Comment by prox
2 years ago
This explains my gripe with most of the messaging on socials (I came across at least) . You see accounts who never cared to post anything of this conflict suddenly being outraged and reposting stuff. It’s not that they should not care, but it’s a “outrage of the week” sort of thing, and as you say, often with nothing of the careful history and understanding.
For sure it’s a tragedy.
The "outrage of the week" is attention going to a current event. Our attention and hours are limited so for the majority you choose what's top of mind. There are 1000s of things we should all be addressing collectively but the conflict du jour usually wins our attention.
In my country (US) we've had ~200k deaths from opioid prescriptions. It gets attention but it's really not enough when the perpetrators should be in prison for life.
None of this is a good thing but "outrage of the week" is simply attention and attention span. We're all limited.