A significant portion of viral content on social media is either staged, or somehow manipulated (lacking context, creatively edited, etc) to evoke an emotional response.
They may be videos, memes, or even just inflammatory messages.
When we see these,
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Emotionally divisive content exists to target people across the whole political spectrum - left, right, fringe, moderate; everyone.
As liberals, it is easy to think that propaganda
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The difference is in how they are targeted.
We can recognize propaganda on the other side easily, because it is obviously outlandish or unbelievable to us - it’s more difficult to recognize when it is targeted to us.
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The caption claimed that liberals wanted this in all our kids’ schools.
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Why? To create/exacerbate divisions between people in society - to drive a wedge into the fault lines between us.
I actually responded to this..
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I said that I am a liberal, and that I wouldn’t want my kids exposed to that in daycare, and that I didn’t think any sane person would.
That was the most-liked comment I’d had on twitter at the time, and I people were thanking me for saying it.
After it reached a
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Because the point of that video was to create division - it was designed to make conservatives disgusted by liberals.
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It was propaganda.
Why does it work for conservatives?
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The way these express themselves, is that we are susceptible to different kinds of emotional messaging.
A book that discusses this is
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That video triggered both of those responses, & targeted the feeling toward liberals.
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Well, liberals get emotionally manipulated exactly like conservatives do. The only distinction is that liberals respond to different emotional triggers, based on different emotional/moral foundations.
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We - liberals - are more susceptible to appeals to our senses of Care/Harm, and Liberty/Oppression.
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Two examples that I have seen are
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2) Videos of small children (and adults) using racist/prejudiced language.
If you are a liberal, ask yourself: Isn’t it difficult not to react to these, and to immediately share them?
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And, in fact, that is the first sign that we need to question what we are seeing.
If something we see online evokes an emotional response, then that is a clear sign that we need to be very skeptical.
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Because anything that overrides our care about things like context and facts is, by definition, emotionally driving our next reaction.
And that next reaction will be predictable:
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And that, is exactly how the differences between all of us in society, are exacerbated, and then propagated as if through an emotional virus.
And we do it without asking...
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If we are sharing content without asking these questions, we are contributing to the same divisiveness that we are fighting against.
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You may be denying this right now.
If you are, ask yourself: If I find it difficult not to believe the worst stories that I see about conservatives, can I judge them for believing the worst about liberals?
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If you read this and think “Well, kids in concentration camps are obviously worse than a trans person in a library,” then you are missing the point.
This is not the outrage olympics.
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Once we grasp this, we can also see how social media & tech companies manipulate our psychology - and even how our elected officials manipulate us to pursue their own agendas.
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There is a lot more to unpack, but hopefully this provides enough insight to be helpful.
Removing Trump isn’t going to make these things better - that part is up to us.
First, it’s good to understand that anger (i.e. outrage) itself can be addictive:
psychcentral.com/lib/is-anger-a…
The video I mentioned was not a trans woman putting on a provocative show. It was a man dressed in drag putting on a provocative show.
The tweet claimed that liberals are pushing to have this performed for toddlers in day care.