I have an idea

I'm just spit-balling here.
I was thinking about our Outrage Culture.
I was thinking about what can be done about it.

First of all, I know that the mass media likes to stir up this sh*t, but we need to face the facts that mass media doesn't cause people's need to publicly shame other people. To dox them. To bully them.
These are just rotten people, and the internet give them a megaphone.

You can't shut these people up. There's too many of them. And ignoring them doesn't seem to work either, because the 24-hour news media uses them as filler. Sometimes the politicians find them useful.

So this is my idea: Use their megaphone against them.
Let them talk. We all know that these people aren't the smartest. It isn't hard to play them.

My idea is specifically: Make sh*t up for them.
Make up obviously fake outrages. Not just a few, but a tonne of them.
Then reveal the truth of the fake outrage, only after it became viral.

Eventually even average ordinary people will start tuning this sh*t out because they won't know what to believe. Thus you take away the power of the Outrage Culture Warrior. Their megaphone becomes a paper tube.
I should say that this should be targeted misinformation. It should target those who like to shame people without power.

I know that you're thinking putting out fake news is not a good thing. My answer is: too late for that.
We simply don't have an outlet for news that we can trust, and that's not going to change under the current system.

What gave me this idea was the kids who made the automated code to swamp the Texas anti-abortion fink web site, and the Kellogg's hiring scabs web site.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

....to damage the credibility of either corporations or the news media. If the effort is well organized, why wouldn't it work? First thing you gotta do is rent office space for a think tank on K Street. The think tanks are ground zero for all the poisonous fake news and false flag attacks that plague the nation. The colossal China smear extravaganza comes from one weird guy working out of one think tank making stuff up. Bellingcat's destructive geopolitical lies filter into society using the very same channel. I think the news media will run with anything that comes from a DC think tank.

If I lived in DC and had the money, I'd lease an upscale office suite and pose as a highly classified think tank. Then just use it as a luxe hangout workspace for writers, all very hush-hush. Give it an intimidating name like the Post-National Strategic Reositioning Trust, lock it down and get a robot receptionist, that turns away all uninvited visitors. Then launch counter narratives, as needed, for the gullible media.

But back to your premise:

... we need to face the facts that mass media doesn't cause people's need to publicly shame other people. To dox them. To bully them.
These are just rotten people, and the internet give them a megaphone.

I really think the United States has always been exactly like this from the very beginning. This country is flooded with psychopaths, who are consistently selected as leaders. The nation's actions have largely been corrupt, outrageous, and horrific throughout its history. The holocaust pales by comparison. There is tremendous cognitive dissonance that infects the people like a brain-eating mind virus from the very moment they arrive here. If you look back through time at the unspeakable injustice that has gone on at all points in US history — the casual crushing of human lives as business as usual — which all Americans ignore and deny all of the time — the realization is inescapable. After all, every single year of its brief national existence, the US has been involved in continuous bloody wars and war crimes — except for seventeen uneventful years.

What gave me this idea was the kids who made the automated code to swamp the Texas anti-abortion fink web site, and the Kellogg's hiring scabs web site.

Sabotage is the only thing that has ever worked.

YMMV

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@Pluto's Republic

campaign fights for the Presidency to see how nasty this legacy is. They just didn't have the megaphones of social media and had to rely on newspapers and anonymous pamphlets, etc.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

enhydra lutris's picture

implementation, especially in our censorship laden universe will be a hassle, maybe samizdat?

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

QMS's picture

what the hell is: Outrage Culture?
and how is it different from all the other
cultural diversions being fed to us on a
daily basis? Does one not recognize the
purpose of keeping the masses
'otherwise concerned' as opposed to focusing on
more important issues? Pretty obvious imo.

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Zionism is a social disease

@QMS Outrage Culture

When people play the victim card and bend over backwards to be as offended as possible when they really aren't. Using hissy fits, political correctness, character assassination, and a false sense of moral authority, the outrager hopes to gain power and public recognition for their brave act of justice as well as a sense of control over their meaningless existence. Often accompanied by demands for financial compensation for their "pain and suffering".
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zed2's picture

Better to speak directly to people, tell the truth, and be sincere.

The cost to ourcountry f all these fake people has been astronomical. Its not a joke. Because of them we have gotten the worst political mess in the world. Its become absolutely famous for that. Do people want that to continue? I don't know about you but I am absolutely sick of lying and the sleaziest kinds of people trying to lie some advantage for themselves by dishonesty.

It reminds me of the Clinton tactics. SO many of us have fallen for it. Well, GATS exposes all that. When one realizes their real goal is the opposite of what they pretend, it just becomes too much to play along. The price to society is too high.

:o

Don't you become fake too, if you want my respect. Thats the one thing that makes me draw the line.

Even if I disagree with somebody I will listen to them and tell them what I think if they are sincere. But if not they are not going to waste my time.

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@zed2
What you are saying carries a lot of weight.

At the same time I can't help but consider how the Left always seems to lose in politics by taking the high road.

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zed2's picture

and try to drown them out. I noticed this was predictable with health care discussions.I atrributed them to "sock puppets", probably paid by the PR industry under the radar firms that were hired by Big Pharma and the health insurance industry. Later on this was verified to me by a friend who was a professional in the ad industry. He actually brought it up to me while we were having lunch in New York City's advertising district. It turns out that the USis well known for having this real zoo in politics and politicians elsewhere are now imitating us. As he put it they (sock puppet epidemic) "argue both sides" of issues to confuse people and do their best to shift the overton window rightward. Lots of money is being spent to keep us in the mess we are in, forever. Meanwhile several hundred people die who wouldn't die in the civilized countries EACH DAY. Thats a LOT of poor Americans dying before their time.. Over the last 26 year its probably been around a million needless deaths.

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Only when enough people are seriously disturbed by something will you get anybody to listen at all,

That's from a diary by Fire with fire. It's true. It's essential.
Be happy people are outraged.
It's a good thing.

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