calm down and read what's actually written, otherwise you're going to make liberals look like uneducated, unhinged, lunatics. I can be critical of CNN without praising Fox News....
  - iJohnDoe 5y ago
    No one needs to calm down. The intent was the same. To indicate that any news feed can potentially influence people’s behavior. You equally took my comment out of context. Maybe you should calm down? :-)
s5300 5y ago
I know more retired people (or people on disability/other state welfare) who watch Fox News religiously. It's always on in their house. They are uniformly obsessed with the election and Donald Trump. Frightened. Paranoid. They truly believe that the election was stolen by hundreds of thousands of votes from dead people and South American immigrants who have never stepped foot even into the lower bounds of North American Mexico. That Trump is still, by the constitution, our sitting president. They truly believe that the majority of liberal leaning college students grow up to eat babies, have abortions for fun, and have regular satanic rituals in their basements (lol, it's funny because they can't afford houses with a basement) I don't particularly understand the urgency of the nature of your statement. There's definitely some urgency surrounding mine as uncalled for as it is though, as these people openly talk about wanting to massacre their opposition. Your side really just wants people to wear a mask and get a safe vaccination.
- anotherthought1 5y ago
  Oh you know those people, do you?
  - s5300 5y ago
    Yeah, I'll send you my personal address if you verify your person in some way, and you'll be able to easily look at the county cable television statistics. And if you'd really like, I can give you my browsing history too. I frequent none of the sites you've mentioned, only really spend time on HN anymore. Can walk outside and take a timestamped picture of the flying Trump flags and every lawn with Trump 2024 poster signs as well if it would please you. Still some lock her up posters from years back around certain neighborhoods. Could even put a voice recorder at the local range for a day and give you some good footage of just how often and casually these people openly talk about wanting to murder "the libtards" You speak like you don't particularly have experience with small conservative U.S. towns. Everybody knows everybody, typically via church :) But this sort of flame bait doesn't exactly belong on HN.
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
api 5y ago
I have one relative whose house is constantly full of the voice of a right wing angry man and another one whose home reverberates with a left wing angry man. Cable news is trash.
orhmeh09 5y ago
There’s probably a stronger correlation with age and free time, here, than with the television channel.
- z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
  Considering msm is pure fear mongering, no not really
  - orhmeh09 5y ago
    What’s the effect size of fear mongering on the study population? If you haven’t measured it, would you hypothesize it to be greater than previously observed effect sizes for health-related behaviors and attitudes of older people? These topics are studied by actual researchers somewhere, not only in throwaway conjecture about what one personally thinks about “MSM.”
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

wffurr 5y ago

24 hour cable news is awful. They work hard to keep you afraid or angry and tuned in.

xeromal 5y ago
This is the proper take. It doesn't matter which channel it is. It's instigating fear. The type of fear is the only difference.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  I once heard my mother-in-law say, "I have a balanced set of sources, I watch both CNN and Fox News to make sure I hear both sides." shudder
  - 1cvmask 5y ago
    I know it's true but I couldn't stop myself laughing. They are two sides of the same corporate media and are especially dangerous when they agree on matters like Iraq WMD and the faked Syria chemical weapons attack in Douma etc.
    - blendergeek 5y ago
      I'm interested to see your sources that indicate the chemical weapons attack was faked.
      - AndrewBissell 5y ago
        Seymour Hersh basically nailed it at the time and then it was confirmed with the WikiLeaks OPCW dump. All quite easy to find with Google.
        blendergeek 5y ago
        I though @1cvmask was arguing that chemical weapons weren't used in Syria. After reading the replies, it seems that they were arguing that the chemical weapons attack was carried out by someone other than Syria. I misunderstood "faked" to mean that no chemical weapons were used rather than that Assad was framed for using chemical weapons.
        jessaustin 5y ago
        Yes those magical bouncing chlorine bombs were another fake story that immediately failed the cui bono? test for anyone who pays attention... so, like, 5% of Americans. https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/18/at-un-aaron-mate-debunks-opcws-syria-lies-and-confronts-us-uk-on-cover-up/ https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/18/at-un-aaron-mate-debunks-...
        notriddle 5y ago
        Because the “who benefits” test isn’t sufficient to prove anything. It’s a starting point, at best.
- daniel-cussen 5y ago
  It's fear, that's part of it, and they know how to rattle them by say talking about Social Security payments getting cut. But they also instigate powerless anger, and a good bit of hatred, too. With the anger, it's about framing it as an inescapable injustice, rather than something you could make a dent in by eg going to jury duty, voting every single time (even blank) because it's so easy, even making a financial contribution to a politician you think very highly of (and with the campaigns I contributed to, pocket change basically, but I'm really happy I did, those politicians truly came through for the common good over their whole career since the contribution). But CNN doesn't want to talk about actions you can take to fix problems they tell you you have, because if you do you will be carrying out actions and doing verbs instead of watching television. It's basically an attention thing, advertising only works if people are paying attention, and different shows get it in different ways. Comedians get attention by telling jokes. Action movies get attention by (generalizing) showing a single hero or heroine take down a conspiracy of over 50 people. I'd estimate 90% of action movies involve a struggle against a conspiracy. The exception that proves the rule is No Country for Old Men, because the bad guy was a lone wolf, but I can't think of any others. In fiction it allows for plots where it makes sense for a single star to be in fight scenes against "henchmen", which is of course a conspirator, especially in fights where he's outnumbered. This gives more drama and sense of risk, over and over again. And I sense that people really find the struggle against conspiracies gratifying to watch, there's some really profound identification there. And news channels get attention by rankling you. And it also involves conspiracies, without actually using that word because it's super taboo. When Biden went into office the news channels had problems coming up with enough "content" because they could no longer put negative coverage, and fake news, and lies, and occasionally some little nuggets of truth too, about Donald Trump around the clock. He was keeping them in business, very good for their bottom line. There's an element of hatred here, too, they absolutely desire that. They want you to refuse to cooperate, and always oppose, the bad guys of the movie that is CNN, which is really the basic biological function of hatred. The bigger picture is, what is CNN selling? Well, they barely have any formal ads. I believe their ads in Chile are for that Emirates airline, and occasionally they have a "technology" feature which is pitching some electronics. So what are they selling? I think the viewer's votes. They have ways of measuring how many brain stems they have hooked up to their Matrix, they can give credible estimates of how much they can swing an election. Eyeballing it, I'd say CNN can swing a presidential election by .1%, which is a huge amount.

mlazos 5y ago

It’s been well established that covid is dangerous for unvaccinated older people. I don’t think cnn is the reason for being afraid of a global pandemic which kills older people, especially if this was before the vaccine was available.

iJohnDoe 5y ago

As opposed to those that only watch Fox News, and anything else, including the Communist News Network, is just wrong and fake news?

midev 5y ago
The parent didn't say anything close to this. You need to calm down and read what's actually written, otherwise you're going to make liberals look like uneducated, unhinged, lunatics. I can be critical of CNN without praising Fox News....
- iJohnDoe 5y ago
  No one needs to calm down. The intent was the same. To indicate that any news feed can potentially influence people’s behavior. You equally took my comment out of context. Maybe you should calm down? :-)

s5300 5y ago

I know more retired people (or people on disability/other state welfare) who watch Fox News religiously. It's always on in their house. They are uniformly obsessed with the election and Donald Trump. Frightened. Paranoid. They truly believe that the election was stolen by hundreds of thousands of votes from dead people and South American immigrants who have never stepped foot even into the lower bounds of North American Mexico. That Trump is still, by the constitution, our sitting president. They truly believe that the majority of liberal leaning college students grow up to eat babies, have abortions for fun, and have regular satanic rituals in their basements (lol, it's funny because they can't afford houses with a basement) I don't particularly understand the urgency of the nature of your statement. There's definitely some urgency surrounding mine as uncalled for as it is though, as these people openly talk about wanting to massacre their opposition. Your side really just wants people to wear a mask and get a safe vaccination.

anotherthought1 5y ago
Oh you know those people, do you?
- s5300 5y ago
  Yeah, I'll send you my personal address if you verify your person in some way, and you'll be able to easily look at the county cable television statistics. And if you'd really like, I can give you my browsing history too. I frequent none of the sites you've mentioned, only really spend time on HN anymore. Can walk outside and take a timestamped picture of the flying Trump flags and every lawn with Trump 2024 poster signs as well if it would please you. Still some lock her up posters from years back around certain neighborhoods. Could even put a voice recorder at the local range for a day and give you some good footage of just how often and casually these people openly talk about wanting to murder "the libtards" You speak like you don't particularly have experience with small conservative U.S. towns. Everybody knows everybody, typically via church :) But this sort of flame bait doesn't exactly belong on HN.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago

api 5y ago

I have one relative whose house is constantly full of the voice of a right wing angry man and another one whose home reverberates with a left wing angry man. Cable news is trash.

orhmeh09 5y ago

There’s probably a stronger correlation with age and free time, here, than with the television channel.

z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
Considering msm is pure fear mongering, no not really
- orhmeh09 5y ago
  What’s the effect size of fear mongering on the study population? If you haven’t measured it, would you hypothesize it to be greater than previously observed effect sizes for health-related behaviors and attitudes of older people? These topics are studied by actual researchers somewhere, not only in throwaway conjecture about what one personally thinks about “MSM.”

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]