The last couple years, especially, but there always seems to be some stupid fucking pop culture “thing” that American conservatives just universally latch onto. I’m not talking about them complaining about BLM or CRT, which I at least understand why they’re complaining about, but it seems that every few months there’s some IMMENSE outrage over something stupid like the plastic potato’s implied gender or stopping the print of some Dr. Seuss books no one was buying or Aunt Jemima or now a fictional character claiming to receive a COVID vaccine. There always seems to be some cultural lightning rod for conservative outrage that NEEDS to exist, no matter how frivolous or stupid the concerns are. Why is this? Why do American (though I could imagine conservatives elsewhere do the same, I’m just speaking from experience) conservatives feel the need to latch onto and be offended by SOMETHING?
I’ll answer this with a different perspective that I’ve been brewing for a while but have never really tried to write out so it’s going to be a little messy and disorganised.
In the west, the best way to access the largest quantity of people is via entertainment. Via TV, movies, videogames and hobbies. Many MANY people are quite comfortable, they are switched off politically because of that comfort level, and the only way to reach them politically is by reaching them where they are at.
So where are they? Well what do comfortable people do when they’re not working? Entertainment. TV. Movies. Videogames. Hobbies.
The best way to reach people is to agitate within the spaces that they occupy. Outside the workplace these are the spaces that everyone occupies.
It is the pathway to creating people who are politically aligned with you. There are several ways to do this:
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Agitate politically with fake outrage about bullshit. Doesn’t matter what it is, people will get mad about the SMALLEST thing if it affects a thing they like. In entertainment mediums people have been trained that exploding and causing the largest amount of fuss possible is the best way to get companies to do the thing you want in the thing you occupy your entertainment time with. This primes people for agitated over-reaction to anything and everything.
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Control the entertainment communities themselves. This gives you marshalling power towards the reactionary and allows you to hold pretty considerable power over the companies that might want to please the community you’re a marshall of. Even if it doesn’t (such as with a community dedicated to a single product vs a whole hobby) you still can gain considerable cultural power to steer the entire fanbase in any direction you want. Turning a million people into chuds causes ripples.
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Create agitation communities that agitate about the various aspects of each industry. These are your “in action” and style gamergate spaces, any space that is specifically dedicated to getting mad about something in some hobby/interest.
The good part about all of these things is that by breaking them down and understanding them, we can use them too, and be just as effective.
The core and most important thing to understand here is that it’s not occurring randomly. It is a conscious effort because they have realised that it is the most effective way to reach people in a society of people that have one of two states: Work or Play.
I think decades of atomization has made people see others as adversaries or threats. It’s harder to dehumanize people if you are in a diverse community (which is why you also have those conservatives who are like “I’m not racist because I have a black friend” or similar).
The whole outrage media keeps this sentiment alive. It’s easy to have a “target” to blame for the problems you see in the world and all it does is further divide people and draw attention away from the real systemic problems.
Can’t be a reactionary without the “reaction”…
I’m in my late 30s and it’s been going on since I was a little kid (and before then too). It’s remarkable how the lyrics are a little different each time but the song is exactly the same. I posted something I distinctly remember in the news. It’s from the mid 90s (cw: homophobia). The moral panic here is that an openly gay teacher was teaching kids. That’s it, that’s what they were upset about. When they can no longer maintain one outrage due to public opinion, they just move on to the next one.
