Comment by lazide
5 hours ago
The reason they feel that way (more) is because of those videos. Just like most people who watch Alex Jones probably didn’t start by believing all the crazy things.
We can chicken/egg about it all day, but at some point if people didn’t want it - they wouldn’t be doing it.
Depending on the definition of ‘want’ of course. But what else can we use?
I don’t think anyone would disagree that smokers want cigarettes, eh? Or gamblers want to gamble?
I think most people have experienced relatives of theirs falling down these rabbit holes. They didn't seek out a reason to be angry; they watched one or two episodes of these shows because they were on Fox, or because a friend sent it, or because they saw it recommended on Facebook. Then they became angry, which made them go back because now it became a moral imperative to learn more about how the government is making frogs gay.
None of these people said to themselves, "I want to be angry today, and I heard that Alex Jones makes people angry, therefore I will watch Alex Jones."
> "They didn't seek out a reason to be angry"
A lot of people really do, and it predates any sort of media too. When they don't have outrage media they form gossip networks so they can tell each other embellished stories about mundane matters to be outraged and scandalized about.
> When they don't have outrage media they form gossip networks so they can tell each other embellished stories about mundane matters to be outraged and scandalized about.
But again in this situation the goal is not to be angry.
This sort of behaviour emerges as a consequence of unhealthy group dynamics (and to a lesser extent, plain boredom). By gossiping, a person expresses understanding of, and reinforces, their in-group’s values. This maintains their position in the in-group. By embellishing, the person attempts to actually increase their status within the group by being the holder of some “secret truth” which they feel makes them important, and therefore more essential, and therefore more secure in their position. The goal is not anger. The goal is security.
The emotion of anger is a high-intensity fear. So what you are perceiving as “seeking out a reason to be angry” is more a hypervigilant scanning for threats. Those threats may be to the dominance of the person’s in-group among wider society (Prohibition is a well-studied historical example), or the threats may be to the individual’s standing within the in-group. In the latter case, the threat is often some forbidden internal desire, and so the would-be transgressor externalises that desire onto some out-group and then attacks them as a proxy for their own self-denial.