Misinformation Merchants Peddle Outrage
Is society being destroyed by woke-ism, transgender activists, rich people, men, women, the NRA, or the liberal media? Yes. Don’t believe me? Just poke around Reddit, Quora, or YouTube for a bit. You will see that Outrage is a popular offering. Pundits and gadflies want us to be mad at all kind of things. Some of those things even exist, while others are pure misinformation and propaganda.
Nevertheless, whatever you are worried about or interested in, some segment of the Outrage Industry exists to get you wound up and keep you that way. Read on to learn more about the industry and how it operates.
Propaganda and Misinformation Create Fake Crises
Stay tuned and after the commercial I will prove that environmental wackos want to take your cars and ban your hamburgers.
[insert commercial break]
Of course this is nonsense.
I can hear people objecting that Mister Environmentalist has called to ban internal combustion engines and Miss Vegan has demanded that we “liberate” our livestock.
So what?
Only a tiny fraction of environmentalists want to take your cars and your ground beef. The Outrange Industry would have you believe those are mainstream views.
By whipping up anger about deranged fembots, delusional gun grabbers, Christian fascists and so on. Once you get an emotional response from your audience, you can lead them on some tangent that suits you. You can begin to sell fear and anger over an issue. You can encourage your audience to tune out conflicting voices, because they are trying to hide the Truth for their own purposes. Of course these activists often have solutions for the problems they just invented.
Honestly, this is a pattern that many regular old advertisers use. Present something as being a nightmare, a mess, an ordeal, or whatever. Introduce your product or service and explain how it helps you solve the problem.
> Dinner time is a nightmare when you have kids.
> Will you starve in retirement?
> Your diet is probably killing you. Find out how to fix it here.
The Outrage Industry does the same thing, just with real or imagined social problems.
Digging Deeper to Understand the Outrage Industry
The Outrage Industry is just what the name says — an industry, albeit a small one. But, this is the digital age. If you are industrious and know a few things about social media, maybe have some money to spend on ads, the sky is the limit! Whether the cause is immigration, guns, or racial justice, there are business people out there trying to make sure you have stuff to be angry about. They often do this with a political agenda in mind, to stop gun control or promote gun control for example. Some peddle fake outrage just to make money, but my guess is the vast majority of availability entrepreneurs are politically motivated.
Whatever the motivation, one effect they have on society is obvious — time wasted on nonsense. If 10 million American adults spend an average of an hour a week reading up on fake problems and imaginary terrors (like men pretending to think they are women so they can go in ladies’ restrooms and look at little girls’ naked ankles?) they aren’t doing something useful.
Oh, and then there is advertising. The entrepreneurs and their channels peddle a wide range of products, some pretty harmless but some…well, a sensible person should be asking hard questions. Do I really need six months of survival rations for when SHTF? Should I buy gold instead of putting my money in a mutual fund? Do I need tactical pants and a tactical flashlight?
Nope. Pretty sure I don’t need any of that stuff. Neither do you.
You know what else we don’t need? A $20 book on how liberals are destroying the country.
There are liberal and conservative players in the outrage industry — conservatives tend to go on about illegal immigration, attempts to control gun ownership, violent crime, foreign aid, gender identity, and attacks on Christianity. Liberals tend to peddle outrage around gender, race, climate change, and economic inequality.
Examples of Their Products
Here are a couple of examples of the Outrage Industry created fake problems, one liberal and one conservative:
War on Christmas
Is there a liberal assault on Christmas and everything else that’s Christian? No, no there isn’t. Not one person on the Right will ever cite a statistic to back up their claim. If they do, they cannot tell you what a valid statistic would be, they just tell you what they learned from Gutfield or Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson. I guess the War on Christmas has somewhat faded fom the public eye since, I think, Rush Limbaugh ginned it up. Are these things really evidence of a War on Christmas:
- Cashiers saying “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas?”
- Holiday decorations replacing Christmas decorations in some places
- Christmas parades here and there giving way to holiday parades
(A sidenote: Some conservative availability entrepreneurs will, as sure as the sun rises, bring up prayer in public schools. When science education is under discussion, those same people will bring up Christians.)
The Minimum Wage Debate
As you may or may not know, the United States has a federal minimum wage. No job, unless the workers get tips from customers, may pay less than this amount. States and localities are allowed to set a higher minimum. So, of course some on the Left are trying to generate outrage at the meagre wages that employers may be required to pay under the law. But, what standard of living should the minimum wage provide? That is the question, unless you are an activist, then you may not want to give a figure. You may want to share a meme about how no one in your state can rent a 2-bedroom apartment on minimum wage.
Consequences
I mentioned the time wasted on misrepresentations. What else is there? Money flows to charities that promise to address this or that outrage. Money flows to politicians who promise to take on this or that. People volunteer their time for organizations and politicians. To an extent, this is just fine. To what extent? Who knows!
And that is the root of the problem. It is pretty hard to say where you draw the line between a reasonable investment of time and money versus a waste. The line is impossible to draw for a couple of reasons:
- Ideology — Because of your conservative or liberal views, you think that X or Y are terribly important and deserve the time or money that advocates say they do.
- Cognitive Dissonance — You don’t want to admit that, as a sensible adult, you’ve been sucked into some useless campaign against a manufactured crisis.
Like any peddlers of products, the sellers of outrage like to short-circuit your reason, exploit your ignorance of science and technology, and appeal to your emotions to promote their ideas. Let’s spend a minute on this. So, we’ve seen how cognitive biases may undercut a person’s ability to make a rational decision. Availability entrepreneurs are trying to sell ideas, so they want you to avoid dwelling on questions like:
> Has this information been presented with the right context?
> Is the study they cited a good one, and is it backed up by other studies?
> Have they cherry picked one or two cases to make a point?
> Did they provide context for the examples of stories they shared?
> Are the numbers recent numbers and from a reliable source?
Those questions are important, and the reason why may not be obvious. I hope it is, but I may write at length about why those questions matter and how to answer them without too much effort.
Let the Buyer Beware
This statement about buying consumer goods is perhaps even more valuable in the marketplace of ideas where the availability entrepreneurs peddle their ideas. Markets tend to be regulated by various government entities. The marketplace of ideas is a real free market, which in a free society pretty much has to be the case. But this market freedom also places an added burden on the consumer to evaluate what they are being served. You know that a sandwich shop has to meet some basic hygiene standards to keep operating but a YouTube channel called Liberal Shame doesn’t have any such standards. Hell, aside from inviting readers to kill liberals, I am not sure how the channel would be suspended or removed.
If you like this kind of content, please share, and please check out some of my critical thinking articles here on Social Pollution Prevention. And if you are feeling super charitable, how about a tip?
