How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit • Hacker News Board

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#121

Post by smokeyj » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 7:59 PM UTC

rosser wrote: post #111

smokeyj wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I just think it's paradoxical to free your mind of fixation only to fixate on something else (relentlessly helping others). I don't think being happy, or contributing to society requires a fixation on giving - or for it to be uncomfortable. Bill Gates seems to be a pretty generous dude, but I don't think he makes being Jesus-like his identity. So in a certain sense, I think working smarter not harder is a healthi…

Where do trying to be "Jesus-like", relentlessness, or replacing one fixation with another come into it? That's the bias I'm talking about; you're making a leap from one extreme to another that's unsupported by anything in the discussion, or the referenced text.

> The really important kind of freedom involves .. being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

Are we not reading the same thing? Is this sentence not the crux of the entire message? It seems to me - by the word choice used - that DFW finds sacrifice to be "petty and unsexy" - yet does it to a repetitive extent for the sake of real freedom. I'm making the observation that that also sounds like a type of worship. Maybe it's totally off base, but I don't see why the point is confusing. It's pretty simple actually.

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#122

Post by abhi3 » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:00 PM UTC

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…

It seems to me that the solution is not to ban advertisement but only certain kinds of them such as ones containing strong emotional (Ads guilting people into buying insurance) or aspirational content (won't you look so cool if you lived 'The Marlboro Life')

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#123

Post by abhishek0318 » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:01 PM UTC

This article's headline is ironic.

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#124

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:05 PM UTC

As the article mentions, this sensationalism was also a problem in the past. I think the big change is the subscription model vs the one-off model. A one-off model whether sold on the street or on the Internet favors a sensational attention grabbing. A subscription model favors long term value which is insight and honesty.

I am happy that some of these traditional newspapers are going back to a traditional model. I would guess that if you compared headlines from newspapers that are subscription vs ad based, the ad based ones have significantly more sensational headlines.

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#125

Post by sgt101 » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:06 PM UTC

QAPereo wrote: post #15

maxxxxx wrote: post #3

I don't understand why so many people are addicted to outrage, anger and fear. For a while I played along but then I quickly realized that all this stuff is manufactured to manipulate people. Now I can't even stand watching CNN or watching a campaign ad.

I feel the same way, but it took time to get there. At first, it was more exciting to be plugged in... then you start to notice the patterns, and the lack of anything substantive. For some of us, that leads to disengagement, but maybe that's because we already prefer to focus on other issues?

I formed an opinion on a political event this year. I was right, but I didn't back my call and it cost me $40k - in the sense that I knew what to do (sell, shift to $) and I had the opportunity to do it, but I had a "doesn't matter to little guys like me" perspective. Last time I'm going to be disengaged....

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#126

Post by sgt101 » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:08 PM UTC

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 put it on Facebook, I used the headline "what the human race did next will make you cry". Maybe this will turn a few heads that I've not been able to?

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#127

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:08 PM UTC

smokeyj wrote: post #121

rosser wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do trying to be "Jesus-like", relentlessness, or replacing one fixation with another come into it? That's the bias I'm talking about; you're making a leap from one extreme to another that's unsupported by anything in the discussion, or the referenced text.

> The really important kind of freedom involves .. being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. Are we not reading the same thing? Is this sentence not the crux of the entire message? It seems to me - by the word choice used - that DFW finds sacrifice to be "petty and unsexy" - yet does it to a repetitive extent for the sake of real freedo…

[deleted]

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#128

Post by moduspol » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:09 PM UTC

abhi3 wrote: post #122

moduspol wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It seems to me that the solution is not to ban advertisement but only certain kinds of them such as ones containing strong emotional (Ads guilting people into buying insurance) or aspirational content (won't you look so cool if you lived 'The Marlboro Life')

That seems like a can of worms to me.

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#129

Post by _wp3r » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:15 PM UTC

ouid wrote: post #59

_wp3r wrote: post #35

I would be happy with just opinion free and divisive speech free headlines. If the big outlets could simply start with that, it might be attainable. Words matter. In the meantime. https://legiblenews.com/

This doesn't seem to be all that much better. the "war" section is A at the top, and B the only headlines there explicitly generate fear and outrage.

It is alphabetical. Also it is wikipedia edits from the previous day, some days do not have that section, but I would say that is rare. The blurbs do seem to be more statement of fact than op ed especially compared to media outlets.

Also humans are messy.

Re: How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit

#130

Post by chroem- » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:17 PM UTC

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…

Just because you find one source more politically palatable than the other does not make your preferred news outlet less susceptible to being propaganda. It was the NYT after all which convinced the public that Saddam Hussein was armed to the teeth with WMD's, and the only solution was to give him (and his oil fields) a little taste of Freedom.