Keep Coronavirus insanity away by avoiding the news
Monitoring your news and social media consumption will be just as important as washing your hands and not licking metro poles, to stay…
In light of this absolute media insanity around the Coronavirus, monitoring your internet usage will be just as important as washing your hands and not licking metro poles.
I’ve yet to convince some people around me that the news lies for views and money. It’s astonishing to me how many people have blind faith in the journalistic system and still consider it an infallible source of truth. The media loves nothing more than war, epidemics, terrorists, and missing children. That’s because all these topics make for wonderful revenue streams and increase in viewership.
Below is a screenshot of the nonsense that appeared in my YouTube today despite only clicking on one single Coronavirus video on the science of how it works.
Please note the titles and how completely un-newsworthy some of them are in this image. Why on earth should I care about what some random Canadian has to say about being in Wuhan right now? That is not news. That is blogging. Our journalists shouldn’t be busy promoting this nonsense.
A term that I feel is not widely used enough anymore is FUD. Here’s the definition from Wikipedia.
The term “fear, uncertainty, and doubt” appeared as far back as the 1920s,whereas the similar formulation “doubts, fears, and uncertainties” even reaches back to 1693 the least. By 1975, the term was appearing abbreviated as FUD in marketing and sales contexts as well as in public relations.
Essentially it’s a term used to drive people into making decisions emotionally rather than rationally by playing on basic fight or flight responses. Here’s a continuation of the Wikipedia article:
FUD was first used with its common current technology-related meaning by Gene Amdahl in 1975, after he left IBM to found his own company, Amdahl Corp.:
FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products.
Let’s look back at that screenshot I shared above to see exactly how the news is using our primal instinct to survive to instill FUD, which in turn drives up their clicks.
Notice some the following:
- Hollywood-style pandemic scenes used as thumbnails for the videos
- Sprinkling of previous pandemic buzzwords (SARS)
- Stating the obvious about a pregnant woman wanting to leave — we all love a good mother story
- Random opinions of Canadians in Wuhan — we all love a good anecdote
- Extreme words like “cases soaring” without any numeric mention of the rate or what it’s compared
I hope you’re realizing that the people reporting on these things are not actually looking out for your well-being at all. They just want your terrified brain to sit there staring at the farcical content they will keep pumping out until this “outbreak” goes away.
Of course, there is entirely a possibility that this could be the end of the human species. We know very little about the virus to date. This doesn’t mean we should over-report and over-consume information to “stay informed and safe”.
The basics are well known:
- Wash your fucking hands when you get home
- Move away from people that cough openly (as unfortunate and rude as they might be)
- Don’t put your dirty hands in your face
- If you’re sick — with even the basic flu — just stay the fuck at home ( No one cares that you didn’t do your menial job today)
Nothing in the news has evolved since the minute we discovered this outbreak. Chill the fuck out and use your common sense.
If you really want to educate yourself, watch some quality content on the matter. An example is this excellent video by YouTube channel AsapSCIENCE:
Additionally, you can read quality articles like this piece on The Atlantic that talks aims to create some context around the virus. This is something standard news isn’t willing to do because it weakens FUD:
