Why Our News Keeps Blasting Out Ridiculous Tropes
Pass the idiot ball for more manufactured outrage and fake news in the modern age
“The libs stole the election!” Tucker yelled with lips furled.
How can this be? We’re the best in the world?!
“I know what to do, we’ll never lose again.”
“We need to stop them from voting, and wins will begin.”
But surely they won’t let us get away with this?
“Don’t worry my friend!” Tucker sneered with a hiss.
“Distraction is king and outrage will follow,”
“just like our morals are surely most hollow.”
I’m really not sure the people will believe you.
“Believe you say? They won’t have a clue!”
But what will make the masses fall into the noose?
“That’s easy my friend, have you heard of Dr. Seuss?”
I’ve been wondering something for the past few years.
If Trump were to pass away, lose the next election, or simply be consumed in the fires of pure narcissistic greed, what would the news talk about?
Since it looks like option 2 came to fruition — at least for 70% of Americans — we’ve now found out what they want to share.
Perpetual outrage
It was nice to load up my favorite news feeds, social media, and chat groups and not see my screen dominated by Trump’s latest buffoonery.
It was almost relaxing in a strange sort of way.
But it wasn’t long before the more ludicrous faction of conservatives found a way to dominate the screens again. It looks like they’ve learned a few lessons from the Trumps — outside of how to commit tax fraud, rape, bribery, or how to get pissed on by Russian call girls.
The lesson they learned, to the detriment of my screen, was to stoke the coals of the modern-age perpetual outrage machine.
Bad news is good news?
Social distancing and mask wearing are for some reason a political issue.
Videos of Karen’s flipping out on usually innocent strangers abound.
The insurrection was secretly Antifa. Neanderthals should now be looked up to. Potatoes now have a sex and gender. Dr. Seuss was completely cancelled because of off-white ham and eggs.
Every week, if not every other day, there’s something else.
And it’s always ridiculous. No nuance. No appreciation for the actual facts, and whether or not something had any merit to it. Not to mention whether it’s even worthy of being in the ‘news’ in the first place.
It’s always 0% or 100%. Good or evil. Freedom or communism. PC or fascist.
Our society is dwelling in a plethora of hate, and there’s no sign of it stopping.
As commentator Gerald Seib posits, it’s probably because hate and outrage is incredibly profitable — and we can’t stop consuming it.
Hate is big business
- 4.9 million political TV ads were displayed during this last election — double the amount of 2016
- $1.7 billion was spent on digital ads, with the same doubling effect from previous years
- Super PACs raised over $3.4 billion dollars in 2020 alone
These numbers are astoundingly high. And they’re only continuing to grow. Not just linearly either. Every election since Citizens United vs FEC was decided in 2010, we see multiples of spending from the previous cycle.
It’s completely out of control. Advertisers and media companies couldn’t be happier.
You know a court ruling is probably bad for democracy if the skin-based turtle neck that is Mitch McConnell came out heavily commending the decision.
In his 35+ year history of raising funds in the senate, he’s raised more than $138,000,000.
Over $100,000,000 (73%) of that has occurred since 2012.
Politics is big money these days — and people are cashing in.
Pass the idiot ball
Did you know that people are 60% more likely to read negative articles instead of positive ones?
Advertisers, algorithms, and assholes know that too.
And they’ve been abusing the shit out of it. It’s why 91% of COVID news in the US has been negative. Oddly (to some), it’s only 54% in non-US countries.
We can’t get enough of that sweet, sweet hatred in today’s world.
So what’s the modern weapon of choice now that Trump has mostly retracted into his golf-hole in Florida?
I quite like one potential answer to this — it’s what TV writer Jon Rogers calls the idiot ball.
What’s this?
“A moment where a normally competent character suddenly becomes incompetent which fuels an episode or a small plot line.” — TVtropes.org
In many TV shows, their stories often require a different character to do something incredibly stupid every week. Something that doesn’t make sense, but drives the story forward.
As Jon Rogers describes it, many Republican pundits have taken this trope and applied it to real life.
Dr. Seuss. Britney Spears. Millions of missing votes. Texas windmills. Neanderthals.
Every week has some new outrage. Some new idiot ball.
Only in the unfortunate case of reality, it’s not just one character wielding the ball, it’s nearly every cable news personality and politician that wants their face seen on the screens that week.
Learn from the best?
Trump did this for decades.
Way before his political endeavors in the 80s, he used to call into local radio shows pretending to be someone else while lavishing praise on Donald Trump.
He constantly lied to newspaper columnists to make sure his name and face were all over the place.
By the time he matured and entered the political arena, his manipulation of the press wasn’t so much about real estate as it was about hate.
Obama wasn’t American. Hilary was a crook. Mexicans are rapists. Muslims are trying to kill you. This list could expand to over 1,000 instances I’m sure.
He made it his business to hate everything, and inspire love for himself in the process.
Isn’t humanity fun?
Now that he’s receded from the picture, at least a bit, his tactics are starting to take hold via other familiar channels of hate — Fox News, OAN, Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Mitch McTurtleneck, and similar ilk.
The last four years appear to have been a masterclass in how to fuck up a democracy, and they already had a few decades head start.
The worst thing they seem to have perfected? The art of hate as a distraction.
While our screens were flooded with Dr. Seuss being a supposed victim of far-left communist cancel culture, Georgia and Arizona have been hard at work passing anti-democratic voting laws.
Where’s the outrage on that topic?
Oh right, Dr. Seuss’s estate pulling 6 of his 60 books due to racist content is surely worth the entirety of society’s attention.
Do you like
how they scam?
I do not like them,
Lindsay Graham.
I do not like
Ted Cruz and sham.
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