Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Reacting to "Outrage Porn"

Emotionally reacting to individual news stories is kind of silly. Some news is useful. But the latest sob story about some horrific crime is not useful and it’s barely even information.

I like the term “outrage porn”, typically in reference to these outrageous news stories about individual crime cases (or sometimes outrageous non-crimes). I imagine this dialogue:

Person 1: Did you realize that a really horrible thing happened this week?
Person 2: Well, I guess I assumed that *something* horrible happened this week, considering that horrible things happen every single day. I don’t see why knowing about a specific instance would meaningfully add to my knowledge.
Person 1: Yeah, but did you see…THIS! (Horrible, outrageous headline.)
Person 2: WHAT! This is an outrage!
Person 1 + Person 2: Rabble rabble rabble!

Sometimes the news meaningfully informs you about your world. As far as I can tell these outrage stories do not. I think some people string together collections of these news stories, each one alone being merely an anecdote, and fool themselves into thinking they are incisively analyzing a real social trend. No, you need some statistics to do that, along with the competence to interpret those statistics. Take off the "moral outrage" hat for a moment and put on the "skeptical analyst" hat. It's rewarding in its own right, and it will help you communicate more meaningfully with people who hold opposing worldviews.

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