Bad Media: Why is Crazy the New Currency?
By: Alexander Chavers
Tags: Fake News, Journalism, Politics, Media, Conspiracy Theories

Post-truth is like a poison: latching its tendrils onto every news feed. Making us question our information. In the Trump era it’s a scary norm for our social climate. And getting bigger and bolder every day.

Enter Momo: the “Mother Bird”, originally conceived as an art piece for a Japanese special effects company. What happens, though, when you upload a creepy image like Momo onto Reddit?

Answer: you have an urban legend, much like Slenderman, making its way into the online community. You have stories of a “WhatsApp terror game” leading to mass suicides among children. And a resulting global hysteria among adults.

What you don’t have is facts.

As of now, there are no confirmed deaths. But you still had word spreading all over Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that somehow, someway, the so-called “Momo Challenge” was inspiring kids everywhere to inflict self-harm and, even worse, to take their own lives.

Reports have noted that the real danger here lies not in the rumor, but in its constant exposure, across news outlets everywhere.

In other words, kids who are susceptible to these kinds of things are more likely to be drawn towards them, the more we sensationalize it. Curiosity, more than an actual epidemic, will drive children to take a look at just what the hell everyone’s talking about. They have the internet in their hands; which means more coverage means more viewership.

I don’t need to preach and say sensationalism is the new norm. So why am I making this post: because I still feel the need to address it. Enter, case of said teenager who decides to testify before Congress on why he “rebelled” against his parents’ refusal to vaccinate him. They were probably reeled in by some third-party, online provocateur who believes that spectrum disorders were manufactured in a government laboratory. And, if you don’t buy that, then look at how many people are talking about it. I mean, why else would they be talking about it?

Therefore, a baseless theory makes sense. Nevermind that many childhood diseases like measles are reaching a new high, making kids sick all across the country. We need to bring back old diseases, for nostalgia’s sake. Like bad movies from the 80s.

The obvious question is: why should everyone else have to pay for the decisions of a few stupid parents?

The answer, as always……(drumroll)….FAKE NEWS.

Perhaps you’ve heard of an orangutan who lives and tweets at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The term clearly popularized after Kellyanne Conway used it to dodge a question. But “fake news” doesn’t just speak to backwards facts; it speaks to the moral outrage surrounding them at large.

For 2016 that outrage became a currency. Every Trump tweet and glib public statement spread like wildfire across media platforms, exposing the bad guy, but also boosting his charismatic appeal. It made every display of his less-than-civilized behavior highly accessible to other dangerous voices.

And what happens now, when dangerous voices want an audience? They go online. They form alternative news outlets, Youtube channels, and fake Twitter profiles. Our cyber dissent has a breeding ground, only making us susceptible to outside, foreign interference.

Outrage is a recruitment tool because it’s so damn public. Because it’s everywhere. If I think something can raise my influence, I’ll make it as loud and excessive as possible. Why: because, even if I don’t believe 100% percent of what I’m saying, other people will think I do. And they’ll do my job for me, by giving free publicity.

Exposure, as a means to uncover something in order to breed resentment towards it, DOES work, to an extent. But, it also accomplishes something else: promotion.

It gives these “alternative outlets” exactly the fuel they need to build followings. And conspiracy theories. Think about the fact that, alone, many of them would probably be relegated to some lone, forgotten corner of the internet. Why: because no one’s constantly re-tweeting them. Or placing every sound bite through the lens of a screenshot that’s shared way too many damn times.

Why is Jussie Smollett the biggest story of Black History Month? Because of the chaos surrounding it. It’s public, it’s polarizing, and it’s food for frequent thought.

Actually, more of a side dish. Or those fries you neglected to eat. But what if we put hot sauce on them?

The same goes for our politics. Do we really need to know every congressperson’s belligerent, internecine tweets? Maybe not, but they’ll gain the most coverage.

And, unfortunately, provide a new standard on how to conduct ourselves. The noise becomes the metric. If your voice feels small, try yelling it at the loudest octave. Without that, how are you ever going to get your point across?

It helps to convince the rest of us that if we really crave “being heard”, this is how you do it. But this also breeds a compulsion beyond our control. If we think that compulsion is going to solely benefit us, just because we believe in ______ principle, then we’re sadly mistaken.

Think about all those 4chan people who used to hurl racial obscenities in big, misspelled words. Skip ahead to today, when a sizable portion of them (and people who think that way) have a full-blown Youtube channel, with multiple millions of viewers/subscribers.

Why do these people have messed-up views? Because a lot are messed-up people, with a lack of perspective. Why are they famous? Because everyone’s made them that way.

Ergo, all the trolls live on YouTube now. And Twitter. Perhaps we deserve an award for normalizing them. But, then again, maybe it was bound to happen either way.

Either way, why is it that when someone crazy grabs the mic, we always amplify the sound? Instead of cutting it? It’s something we’ve always done in society, but now it’s like suffocation. You can’t turn it off. You might block, or unfollow one form of it, but another will likely resurface, with Momo’s glittering countenance.

Only problem is, Momo (not named after the monkey from Avatar) is chilling somewhere, on a pedestal in a Tokyo museum. She’s not burned in your children’s consciousness.

But she might be, the longer you put it in on their unsupervised phones.

Clearly, the fault of outrage lies not in the stars but in the telescope pointed directly at them. For a minute we had the Hubble fixed on “Mother Bird”, spurring a global sorta-panic. And, in the case of vaccines, narrow, numb-minded parents who don’t believe in SHOTS, SHOTS, SHOTS, SHOTS, SHOTS, SHOTS. EVERYBODY!

If these things thrive on “viral exposure”, wouldn’t we be better off NOT having to look them constantly in the eye, Clint Eastwood-style? Maybe. We obviously can’t bury what comes to the light; that’s a backwards step. But we can make it less romanticized.