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How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

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Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#161

Post by [deleted] »

stcredzero wrote: post #71
sqeaky wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long until a critical mass of people forms to allow some more useful form of news to gain economic momentum? Will it ever happen? If not will the economic repercussions leave us with a decent world or some kind of dystopia?

How long until a critical mass of people forms to allow some more useful form of news to gain economic momentum? Such things started forming on YouTube (with some problematic elements) but were defunded with an eye towards attracting more old media ad money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfHXXV45EjE Phillip DeFranco isn't perfect, but he's graduated from YouTube punk to what passes as a "moderate" there. (I think h…

[deleted]

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#162

Post by Dangeranger »

passivepinetree wrote: post #160
karllager wrote: post #80

As a kid, I grew up in a country with almost no advertising. Repeat after me: No ads in the streets, in the TV, in the radio, nowhere. One day we found a magazine (from another country), which contained ads. Two people smoking cigarettes in a strangely alien world, some kind of jungle - or a safari, maybe. This image was so strange in many ways: Why is it there in a magazine, that was about something completely diffe…

If you don't mind sharing, where did you grow up? Was it a political influence that resulted in the lack of ads? Was everything state-run as a result?

Just an educated guess but it is most likely Cuba. [0]

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/how-do-...

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#163

Post by olleromam91 »

ereyes01 wrote: post #78
eludwig wrote: post #73

A nicely laid out and illustrated article that's well written. That's about the best I can say. The worst is why? Who is the audience for this? I firmly believe that if you found this article by clicking on a link on the HN homepage, then you already know all this. It's exactly the kind of article we've been reading about in one form or another for 20 years. If you didn't find this article on the homepage of HN, then…

I shared the article in my Facebook feed. It will reach at least a couple of friends that are habitual troll victims. I guess to your point, that probably won't stop them from being victims/easy bait. At least they'll read it, hopefully.

Same...and the only person I really care that reads it is my mother =/

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#164

Post by bufbupa »

SCHiM wrote: post #157
bufbupa wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary dude, I don't think you've gone deep enough. To dismiss the parent comment on some vague existential bemusement seems near insidious in intent. At the risk of derailing this conversation into semi-unrelated philosophical conversations: Why is it you would prefer 2 to 3?

> vague existential bemusement We'll that is why I asked people to talk me out of it ;) Most people that I meet either assume 2 from the get go, reasonable because that's how everything appears to us at first glance. 3 Basically means we don't even exist, in the sense that you can't have agency/identity/whatever you want to pinpoint as 'you' if everything is predetermined. The closes analogy to 'real' (this is always…

See other replies to your parent comment for other ways of phrasing that free will as it relates to ethics is generally deemed a moot consideration. That is, we can't predict the future from our perspective of reality (computationally prohibitive, non-deterministic, etc), so what the future will be can’t be taken into consideration for decisions of the present.

To me, your concern seems more related to the meaning of life rather than the presence of free will though?

Unfortunately, I fear that’s may be too broad a subject to fruitfully assess on a medium such as this forum..

At the least, I’d argue ‘you’ existing is the only thing you can really be sure of. “I think, therefore I am”. It’s harder to tell if others exist, and there are several branches of philosophy that outright conject that nobody else other than yourself does exist. EG: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#165

Post by [deleted] »

sqeaky wrote: post #120
dageshi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they will, they'll turn off the news completely and follow "news" about other stuff instead. Sports, video games, hobbies, they'll ignore current events and politics or anything else they might find anxiety inducing. That's what I do anyway, I'm much happier for it.

I suppose it is possible that a critical mass of people will give up. That seems unlikely to me, too many care for better or worse. The people that care will either remain poorly informed for gradually get more informed and by our electing of Trump it seems quite likely misinformed with reign for some time. (I am not trying to politicize this, but trump got huge help from crazy news sources like breitbart)

[deleted]

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#166

Post by icanhackit »

This was touched on by the study mentioned in the article which researched millions of headlines -- there was a interesting study from Wharton School of Marketing titled What Makes Online Content Viral [1] that demonstrated which emotional valences led to readers sharing content, and the biggest predictor was anger. Interestingly the valence that led to the least amount of sharing was sadness.

[1] http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~kmilkman/2012_JMR.pdf

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#167

Post by mikekchar »

thebokehwokeh2 wrote: post #117
awkwarddaturtle wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> >Journalism — the historical counter to propaganda Wow. Then they need a lesson in the history of journalism. They might want to read up on hearst and pulitzer and the founding of modern american journalism. > "The good old days", except that never existed. Journalism has always been the tool for the powerful to paint a positive picture of themselves to the general public via "unbiased agents" called journalists wh…

> foxnews and the nytimes are just propagandists like any other This is a textbook example of the lazy, uneducated thinking that causes fear and outrage. Lazy lazy lazy false equivalence. To say that "they're all the same" is absolutely not the case and nor will it ever be. The sooner people become more discerning of the information that they consume, the better off we all will be. There is an extremely large gulf in…

I'll get myself in trouble, but the main difference between Fox News and the NYT is that the NYT is far more effective at disguising its bias. Let's face it, Fox News doesn't even try.

My advice to you is to follow foreign news services and compare the news you get. The biggest challenge, unfortunately, is that you have to dig a bit because lately English language news is dominated by stories from Reuters and AP. You best bet, by far, is to get news in languages other than English for a fair comparison. However, if you can't do that, you should search google for news articles and compare them to the equivalent Reuters and AP articles to ensure that they didn't originate there.

If you do that for a while, I suspect your opinion of the NYT (and many other respected English language news services) will change pretty dramatically.

Which is not to say that there aren't good journalists, good editors, good news stories, etc, etc. These exist all over the world. However, the news is big business and also an institution that is critical for political success in any country. Educating yourself on the level of interference that occurs will only benefit you.

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#168

Post by jimjimjim »

moduspol wrote: post #101
karllager wrote: post #80

As a kid, I grew up in a country with almost no advertising. Repeat after me: No ads in the streets, in the TV, in the radio, nowhere. One day we found a magazine (from another country), which contained ads. Two people smoking cigarettes in a strangely alien world, some kind of jungle - or a safari, maybe. This image was so strange in many ways: Why is it there in a magazine, that was about something completely diffe…

Advertising is a fact of life, though. Without it, there's no way to inform potential customers of a new brand or product. I mean, imagine if it all disappeared tomorrow. Wouldn't people just stick to the megacorps and established brands they already know? Wouldn't this make it even that much tougher for a Netflix to compete with a Comcast, or an Uber/Lyft to compete with an entrenched taxi industry? How would Dollar…

advertising works in favor of the system/status quo/megacorps. not the little guy.

Ads on tv do not show new things. They push brand. brand is mother, brand is father.

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#169

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

dageshi wrote: post #75
sqeaky wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long until a critical mass of people forms to allow some more useful form of news to gain economic momentum? Will it ever happen? If not will the economic repercussions leave us with a decent world or some kind of dystopia?

I don't think they will, they'll turn off the news completely and follow "news" about other stuff instead. Sports, video games, hobbies, they'll ignore current events and politics or anything else they might find anxiety inducing. That's what I do anyway, I'm much happier for it.

Could we build a plugin that alters headlines to reflect reality?

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#170

Post by gnaritas »

gmarx wrote: post #143
gnaritas wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is totally something to be dismissive about because violent crime is firmly in a downtrend, that a year here or there has a slight uptick does not change the trend and is entirely irrelevant. To say violent crime is up at all is to be dishonest and nothing more than an attempt to incite fear.

What, even if violent crime is up you know the downward trend will continue so pointing it out is fear mongering? Given the down votes we can consider the point made; people enjoy being outraged by things they disagree with

Yes, misrepresenting minor bumps in a downtrend as "crime is going up and out of control" is fear mongering. We saw this lie continually used in the presidential campaign to mislead the right into thinking crime is out of control when exactly the opposite is true. The current liar in chief did this continually.
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