
Things the media does to manufacture outrage - akshat_h
https://medium.com/@parkermolloy/5-things-the-media-does-to-manufacture-outrage-ba79125e1262#.z786qmwpa
======
c2the3rd
This article is far too shallow in its diagnosis.

Yes, the media manufactures outrage for attention. This is not the problem.
The media has done the same for as long as it has existed. The problem is that
real people are willing to believe and act upon this "outrage", sometimes in
an extreme manner, to avoid being on the "wrong side".

The action I care about isn't the media writing a libellous "story" about how
"outraged" people are at some action of mine, though they are scum for it.
What I care about is when people use it as justification to call my
boss/family/friends and go after me personally.

It's not the media that doxxes, makes death threats, and gets people fired.
Who does that is a population that increasingly cannot tell the difference
between words and violence, a population that sees bad thoughts as assault and
disagreement as evil. Even the smallest infraction is justification for
ruining lives.

Brendan Eich was ousted from his position at Mozilla for his donation years
ago. A pizzeria owner was threatened with death for merely saying he wouldn't
serve gays. The mob retaliations are completely disproportionate to the
"crime".

That's why people are afraid of the new outrage. They know one violation of
the ever changing set of rules can now cause a mob to go nuclear on everything
they hold dear.

~~~
laughinghan
> Yes, the media manufactures outrage for attention. This is not the problem.
> The media has done the same for as long as it has existed. The problem is
> that real people are willing to believe and act upon this "outrage",
> sometimes in an extreme manner, to avoid being on the "wrong side".

This diagnosis is also too shallow. Just like people's belief and actions in
response to "outrage" has varied over time, the media's sensationalism has
varied over time, for example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism)

> Even the smallest infraction is justification for ruining lives. [...]
> Brendan Eich was ousted from his position at Mozilla for his donation years
> ago. A pizzeria owner was threatened with death for merely saying he
> wouldn't serve gays. The mob retaliations are completely disproportionate to
> the "crime".

These don't strike me as compelling examples. Brendan Eich (whom, for the
record, I did not think should be ousted and said so at the time in HN
discussions) was not ousted for minding his own business making a private
donation, that is a misrepresentation. He was ousted because of his defense of
his donation, and even if that ruined his life, he was in a position to affect
a lot of lives, and it's reasonable (even if we disagree with them) for people
to think it's unfortunate but necessary.

As for "A pizzeria owner was threatened with death for merely saying he
wouldn't serve gays."\---gays receive threats of death and violence, and
actual death and violence, for merely being gay, and while there've been
spikes in response to e.g. Obergefell, this has generally been decreasing,
fortunately. So, a death threat in response to explicit prejudice doesn't
really make the point that the mob is worsening.

~~~
kelukelugames
I dug through Eich's story. He was ousted for his donation. I saw no mention
of a defense and only people calling for his head because of the donation.
Would you have links for reactions to his defense?

Also, the parent argument is that death threats are a disproportionate
response, not that they're new.

~~~
laughinghan

        [Eich] was ousted for his donation. I saw no mention of a defense and
        only people calling for his head because of the donation.
    

You're right, I was oversimplifying, because he was very careful not to
actually say anything of substance when he defended his donation. I think my
point stands, however: he wasn't ousted in retaliation for the donation.
People called for his ousting because of how the donation and more
importantly, subsequent non-apology non-defense reflected on his current, at-
the-time-of-being-promoted-to-CEO views, and how they'd affect his
performance:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7460030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7460030)
That's not retaliation or outrage, that's relevant and important concern about
his ability to do his job as CEO of Mozilla.

    
    
        Also, the parent argument is that death threats are a disproportionate response, not that they're new.
    

Also, I think it's very clear the grandparent was talking about a
new/increasing level of disproportionate.

> a population that increasingly cannot tell the difference between words and
> violence

> That's why people are afraid of the new outrage.

And, of course, the grandparent was a direct response to the original article
where "new"-ness was part of the main point:

Tagline:

> People are so sensitive these days!

Opening sentence:

> Is the world more easily “outraged” than it used to be?

Conclusion:

> So is the world any more “outraged” than it’s always been?

------
gkoberger
I hate when articles hide behind an invented "Twitter backlash", and then
include 4-5 tweets with a handful of retweets. 6,000 tweets are sent every
single _second_. You could build a narrative for anything with that logic.

If your best example is a grammatically challenged tweet that racked up 4 favs
and a retweet... you're probably inventing a controversy.

Here's some insane examples from the first page of a Google News search for
"Twitter Backlash":

[http://www.prweek.com/article/1372418/apple-faces-twitter-
ba...](http://www.prweek.com/article/1372418/apple-faces-twitter-backlash-
racism-allegation-australia-store)

[http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/ruby-rose-
faces-b...](http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/ruby-rose-faces-
backlash-twitter-6833436)

[http://www.eonline.com/news/711079/raven-symone-angers-
twitt...](http://www.eonline.com/news/711079/raven-symone-angers-twitter-with-
her-spring-valley-high-school-assault-comments)

[http://www.her.ie/life/bloomingdales-forced-to-apologise-
to-...](http://www.her.ie/life/bloomingdales-forced-to-apologise-to-twitter-
backlash-after-including-date-rape-message-in-christmas-catalogue/264317)

~~~
bsbechtel
Ever try searching for trending outrage hashtags on Twitter? Generally it's
99.9% outrage over the outrage, with no real tweets expressing the original
supposed outrage.

------
HappyTypist
This is a consequence of writers at Business Insider and other brands being
ranked by the number of clicks their pieces generate. Writing for them is more
of a social science than journalism, with specific words and phrasing A/B
tested and Web page designs optimised to get you to stay on the page just a
tiny bit longer (so Google doesn't penalise them for bounce rate). Ever recall
how BI articles end with an unrelated, click bait video?

~~~
_petronius
I also see it in major newspapers like The Guardian. Particularly around
political stories, like Jeremy Corbyn and his new shadow cabinet, they seem
predisposed to describe every comment made about them as putting the
politicians "under fire" or some other such melodramatic term. And then when
you read the actual quotes in the article, they are fairly tame, gentle
criticisms.

This happened twice just this week, once with the (constructive, rather
softball) comments made by a union leader about Corbyn himself (to which the
reaction was something along the lines of "oh no, he's losing the support of
his base!"), to the rather mild back-and-forth about John McDonnell's
sarcastic crack about Mao in Parliament (which the media basically
manufactured into a fake story, all the while implying that McDonnell is a
crypto-communist, while he is nothing of the sort).

Anyway, rather than it being about a specific subject, I guess my point is
that I am pretty down on journalists in general these days, because chasing
the story and filling the news cycle (in any medium) seems to have taken
priority over actually substantive reporting of things that matter.

~~~
rfrank
Do you feel the same way about software devs who work for food
delivery/laundry service startups and the like? Writing clickbait is no better
or worse than "changing the world" one delivery at a time. Everyone's just
chasing easy money.

~~~
knughit
How is helping people for money equivalent to lying to people?

~~~
rfrank
How is a "sharing" economy, or the vast majority of startups, helping anyone
but stakeholders? Without citing a particular piece of content it's hard to
say anyone's lying, just being way too dramatic for more clicks. Because that
is the current incentive structure for web publishing. Bullshit outrage pieces
make way more money than long form investigative peices that are significantly
harder to make, and exponentially less people read. Just like working on big
hard problems takes more time/talent/research. Easy money and complaining for
everyone!

~~~
nikatwork
There's a clear ethical difference between a frothy startup and deliberately
provoking negative public behavior.

~~~
rfrank
Does secret deliberately provoke negative behavior? How about yik yak? Until
the incentive structure changes for writers, they'll keep writing that stuff.
Just the way it is.

------
exstudent2
What a great writeup! This is an example of an issue 100% created by the
media.

To be fair though there _is_ a culture of "outrage" that exists. The media may
be implicit in propagating it but they don't always create it.

For example, this recently happened:

[http://hlrecord.org/2015/11/fascism-at-
yale/](http://hlrecord.org/2015/11/fascism-at-yale/)

I think it's important to study the media's role in creating and extending the
reach of outrage, but it's equally important not to deny that there is a
growing movement of people who are interested in limiting free speech and get
_very_ outrageous about it.

~~~
ebola1717
That's a very uncompelling argument, not to mention patronizing. The criteria
he sets up is literally "it's fascist if you want anything done about the
things you're mad about," which is ridiculous because it removes any ability
to change the status quo. If there were a professor who were openly defending
fascism, calling for him to be removed would be fascist.

In fact, if you change "Calling for people to be fired for expressing their
beliefs" to "Calling for senators to be voted out of office for expressing
their beliefs" then that's fascist. You can play this game for all his
examples:

> Calling to defund a newspaper for publishing an editorial you disagree with

Divestment from companies funding apartheid, something student protesters
commonly supported in the late 80s

> Tearing down fliers that you disagree with

Removing neo-Nazi propaganda posters

> Calling for students to be expelled for wearing offensive Halloween costumes

Calling for people to boycott Chick-Fil-A because of its owner's anti-gay
agendas

~~~
jensen123
In the examples you are listing, the activists are using force to change the
world into something they want, as opposed to using free speech to try to
convince others. A while ago, I read the book Hitler - Memoirs of a Confidant
by Otto Wagener. It really surprised me. From this book, I get the impression
that Hitler was an idealist who really wanted to create a better world (at
least for the Germans who he saw as being totally unfairly treated by France
etc. after WW1).

It can still be fascism, even if you see yourself as doing good. Actually, I
think well-meaning idealists are sometimes some of the worst people out there.
They see themselves as good and being correct, and they get really nasty and
intolerant towards people who see things differently.

There's the old saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", but I
often get the impression that many people don't really grasp this.

~~~
huxley
While many historians do consider them significant, take Wagener's memoir with
a pinch of salt, the author was writing the hagiography of a man he was
infatuated with:

"Hitler turned his large, unfathomable eyes on me; once again, as they had in
Nuremberg, they impressed me with their deep and infinite goodness, as if they
constantly wanted to give something without saying anything."

Even Hitler never painted as rose-coloured a view of himself as Wagener does.

------
icanhackit
Where possible I encourage friends and family to approach news as a single
recent frame from a long-playing narrative, a blurb tacked onto the end of
_history_. Without history you have no context. My agenda is to get them to
ignore the 24/7 news cycle and review topics from a historical standpoint -
Wikipedia and podcasts make this easier than ever before. They're imperfect
sources, but if you want to crawl through dozens of topics for no cost,
they're fantastic tools. From there you can purchase books on topics that
you'd like to learn more about.

Something about the Middle East? You need at least a hundred years of
historical knowledge to understand what is playing out. Ideally more. But it's
not that simple; you need to understand the politics of countries that are
recent but significant players.

And this is the problem: people believe it's reasonable to form an opinion on
complex matters from consuming a few soundbites and massaged footage. How is
that at all reasonable? Answer: it isn't.

------
lmorris84
I'm always suspicious when news articles embed tweets as "evidence". The one
case that sticks out for me was Tim Hunt losing his job because of his joke at
a conference. I wonder if UCL also fell for media manufactured outrage in the
decision to hastily get rid of him, or whether there really were tens of
thousands of twitter keyboard warriors venting their offence all over the
situation.

Either way, for my own sanity I now have to avoid twitter and any article that
even remotely looks like it might be about someone being offended about
something.

------
pdkl95
TL;DR - just watch [4]

The internet has a serious problem with _fame_.

Before the internet, fame was usually something that required an investment in
_media access_. Everybody knows about the big Hollywood movie because they
paid for a lot of advertising/etc. A low-budget film could potentially be more
popular if people knew about it, but the meager (or nonexistent) advertising
budget usually guaranteed it would never[1] become _famous_.

This is what the internet changed. It's fundamental power is that anybody can
publish because the network doesn't differentiate between "publishing" hosts
and "consumer" hosts. All peers are supposed[2] to be equal in capability. The
internet _is_ media access. What used to require significant investment of
time and/or money now happens to people regularly when they post something
casually on the internet: they can become _famous_.

Unfortunately, our social norms are still adapting to this change. As this
article shows, trivial posts are incorrectly interpreted and the author ends
up wading through flames and insults. This is because what started as a casual
post is now _addressing an audience_.

For a _very_ good explanation of this type of change-in-relationship, I
suggest watching "This is Phil Fish"[4]. As this is HN, many of you probably
know the drama involving Phil Fish and his game "Fez", but tht doesn't matter
because this video is about everybody who is _not_ Phil Fish: the audience
that supplies the projection, tokenism, and hatred that fuels the media when
they want cheap hits/impressions.

\--

[1] I am ignoring the phenomena of some movies gaining a cult following a long
time after their initial release for simplicity and questionable relevance
(time).

[2] NAT has destroyed a lot of this equality, creating a situation where you
have to get the permission of a 3rd party (port forwarding at the router, some
centralized server, etc). If we allow this digital imprimatur[3] to continue
to exist, then the internet has truly reverted back to "TV".

[3] [https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-
imprimatur/](https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-
owa2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w)

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Thanks for that link, definitely puts a lot of what I have felt for a long
time into a well thought out analysis.

------
peeters
The Starbucks fiasco was fascinating and frightening to me. Timeline:

\- Nov 5: Breitbart reports "Starbucks faces criticism from politicians and
campaign groups today after it decided to remove all references to the festive
season from its Christmas red cups'

\- Nov 8: Huffington Post picks up the Breitbart story and reports "Some
Christians Are Extremely Unhappy About Starbucks' New Holiday Cups"

Note the difference in headlines. This started as a Tory MP and a professional
Christian shit-stirring group in the U.K. criticizing the move. It is rapidly
generalized to "Christians".

In an age of people consuming news in 140 characters or less, news outlets
really have a responsibility to apply the same journalistic integrity to their
headline as to the rest of the article. They are there to report the news, not
cause the news.

~~~
netheril96
> news outlets really have a responsibility to apply the same journalistic
> integrity to their headline as to the rest of the article. They are there to
> report the news, not cause the news.

And those without integrity, who manufacture news, will earn more.

~~~
TeMPOraL
"Once one agent learns how to become more competitive by sacrificing a common
value, all its competitors must also sacrifice that value or be outcompeted
and replaced by the less scrupulous. Therefore, the system is likely to end up
with everyone once again equally competitive, but the sacrificed value is gone
forever. From a god’s-eye-view, the competitors know they will all be worse
off if they defect, but from within the system, given insufficient
coordination it’s impossible to avoid."

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

------
danso
I can't be the only person who sees the irony in that this great post is
written by someone who works for Upworthy, an outlet who more than any other
spawned the science of using superlatives in clickbait headlines to increase
Facebook engagement.

~~~
hallman76
"Irony" aside it's still an educational article for those of us that haven't
seen this spelled out so clearly before.

------
Maarten88
Another angle to this is that there are agencies, who manipulate media and
stir up controversies like these just to get attention for their clients'
brands and products.[1]

This whole story (including this post) may just as well be part of a smart
promotion stunt for Sephora lipstick. Some agency might be getting paid for
generating all this attention, stirring up controversy around the brand, with
the media and bloggers masterfully manipulated into cooperation. There's no
way to know...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Me,_I%27m_Lying](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Me,_I%27m_Lying)

------
wwzuk
Your best bet is just to get rid of all social media. I honestly think that
the drama that social media encourages is unhealthy and subtly ruining
people's lives.

It gives the impression that certain political groups are more influential
than they are. It encourages outrage culture and the censorship that follows
that movement. It's a lazy tool for certain types of journalists.

There's so many more constructive things to do than use social media. Delete
your accounts, wait a month for any addictive urges to pass and enjoy life
again.

~~~
ikeboy
... Do you not consider hn social media, and if not, why not?

~~~
probably_wrong
For me, "social media" implies that I can use the platform to wish you a happy
birthday. It should also allow me to show the world what I care about (people
I know, topics I like, etc) just by visiting my profile.

HN allows neither, so I wouldn't count it as so. I'd probably classify it as
"news site with comments", but not "social media".

~~~
ikeboy
So reddit wouldn't qualify.

------
the_cat_kittles
great write up. i've always felt that people on tv and writers on the net
should really only talk about their own opinions- if there is something
"people are outraged about", then have them on to discuss it.

------
javajosh
Okay, now what? The media outlets and authors responsible for this will
continue doing it - and probably got (and will get) high praise for the
traffic numbers.

She gets some more attention for calling attention to this, and increases our
collective cynicism a little more (and rightly so).

It's tempting to call this a victimless crime, but it's really not. The
victims are those who are actually outraged, often by actually outrageous
things, like US police taking people's money, beating them up, and killing
them. Or by regulatory capture in energy and banking. Or by US foreign policy
hypocrisy. Or any number of other things.

Honestly, if there was some way for me to _fine_ media outlets in general and
specific authors in particular for this behavior, I would do it. It is _wrong_
to shovel shit into people's minds especially if you have an official "press"
designation. You've violated trust, and if the media doesn't police itself,
then the media itself is going to be replaced with something that does.

------
kelukelugames
I hear more people complain about outrage than actual outrage. It's especially
hilarious when I go to sensitivity training and a bunch of privileged co-
workers complain about being afraid to have fun.

~~~
exstudent2
Do you not see that by finding your co-worker's discomfort "hilarious" and
labeling them "privileged" that you are doing your part to perpetuate and
create outrage?

~~~
kelukelugames
Their discomfort comes from people telling them to stop checking sex jokes
into the code base, posting comments about women's panties, making dick jokes,
etc.

Stopping inappropriate behavior is not outrage.

~~~
seattle_spring
I bet their outrage is actually from things like:

\- Being told the term "you guys" is a micro-aggression that disenfranchises
marginalized peoples.

\- Being scolded for using the term "man hours."

\- Being around people who think that a red hand at a crosswalk is emblematic
of systemic racism.

\- Working with people who look down at spending Thanksgiving with family, and
instead rant about how you're celebrating the murder of the native peoples.

... and any other similar non-issue that psychos left and right today are
touting as the biggest issues facing people today.

~~~
ebola1717
The whole point of the article is that all of those usually go

"Hey, we should refer to our db nodes as the primary and secondaries, cause
master & slave has some historical baggage"

"Yeah, K, not really a big deal"

Not

"OMG YOU CALLED THE DB NODE SLAVE YOU'RE RACIST ARRHRHRGRGRGGRGR"

~~~
seattle_spring
Then I disagree with the premise of the article, and the dozen or so friends
on my Facebook feed that attended Mt Holyoke are proof that this sort of
outrage is a real thing.

------
tdkl
Oh the drama.

Close down Twitter, the 140 characters are exactly enough why those things get
blown out of proportion. Also why ADD "journalists" adore Twitter.

------
baby
I was thinking earlier today that I felt like I was now understanding why my
parents made me believe in Santa Claus. It's because you need to learn only on
that you can't trust people like that. Maybe they should make a law or
something that 1 out of every 100 news must be fake, so that people would be
more compelled to check out facts.

Also journalism = marketing now. Headlines, scoops, shocking videos...

~~~
fchollet
> Maybe they should make a law or something that 1 out of every 100 news must
> be fake

In the world I live in, the proportion is far higher. Especially if you are
talking about the mainstream media. Hell, easily one of 100 _peer-reviewed
scientific papers_ is fake.

~~~
laotzu
>Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself
becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. . . . I will add,
that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who
reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose
mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn
the great facts, and the details are all false.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Norvell (11 June 1807).

------
ShirsenduK
The saddest part is that the best public communication channel; Twitter; has
been hijacked to become an attention seeking blow horn.

~~~
Retra
I'm baffled that you would think Twitter had the ability to be anything else.
The site basically mandates that you compress all your messages into
trivialize-able sound bites.

~~~
oska
Not true. Twitter allows you to makes a brief introduction to a linked
article. I use twitter almost exclusively to follow individuals I respect, so
I can be aware of new things they have written (or that they recommend).

~~~
Retra
You're not disagreeing with me. You're just saying that Twitter's propensity
to allow people to advertise themselves to you happened to work.

------
ams6110
I don't read the mainstream media. I don't use Facebook, Twitter, etc. I don't
really notice any of this.

------
darkhorn
You should see Turkish news on web sites. "Scientists are in shock! Shock
shock shock! Evry european talks about this! Here is what everybody should
give attention!"

------
avn2109
From the article:

"Is the world more easily “outraged” than it used to be? I don’t think so, but
then again, there’s no real way to tell."

Presumably one could go build google N-gram timeseries plots for various
n-grams associated with what the article calls "outrage culture" and then look
for big bumps in the curve.

I'm not close enough to the phenomenon to guess the correct buzzwords. Maybe
"problematic" or "offensive"?

------
necessity
I like how she exempts herself from "the evil media", while being _in_ the
media to start with.

------
petergatsby
"World outrage" isn't a constant.

The internet means information travels faster than ever before, but also
inadvertently causes "interesting things" to outpace "the truth".

Properties like Upworthy/Buzzfeed/ect. exacerbate this. Von D is right not to
capitulate.

~~~
will_pseudonym
It seems like you are missing the point. Von D didn't "not capitulate". Von D
took part in the free advertisement campaign!

P.S. So too, are we.

------
TeMPOraL
Worth posting Scott's civil and thoughtful take on this subject:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-
rage/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/)

\--

And now for my less civil and less thoughtful rant:

 _This_ is why I think journalism and media is one of the biggest thing that's
turning the world to shit. The key observation from the article:

> _3\. The narrative told by the media in step 2 is considered reality._

Every time they lie - and they lie often, regardless whether you want to call
it "bias" or "agenda", it's done on purpose; you can't not notice that level
of intellectual dishonesty - every time they lie, people believe them. And no,
lying in headline and "correcting" it in the middle of the article doesn't cut
it, almost nobody reads the damn article. People go on believing what they
read, and then they demand changes accordingly, and then they vote
accordingly, and stupid policies get instituted and people get hurt.

As the good old LW quote goes[0], "Promoting less than maximally accurate
beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don't do it to anyone unless you'd also slash
their tires." Except in case of media it's _really_ sabotage. It can take your
job, your career or your home at a whim. It changes national and international
policies.

Take Europe and the immigration crisis. You know what's actually the problem
there? It's not just immigrants, and it's not just xenophobia. It's media
feeding off each other, causing outrage after outrage, overblowing the issue
to the point of turning half of otherwise sane people into aggressive
xenophobes, and the other half into high-horse riding apologists.

I tend to get strange looks when I say there's a problem with media, because
Free Media is obviously a Key Element to the Democratic Process (and
Democratic = Good). But you know what also is free to do whatever the fuck it
wants? Cancer. And it doesn't end well for the host organism. So maybe we need
to reevaluate what do we really gain from having this feedback loop running
unchecked.

I'm not saying, get rid of media. I ask only one thing, I ask it from editors
and from journalists: _have some fucking integrity_. Don't publish blatant
lies.

And yes, I know that's in a way not your fault, Moloch - "the abstracted
spirit of discoordination and flailing response to incentives" \- publishes
whatever he wants. But if you want to stand up to him, I'm willing to join.
I'd be happy to _pay_ for a news source whose primary goal would be to present
facts and just facts, the way they are. No spin, no lies, no reporting
scientific papers as if they proved the opposite of what they actually do -
just the raw truth.

\--

Another thing. It used to be that the best way to filter out lies and
propaganda was to run articles through Reddit and/or Hacker News - lots of
people with random biases, combined with quite a good chance of there being a
person directly involved with the thing described, was usually enough to
sanitize the news story. But I'm worried this is slowly stopping to work too.
Outrage is exactly what's eating us. I've seen too many times HN jumping to
conclusions. Hell, I've personally been guilty of this myself far more than
I'm willing to admit. And don't even get me started on Reddit.

[0] -
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/uy/dark_side_epistemology/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/uy/dark_side_epistemology/)

------
nkozyra
I don't understand ... The article references the author's tweet, notes it got
little traction and then decides it was the source of the stories and speaks
for the rest of the people that likely (and more 'successfully') tweeted about
it.

Some fairly weak logic.

------
chatman
Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" is very similar and an insightful read.

------
sago
I think it is utterly disgusting what the media do to manufacture outrage.
They ought to apologise unreservedly. But what can we do about it? A lot! We,
as consumers with power, ought to boycott any of them that don't get the
message.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Let's get angry! Let's have an outrage about media manufacturing outrage!

Oh wait...

~~~
sago
Quite.

Ultimately lots of disagreements have this cyclic structure. Like people
accusing those who call for tolerance of being intolerant of intolerance. Or
those who oppose science by accusing scientists of not doing science right. Or
those telling people to think for themselves, and find out the truth (from the
sources they deem to be correct). Or people who claim that those campaigning
against racism are the real racists for making everything about race. There's
probably some deep point, but I can't be bothered to think about it. It's
easier to just be enraged at how stupid people are. Those stupid f __*ers who
can 't even have a civil discussion!

------
gcatalfamo
Business insider average titles: this is huge, this is big, this could be a
big problem, this is insane, this is awesome, this is awful.. BI is
technically...utter garbage...And kind of worrying

------
kriro
1) Reverse engineer how/why news sites search the twitter stream

2) Craft tweets that are likely to be picked up

3) Sit back and enjoy (for extra credit, mail predictions about the news to
someone in a sealed envelope)

------
pistoriusp

        We are the angry mob
        We read the papers everyday
        We like who we like, we hate who we hate
        But we're also easily swayed
    

\- Kaiser Chiefs, The angry mob

------
kmonsen
Good article, but the name underage red must have been named just to provoke a
response.

Also, if you get offended by "underage red", maybe your mind is dirty is a bit
weird defense. What is the name meant to imply?

And finally, if we should be outraged by anything isn't underage red better
than war on christmas?

------
tibiapejagala
So it appears that media manufacture outrage for cheap clicks, therefore
outrage is not a real problem.

I don't follow this line of reasoning. Let's say the same media often create a
fake sexism/ _ism scandal out of something innocent or unrelated. Can we
conclude that sexism /_ism is not a problem anymore?

Aren't safe-spaces real? Is this
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QqgNcktbSA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QqgNcktbSA)
staged? I don't remember things like that from my university years.

