The Boogeyman

Let's take a quick look at media and it's recent evolution of the boogeyman:

1) Terrorism (a time honored tradition)
2) Zika
3) Forest Clowns
4) Fake news

Hide ya kids - Hide ya wives! The boogeyman has the superpower to morph, too! - one week an ideology, the next a single celled organism, then he'll shape shift into scary forest dwelling clowns and then he's back to an abstract idea. He does appear to have certain favorite personas (see terrorist) which he'll circle around to frequently.

I really can't take this world serious any more. My gosh - "fake news" is actually a thing. That stuff has been in the tabloids since I've been a kid. Remember those magazines that said "Aliens Land at the White House" you'd see at the grocery store checkout? Simply, put that stuff in the internet - and now we gotta lock the net down, create a federal committee and and fuel up the hype train.

Please comment, post your recent sightings of the boogeyman in the news, etc.

this aint tech

The media will always have a narrative so they can pull in casuals who dont know any better, this whole fake news stuff is just other people trying to discredit other people. But now they have a nice pretty label to slap on people.

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/detecting-fake-news-in-generality-is-impossible/110132?source_topic_id=110860

"Fake news" is the favourite of humans.
Since we can talk, we have fairy tales.
Then we got books, fairy tales stayed.
Then newspapers and magazines emerged, fairy tales grew up to become hoax.
Scientists opend up their network for sharing test results, everyone got an input and is now broadcasting their shit.

All that changed is the speed at which this occupational therapy is slung arround. Nothing new, just different.
Politicians rarely prevent problems, they mostly suppress the symptoms without treating the disease.
(Side note: I do not blame the political events on the politicians. The politicians are as much part of the system as the people. Recent example is Trump. He would not be president when people had voted for Stein. But people like to be dumb and complain afterwards. That is easier and you get near zero backlash.)
(Another side note: The backlash people get when expressing their "snowflake opinions" is the same as it allways has been. In German, there is a saying: "Wie man in the Wald herein ruft, so schallt es heraus." (=How you shout in the forest, so it echos back.) Filter bubbles that is social networks are not good as they make people forget how to deal with other perspectives)

I'd really not like to devote much of this thread to justifying why it was created in the tech news & policy space. However, I think that since the issue has been raised, it's fair I should address it.

It's fair to say there are a lot of people who would agree that boogeyman scare tactics are used to influence people and drastically change how technology, like the internet, is regulated. Furthermore, it's technology which has allowed all of the above to become such a prevalent and powerful force in our country.

The thread is not so much dedicated to "fake-news" or "terrorists" per se, but rather, recognizing that much of what is used to influence us is absolute rubbish, gains legitimacy and influence by the disruptive technology which is so prevalent now, and identifying what is "boogyman" reporting and how it could influence tech policy. For example:

  • Encryption or creation of national databases [terrorism],
  • Medical technology ie vaccinations [Zika],
  • Forest clowns [not so much technology but evidence of the absolute apathy of the average person to accept this crap (justifying my opinion)],
  • Fake-news [regulation of the internet, legitimacy of "online news" and people actually believing what they read online].

These are the tip of the iceberg - so I've asked others to identify how they see the boogeyman being reported.

So, I'd ask it to stay in this arena and still have the thread open for people to identify media stories which are ludicrous but stand to really affect our lives. I think one of the best ways to keep unproductive, unnecessary, and net negative legislation from affecting us is to be able to identify it, and if necessary justify why it's dumb.

Like someone has said - 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant.'

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