A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
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A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
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Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
#2It’s crazy how when a lie takes hold, it just stays forever.
Another is relayed to January 6th protests. A friend today, a conservative DeSantis supporter, told me that he knew that on January 6th, the protestors killed several police officers.
This is, as we know now, absolutely false. It was based on a rumor, and once the reporting caught up, it turned out to be false.
Similarly I’m sure there will be Canadians who know that there were these mass unmarked child graves at schools. But again: totally false.
Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
#3Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper.
Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out.
Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible?
If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything -- God and our friends and ourselves included -- as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.
(C.S. Lewis)
Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
#4It’s crazy how when a lie takes hold, it just stays forever. Another is relayed to January 6th protests. A friend today, a conservative DeSantis supporter, told me that he knew that on January 6th, the protestors killed several police officers. This is, as we know now, absolutely false. It was based on a rumor, and once the reporting caught up, it turned out to be false. Similarly I’m sure there will be Canadians who…
My teenage son was shocked when I told him that none of the three people Kyle Rittenhouse shot were black, and didn't believe me at first until he googled it (and even google showed, on every link, that both of the people he killed and the one he wounded were white). He told his friends, and they didn't believe him until they googled it.
Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
#5No post body was provided.
Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
#6Balajis new book "Network State" has an entire chapter on stuff like this: https://thenetworkstate.com/if-the-news-is-fake-imagine-hist...
List of stuff he points out: https://thenetworkstate.com/if-the-news-is-fake-imagine-hist...
Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
#7same as with covid, which is dangerous but not anymore so than many other preventable causes of death that are completely ignored instead of hyped as the end-of-the-world.
we are truly in an age of perpetual unfounded social panic. thanks twitter.
as with most other problems, more educated people, especially regarding science, math and specifically statistics could help prevent these foolishnesses.
Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
#8It’s crazy how when a lie takes hold, it just stays forever. Another is relayed to January 6th protests. A friend today, a conservative DeSantis supporter, told me that he knew that on January 6th, the protestors killed several police officers. This is, as we know now, absolutely false. It was based on a rumor, and once the reporting caught up, it turned out to be false. Similarly I’m sure there will be Canadians who…
Be careful with your wording here - the suicide of Officer Smith, at least, has been pretty unambiguously tied directly back to trauma suffered on Jan 6th. So while a police officer wasn't directly killed through physical violence on Jan 6th the actions of protestors can be fairly said to have instigated the death of a police officer.
I think the big misstatement of the media here was the unrelated natural causes death of an officer (from essentially a stroke) on January 7th - but law enforcement lives were lost due to January 6th.
Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
#9It’s crazy how when a lie takes hold, it just stays forever. Another is relayed to January 6th protests. A friend today, a conservative DeSantis supporter, told me that he knew that on January 6th, the protestors killed several police officers. This is, as we know now, absolutely false. It was based on a rumor, and once the reporting caught up, it turned out to be false. Similarly I’m sure there will be Canadians who…
Ask around and be horrified as to how many people confidently think Kyle Rittenhouse shot one or more people who were
1. unarmed 2. black
(edit: I see now someone made the above point a few minutes before i finished typing my message, but I suppose that goes to show how widespread this myth is)
Conservatives get the brunt of blame for "conspiracy theories" and "disinformation" these days, and while I won't deny it doesn't happen (like it has for years), the left has just as much, if not more that I hear every day, but they never realize or take accountability for it because they have the popular narrative that runs all major corporations and the greater internet.
Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves
#10same as with covid, which is dangerous but not anymore so than many other preventable causes of death that are completely ignored instead of hyped as the end-of-the-world. we are truly in an age of perpetual unfounded social panic. thanks twitter. as with most other problems, more educated people, especially regarding science, math and specifically statistics could help prevent these foolishnesses.
I used to believe that more education would help, but today it seems that the most educated are most likely to spread these dangerous kinds of misinformation, whereas uneducated people are most likely to question it. The educated seem to be more dangerous if for no other reason than they control the media.