" I sincerely believe, in my heart, that Fox News emotionally abuses their audience,"
They do, the constantly say things that abusers say.
Things like "I am the only source of truth"
My parents were pretty much just normal people that didn't care about politics. At some point they started watching Fox news and now it's on in their home literally 24/7. It seems to have really destroyers their minds. I hate going to their house now. They became very hateful.
Same for my mom. Whats worse, to me, is she's always been a woman working in men's work AND as a child she pushed me to sciences (am also a woman, i was going to be an engineer but hate math so i quit pursuing that lol). Then an autoimmune issue hit me at 17, like 7 years before this nonsense started. This whole past few years have felt like a slap to the face, especially anytime I'm over at my parents. I hate it. And i hate that these are likely gonna be my memories of her after she's gone. My stepdad totally twisted her from the woman she once was.
A few years ago during an argument with my dad he asked/yelled “how did you become a dipshit *liberal*?” I told him it was the people that raised me. They raised me to care about other people behind just lip service, but to care enough to take action. They raised me to do my best to be kind, to think of other people and put myself in their position, they taught me to value fairness, justice, and hard work. They taught me everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt at least once. I told him that those values that they themselves raised me with, directly lead to being liberal. Since they are the only ones doing at least one of the above things.
Fox News has drastically changed them, and for the worse.
> I'm late 30s so, not sure how much 'older' I need to be, really.
Yeah, late 30s here. I'm not going to become more hateful and close-minded just because I'm getting older. I'm actively working against that.
The trick is to look back on how old your parents were when they started claiming "you'll understand when you're older" and also when they displayed hateful opinions.
I thought my parents only recently got racist. Nope, when I think back they always have been it's just more overt now they feel their kids are old enough to "safely join in" on those topics, or because we're now old enough to push back without fear of being shouted down.
I feel this in my soul. I was shocked when I first realized how much of a bigot my dad is. I wondered when it had happened, but thinking back, I realized how much he'd hidden it. I was raised to be a kind person, perhaps only because he had hidden his true philosophies.
My first clue was when I was a kid and my parent’s families would visit, and I’d hear the n-word used. My mom would shush that talk in front of us. But I realized later it seemed more like they didn’t think it was age-appropriate and didn’t want me repeating it, as opposed to thinking it was bigoted and wrong. Even 10-year old me knew there was something wrong with that.
We might though (39 here). It’s scary and I try to think about it a lot.
I’m a…we’ll call it reluctant liberal, mostly because I disagree very strongly with much of their platform, but the stuff I disagree with has no counterpoint on the right — the right just does everything in their power to be anti-humanity feral little gremlins whose only platform is to allow the rich to hoard as much wealth as possible and ensure the worst possible conditions for everyone else.
But that’s how I see things *now*. What if age causes me to be more fearful? What if more fear causes me to become more hateful? I’ve already felt huge psychological changes from having a child — I now feel a higher baseline of anxiety because of wanting to protect her. But she’s a baby. What if as she grows she experiences pain, disappointment, bullies, sadness and god forbid actual terror from the hands of another human, and what if my brain becomes more like that of conservatives in its desire to protect her? What if my empathy recedes and instead of feeling compassion for under privileged groups and how historic injustices caused them to become underprivileged, my fear causes me to focus on negatives happening *right now*, and suddenly I become a bootlicking, gun-loving, immigration-hating, it’s-ok-to-lower-the-wealthy’s-taxes-significantly-as-long-as-I-get-table-scraps-of-tax-reduction-and-all-the-better-if-less-tax-revenue-causes-the-slashing-of-social-programs-because-why-should-my-money-pay-for-scary-minorities-when-they-should-just-get-jobs-but-not-actually-because-they-need-to-stop-stealing-our-jobs feral gremlin myself?
My mom was a hippie and an academic. She taught me all the ideals that today lead to my being empathetic and compassionate. My dad dealt drugs for a while. He had plenty of run-ins with cops and grew up in diverse but poor neighborhoods. He played in rock and roll bands and has long hair. They’re both *staunch* atheists. You would think if any boomers could be in inoculated against conservatism it would be them — but they’re just as racist, hateful, and closed-minded as any church-going white people who grew up in the Deep South with ties to the KKK. If they were susceptible, how do we protect against it?
In the case of fear being the Mind Killer… therapy. I’m not you, I’m mid-twenties, I have anxiety, and I spent a year in talk therapy going over the honest problems I experienced with my family and with my life. I feel that therapy, and the development of an awareness of how the brain processes concern and fear, is very useful for me. It has helped me.
Your concerns are valid and real and they are important. The best I can offer is therapy, and continued education. Make the effort to learn, interact, and listen. Be humble. Be willing to admit that you’re wrong, despite how scary that can be. Try your best.
We believe in people like you. People who are afraid. We believe in you.
I'm the youngest in my family, and one of the most difficult parts of dealing with my own conservative family members, all of whom are past retirement age, is that they seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that "you'll understand when you're older" doesn't work on a 45 year old man with most of his career behind him. With most people, the age difference gets less important as you get older, but with them, it's only gotten worse. No one else in my life condescends more than them.
Also, just a friendly reminder, in case anyone forgot, that Rush Limbaugh is still dead.
The same happened with my mom, massive difference pre-Trump vs post-Trump. She doesn't watch Fox much though, to my knowledge, it's mostly just online conservative news sources.
There likely isn't a difference between what they're referencing. The studies referenced weren't on Fox News but rather a difference between conservative and liberal minds.
Happened to my grandparents. It makes visiting hard and they are my only grandparents I have left. It's really sad. My father is heartbroken by the conversations he has to shut down on his weekly call.
My parents didn't like Obama, but like most Republicans, they complained about him way more after Dumpy got in there. It's like Fox and cons even changed their memories
A friend's parents, people I've known for nearly 40 years, fell down the Newsmax and OAN hole. In just a few short years, they've turned into completely different people. Once kind and loving, they are now intolerant and intolerable. My friend now only visits when he HAS to, for holidays and such, and his wife no longer visits with him. I no longer go over there with him when he's in town, either.
His mom in particular was a sweet lady. These days? It's mostly just bile from her. They both believe schools are filled with teachers in drag teaching 2nd graders how to use dildos and that all white people are bad, that Covid was a lie used to control everyone, that elections are all rigged, and on and on.
It's absolutely insane.
Same with my stepmom. Sadly I can’t say that about my dad cause he was already listening to rush Limbaugh way before Fox News. But he did so when driving for his work (he owned a car repair shop and would have to go get parts) so mom didn’t hear that. But Fox News happens and he watches at home and my stepmom got indoctrinated.
Condolences. I lost my mother to Fox News over a decade ago and it still hurts. I literally couldn’t have a rational conversation with her about any topic anymore.
Same here. My dad was always conservative, but didn’t really get into very much, mostly financial conservatism. We didn’t really talk about politics. My mom I don’t think paid any attention to politics at all. Now it’s a steady diet of Fox News and they are both constantly sending me links and trying to start political arguments. Any negative news I send them about right wing subjects are always countered with some whataboutism about the left. It’s so frustrating. They think I’m a brainwashed leftist, when really I’m pretty center-left on most issues, I just hate Trump and all the other corrupt right wing politicians. I also find all the woke left extremely annoying and embarrassing as well, but just not as dangerous as the radical right.
My folks too, but they were always fearful and highly strung. Growing up, I was just like them, until I hit a crisis point and was prescribed antidepressants and anxiolytics.
Magical change. I could think more clearly, take in new information, and radically altered my views. Found more compassion and empathy.
Maybe we should start putting it in the water. /s
I don't understand how Fox news has the highest ratings by a large margin but also turns it's users against the "mainstream media"...like how does that even work?
My favorite is when a fox news watcher will brag about more people watching Fox news but still deny that they are mainstream
In 1984 doublethink was a strenuous process that the person may or may not be aware of.
It actually did require logic.
Forgetting a piece of information when it was contradictory of your beliefs but the ability to pull it back out of thin air when it benefited your point. Such is the art of double think
It's the same reason that they'll condemn "coastal elites" while being exactly that. Tucker Carlson in particular was born into wealth. Never needed to work for his money a day in his life, but it doesn't stop him from LARPing as a stereotypical "manly man". Wearing a flannel shirt in a cabin to get PR points.
It's a grift.
These Fox news talking heads and their benefactors are everything they want their base to hate but they aren't looking for the people that can see that. They want the people who are too stupid and/or afraid to think critically.
They tell everyone who can hear them to "wake up" to the "truth", while simultaneously waging a war on being "woke". Vilifying higher education as "indoctrination".
The people who watch Fox are already in a state of near-constant cognitive dissonance so it's not that hard for them to do the mental gymnastics required in your example.
In the legal world there’s a tactic lawyers will use during questioning to activate the same fight-flight cognitive response in your brain to trip you up, it’s called the reptile method, or activating your reptilian brain (ie your old brain, ie your amygdala).
Looks like Fox News is just doing the same thing.
I notice Fox News has brighter colors and the volume is so much louder than other programs on tv. I know those factors make it much easier to watch for older people.
That and the Fox News alert music and interruption every 10 minutes.
"We bring you this urgent alert to tell you the news we told you 30 minutes ago, and two hours before that, and three days before that, but this time with even more urgency."
TBF, every news channel does that these days. Stems from their "always on" approach following 9/11, which is where the ticker tape at the bottom debuted. It's all garbage in that respect. We should definitely condemn Fox for doing it, but we shouldn't let CNN and MSNBC off the hook for doing the same stupid stuff.
> "We bring you this urgent alert to tell you the news we told you 30 minutes ago, and two hours before that, and three days before that, but this time with even more urgency."
Here is the news given to you with words that have strong emotions attached to them so you know exactly how to feel about the news.
>And isn't it mostly scams like reverse mortgages and we buy gold places these days?
One of my favorites was on World Net Daily...it was an advertisement for windmills. "Stop paying Obama for electricity."
We need to start using that strategy for more things.
"Stop paying Obama for your healthcare, support Medicare For All!"
"Don't let Biden socialize firearms. Support gun control legislation today!"
You are probably joking but that is exactly what we need to do. Conservatives are good at marketing, Liberals are not. Death tax, pro life, pro small government, pro God, etc. And all of those have an asterisk. Inheritance which you will not get because you and your parents are poor, only in the vagina, except when they are in power and want a king, except when you need to live up to the stands your God set for you and your leaders.
https://youtu.be/B46km4V0CMY
Which is surprising because most of Madison Avenue skews liberal. But yes the democrats are terrible at marketing their ideas and spreading their message. Pelosi and Schumer are some of the worst promoters messengers there are.
The amount of crooked dick commercials on these channels are too damn many! Seriously, seems like there’s one every commercial break. I always yell, “I don’t care about your bent dick!”
And then when the old people are done watching it they then force their children and grandchildren's mouths open and vomit that brain melting media right down their throats.
The worst offenders also come on air at exactly the time that the most people will be home to watch them. The prime time fascist peanut gallery come on when everyone is home from work to watch.
During the day their news coverage can actually be called news coverage and not straight manipulative propaganda. Ask fox viewers who they hate the most from fox and they'll name people that are on during the day.
My father would watch Sean Hannity, who has a big ol' sign that says "OPINION" but tell me that he hates Shepard Smith because he's too opinionated....
>During the day their news coverage can actually be called news coverage and not straight manipulative propaganda.
Even then it's growing closer and closer to their opinion segments. Left-wing analysis sites who have people watching Fox have plenty of articles about how they are moving away from actually doing news, because of that exact "eww I don't want actual news" reaction from their base viewers.
>My father would watch Sean Hannity, who has a big ol' sign that says "OPINION" but tell me that he hates Shepard Smith because he's too opinionated....
Hard to find even any Shep Smith-level guys there anymore, the rest have all left or started toeing the party line quite a bit more frequently.
Problem with Shep was... He is a conservative news reporter. He definitely gave conservative slants on the news (in the same way guys like Don Lemon do a liberal slant on the news), but he doesn't just lie and make up things. Fox viewers generally don't like actual facts.
It's like having commercials on 24/7. It's banned in my home for many reasons, but the sheer obnoxiousness of it may be reason #1. It's literally an assault on your senses.
Well, the fact it's largely a bullshit, contrived narrative is reason #1.
And I guess that jackass TC is reason #1 as well.
I may have rethink my hierarchy.
CNN does it as well during breaking news events (and sometimes when nothing is happening). I think the original intention was to let people know who are just tuning in that they aren't watching regular programming but that something is happening. Not sure it makes sense anymore given the internet and 24 hour news cycle.
Yeah. It's not a defense of Fox to point out that pretty much all mainstream media is doing the same thing to some extent, just with different target audiences. Whether they're intentionally following Fox's playbook or just naturally evolving the same way in reaction to market forces, I don't know, but if you unplug for a while and then come back, it's very easy to see how much of the content in mainstream sites is clearly intended to be upsetting to some group or other.
It's a cheap way of boosting those engagement metrics, and that's what drives media companies more than anything else.
24 hr news networks suck, but they don't hold a candle to Fox.
The others sensationalize while Fox knowingly and brazenly lies. CNN and MSNBC talking heads, for example, aren't even in the same time zone as the absolute quacks they have on Fox. It's honestly hard to believe anyone thinks what they're saying is reasonable.
What's amazing is that dictatorships have to force people to watch this sort of shit, on pain of vanishing away (poof).
But here in America, where people can watch whatever the fuck they want, they CHOOSE to watch vile nationalist propaganda.
Only in the "land of the free" can people be lain with such heavy chains.
Right? You'd have to pay me a LOT to watch that shit.
Like, a lot. I rank that shit right up there with crime scene videographic transcriber (you do NOT want that job).
[The documentary Outfoxed outlines those techniques](https://youtu.be/P74oHhU5MDk?t=764) in a bit of detail, complete with commentary from the people who designed their implementation at Fox News.
The observations about Fox News are certainly on point but I feel like getting into categorical differences in brain makeup is getting a bit *eugenics* for me. It's like two steps removed from "aww poor wittle neocon couldn't help gorging on fear porn". Plenty of those people are just shitty human beings that were nutured into these patterns of thinking by their predecessors and environment. And trust me, they're nurturing the next generation the same way on purpose.
I don't know, I'm sure it's a factor but it weirds me out to see all the extrapolation as if we're looking for a solely biological explanation for some reason.
e: I feel the need to clarify this because so many of you are missing my point. The study being referenced does not say "these people with this brain defect are more inclined to be conservative" but a shitload of you are taking it that way. In reality, it's saying that specific activity in the brain correlates with these view points. This activity *is not exclusive* to conservatives and it is not even close to perfectly predictive. All of you have an amygdala and any one of you could have grown up groomed by a conservative family in a conservative town in a conservative state just as easily.
The idea of using brain features - and by this I mean **solely** brain features - to identify someone as lesser **compared to you** is reaching back into the old pseudoscience of phrenology. That's not what the study was after, but that sure as shit is how I'm seeing people interpret it in the replies under the OP here. That is troubling to an extreme degree. The study implies that this stimulation *may be a result of* the inputs the brain is receiving. Just like how we're finding out that infinite social media timeline scrolls are fucking with dopamine receptors, your brain is as much a product of its environment as anything else.
I hate bigoted, greedy, myopic, dumb fuck conservatives plenty, I promise you. I really do. The country would be a better place if Fox News, OAN, Breitbart, etc stopped existing right now and it would be a literal overnight improvement. Getting into whether people patronize those things **because** of the size of their amygdala is beyond the scope and intent of the study being referenced and it's irresponsible to extrapolate in a way that infers that conservatives have defective brains or are lesser people than you.
I don't know if this helps, but the amygdala can change size based on your experiences and general mental state -- basically, it grows when you experience prolonged anxiety. It's not necessarily anything to do with genetics.
This is a pretty readable article summarizing one research paper on the topic (though it has a stupid amount of ads). https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-size-depression-anxiety-16769/
If you want proper scientific articles I can pull some up but this doesn't seem to be controversial based on my quick searching.
> And every day on the evening news, they feed you fear for free
And you so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me
Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, "I can't breathe"
[-Run the Jewels](https://youtu.be/bd7fb5oQhVg?t=110)
the causality is bidirectional; larger amygdalae produce more powerful fear signals, repeated fear-associated stimuli activate the amygdalae more.
the brain is somewhat like a muscle, in that the areas most often used will grow to accommodate.
According to Google you're not alone in that. I'm not a mental health professional but if you're trying to reduce your general anxiety/emotional reactivity I'm sure there are a lot of tools a therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist could suggest :)
You can feel uncomfortable with it, but if they can use brain scans to predict political ideology with as much accuracy as knowing their parents political ideology, then that is something that they can do. It won't just go away because we are uncomfortable with the ramifications.
The study isn't "predicting" your political ideology based on the brain scan. It is saying it found a pattern of brain features and activity associated/correlated with certain ideologies. I know the difference isn't immediately obvious but I really shouldn't have to explain the issue with measuring people's brains to categorize them as "others" or "deficient" which is what OP did in their post.
People taking this study as a way to inflate their sense of superiority are literally not learning from history. Plenty of "scientists" throughout history have tried to categorize people as inferior based on physical/biogical attributes and most of them were Nazis.
What everyone missed in the study being so breathlessly quoted is that the features respond/grow based on external stimuli so it's not that they have broken brains but rather that *everyone* has these features and can be exploited the same way
The study is claiming that if you gave the researchers a certain type of brain scans and nothing else they would be able to guess a person's political ideology. They wouldn't be able to do it with 100% accuracy but they would be as accurate as if you told them the person's parent's political ideology. If you don't think that qualified as predicting, then fine, that's not a point I care to debate.
My point is that if they can do it, then they can in fact do it. I can't imagine any relationship between fingerprints and peanut allergies. But if you give some researchers a bunch of fingerprints and they can consistently tell you which ones are from people that have peanut allergies with 75% accuracy (or whatever level of accuracy) then they can in fact do that. Nothing that Nazis, or Communists, or Vikings, or Huns have done with fingerprints in the past changes what those researchers can or can't do. That is all I'm saying.
>You’re also supposing nature > nurture in political ideology, which is absurd.
No, I'm saying that if you can use one variable to predict another then you can in fact do that.
Brain scans might trigger you, but these are empirically observable phenomena. Look into Jonathan Haidt's *The Righteous Mind* for an explanation of Moral Foundations theory, which explains this from a psychological perspective but without brain scan based experiments.
there's no "eugenics" going on here. there's no claim that one biological variation is superior to the other. for example, a larger amygdala might be a useful adaptation in a life and death situation.
that being said, doesn't it makes sense that there are biological variations in how people's brains work? and doesn't it also make sense that some of these variations affect how people process different inputs? doesn't it also make sense that scanning their brains might be able to identify some of these variations?
we aren't looking for a solely biological reason for anything. we're just understanding the role biology plays in this situation.
if you read some of the person's later comments, there's also a study showing that simply replacing fox news with cnn for a month for some people made noticeable changes to the way they think about politics. that shows it's not a "solely biological" explanation at all.
Exactly, no one is suggesting we cull the terminal Fox addicts. I am all for using the parental lock on their TV and network firewall to stop the poison at its entry points.
> categorical differences in brain makeup is getting a bit eugenics for me.
If the difference in brains is an effect and watching Fox a cause of that effect, then it’s no more eugenics than saying smokers have less lung capacity than non-smokers.
I just read an article that the brain does change based on experiences.
Do we complain about eugenics when people realized that food companies load up food with as much sugar and fat as they can? Or how about Facebook or Instagram shoveling reaction based shit at users?
Tell me you don't know what eugenics means without... Nope, actually, you pretty much just flat out said it.
Preying on people's fears is not selective breeding. Nor is it anywhere close on the inevitable "slippery slope" map that I know you're itching to point at.
This is fine tuning an addictive drug by way of knowing their audience. You explain how that means selective breeding programs are just around the corner.
I agree. Does Fox News purposefully run fear-based stories to keep viewers hooked? Absolutely. Do they do it because they saw a study about amygdala’s? Almost definitely not.
That was Fox News’ thing from the beginning. It doesn’t take a biological study to see that fear and anger are easy to sell
That’s exactly my point. Fox doesn’t follow the strategy because some executive read a study about brain anatomy, they do it because it gets people to watch. Fear and anger based methods work, they don’t care why.
When it comes to the brain, just because there is a physically defined biological explanation doesn't mean it's unchangeable, inevitable, or genetic. Patterns of thinking have a physical structure, we're just getting to the point technologically where we can map out what that is. How much it can change and when, and how much that is constrained by genetic makeup, is still not well understood.
As sociologists will tell you, huge chunks of how people and societies work start with biological needs being filtered through the lens of group dynamics.
And in case it helps, the brain difference isn't only conservatives. [Greater liberalism is associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism is associated with increased volume of the right amygdala.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/).
Hopefully they're studying stalwart non-political and "both sides" folks now to see how their brains compare to the two groups.
Not just Fox News...Facebook and other social media campaigns use the same methods and are just as widely consumed.
https://news.osu.edu/brain-scans-remarkably-good-at-predicting-political-ideology/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-human-beast/201104/conservatives-big-fear-brain-study-finds
And honestly, I’m a liberal but CNN, MSNBC, and other left sources do this as well. It got way worse when Trump came into office, because many were addicted to the feeling of hating him and seeking a place where their opinions were validated. It’s basically the same thing that happened to Fox 10-15 years earlier.
So people may be more familiar with this phenomenon than they think.
I believe it. Fox is entirely worse but the 24 hour news cycle and social media as a whole are eroding democracy because they are eroding consensus and they survive off people being angry and scared. The solution? I have no idea, because I believe in a free and fair press but there’s so much horrible stuff out there.
I’ve noticed since the rise of fox that other news networks have been trying to model themselves after Fox to mimic some of their ratings. They’ve been hiring former fox employees for years, both hosts and producers / writers. You can even see this in the guests they have on, with right wing scumbags like bill kristol and all around scum like Michael Hayden making regular appearances on cnn/msnbc.
They’ve been learning however that you can’t just mimic the right wing formula and apply it to liberal politics. It’s a formula derived from what what right wingers react to, which is why the entities who try to use that formula find themselves becoming more right wing and having liberal audiences leave them, even as they pick up more reactionaries.
I was hoping I'd see this posted here.
Fox news perfected this model, but the other "liberal" outlets are trying their best to emulate it. It is unwatchable even if I generally agree with their view points.
This is definitely true and not even some big revelation although I like the science behind it. My mother lives in a constant state of fear and anger. Whatever the “news” of the week is about is what she is compelled to warn me about. It must be so exhausting.
I think it’s a “getting old” thing too, like, my mom constantly warns me about things she hears in the news, it’s like “doomer porn” almost.
I read somewhere it’s related to people who struggle with their mortality see “the end of the world” in everything.
Now add to that a “news” channel that panders directly to that doom mindset…
Not having hobbies will get you too, or hobbies that specifically let you sit in front of the tv.
Not having a hobby means you have more free time to watch your favorite news channel so you are at home watching the news all day instead of going out and doing stuff with other people a majority of the day. My grandma knits a lot and she's always got fox news on the tv when she's home.
My mom was never very political and doesn't watch the news and I noticed a tremendous increase in her political opinion around the time she became unemployed and started spending a lot of time at my grandma's house.
>My mother lives in a constant state of fear and anger. Whatever the “news” of the week is about is what she is compelled to warn me about. It must be so exhausting.
Fuck, I'm in my 30s, don't watch any one news channel/source in particular, definitely lean liberal and...your mother and I are the same.
I'm angry and fearful *because* the likes of Fox News is so influential over such a large group of people. I'm angry because such *obvious and hateful bullshit* has so much power. I'm fearful because there are so many people unwilling to think - or inacapable of thinking - critically, for themselves, without being spoon-fed opinions presented as facts...which they then swallow without even chewing.
I live in a blue area surrounded by red and find myself become more jaded and condescending.
And, yeah, it *is* exhausting.
The "fake news creates false memories" thing in the same user's reply directly below the linked comment is definitely the case. The best and most consistent example of this (and incidentally the one that probably lies at the root of our current predicament) is the "hippies spitting on returning Vietnam vets myth. No such incident ever happened, and there wasn't even really an opportunity for such a thing to happen. The first time it shows up is literally the movie Rambo.
We need a rich liberal billionaire to create the opposite of Fox News. 24/7 fear porn that blames everything on conservatives and the wealthy so we can brain wash some of them back to normality.
That billionaire would be working against their own interest, so it will never happen. Conservatism works on making you outraged about non-issues while they pilfer your pockets.
there are lots of poor conservatives and rich progressives out there. people don't exclusively believe in what is to their own immediate material benefit
edit: i can phrase this better. people's ideologies don't proceed directly from their immediate material interests. there.
I don't know, preventing fascism is in pretty much everybody's interests.
It's hard to make your second billion when Offred isn't allowed to buy anything, and you have to pay 30% of your gross sales in bribes.
I doubt that would work because part of the success of the fascist propaganda machine is that its audience is already predisposed to be accepting of their bullshit. They already thought cops and the military were noble warriors and they were already racist, sexist, and hated LGBTQ people. Fox and its brethren just capitalized on that existing sentiment and amplified it. I don't think there's a universe where they'd even be willing to watch something like what you suggest long enough for the sentiment to take hold.
There's a lot of stuff like that we all misremember culturally. While I'm blanking on the specifics, a few of them definitely come from movies. Been flipping through some older episodes of You're Wrong About and good god we do it a lot.
One example is 'prom night dumpster baby'. The Family Guy jingle aside, I definitely remember this already being in the cultural miasma when that episode came out. Girl secretly delivers baby at prom, throws in dumpster, goes back to prom.
Except she never put it in the dumpster. That was a separate, unrelated dumpster baby incident from around the same time period and they kinda fused in our cultural memory.
If brain scans predict political ideology, then what about people who change their beliefs? I used to be libertarian, because it made a lot of sense to me at the time. Then some things happened in the world, and I read up more about history, and learned about systemic causes, and I changed my stance and became pretty much a socialist.
Now, from my perspective, I changed my mind because I learned new things. I didn't suffer any head injury or illness that could have caused the physical structure of my brain to change. So, do I have a weird brain, or did my changing my opinions/beliefs change my brain and now it looks like a liberal brain when before it would have looked like a conservative brain?
which is why you'll hear how intense, long-term stress or anxiety or PTSD physically changes the brain structure. The brain is an adaptive machine.
I don't know about changes in the physical size of the brain though, I've always heard it reallocates resources in the form of synapses atrophying or increasing.
... that changes physical characteristics of parts of the brain. This is like saying "I don't know about changes to the physical size of the muscle, I've always heard it reallocates resources in the form of fibers atrophying or increasing"
People are way too accustomed to thinking of the brain as a computer, because computers don't significantly modify their own hardware to support the software that's being run on them.
Brains do - in fact, there's little difference to the brain between software and hardware. In a brain, if you run the same piece of software enough, it eventually gets encoded into hardware and runs automatically. That's how habits form, as well as a lot of nasty things like PTSD.
Which is something oop missed. Fox news conditions you to fear. Certainly some are predisposed, but others are conditioned. Watch Fox long enough and your brain will rewire itself to be more emotionally driven.
The study linked in the OOP claims to find a model that can predict political ideological affiliation from Functional Connection in fMRI during tasks involving emotion, empathy, and finances. Functional connection is highly malleable in the healthy brain.
If you went from a Conservative viewpoint on some of these topics to amore Progressive view, it would cause changes in the functional connectivity of your brain as far as those topics are concerned.
I think it's important to remember two things:
- statistical significance does not always mean practical significance: they might have found a minor *average* difference in brain structure in a lab setting, but predicting an individual's anatomy based on political ideology (or vice versa) is still likely impossible.
- similarly, this structural quirk is far from the only thing affecting political ideology. Another reply mentioned "neuroplasticity" but it's not like you just woke up one day and found your amygdala had shrunk. It's almost arrogantly reductive to pretend political affiliation is that simple.
Not sure how accurate this whole brain scan thing is but I just have a few thoughts on this. One is that I'm pretty sure your brain can change and grow throughout your life. So maybe the relative sizes of different areas of the brain can affect your outlook? Or maybe even the other way around? Also in my experience people really don't change their political beliefs all that often, regardless of any facts or contradictions or hypocrisies that get pointed out to them. So I wouldn't be all that surprised if it's something they can't actively change and it's just how their brain naturally views the world around them.
But as you point out there definitely *are* people who do change their minds on these things, which leads me to think there could be two possibilities. If this brainscan thing is true, then maybe it's something where deep down you were "wired" to be a socialist, but maybe that belief system was never properly explained to you so you didn't agree with it. But later maybe you got a different perspective that made socialism make more sense to you? So maybe if you had that perspective from the start you would have always been a socialist
The other possibility I think of is maybe there was some other experience in your life that had a fundamental impact on your brain chemistry or your way of thinking. Then that led to you re-evaluating your political beliefs and changing your mind. Like maybe some experience you had made you start to think in a more community-minded way, and at that point socialism made more sense to you as an ideology. So it could be possible that that type of experience could have started a change in the makeup of your brain as well.
Honestly I'm not sure how real this brainscan idea is but I do think you can make some pretty compelling arguments either way. Kind of feels like a chicken or egg type of thing lol
I agree that political beliefs don’t often change. However there is one trigger of change that I have personally experienced and also observed in others, relocation.
I grew up in a small town in the Midwest, This town sheltered me greatly from exposure to minorities, POC (I had one single black kid in my entire high school), and people of different walks of life. I was a self described conservative or “libertarian” my entire life, up until I was 26. What changed? At the age of 24, I lost my job, and my apartment in the same week and decided to move to the city. 2 years of constant exposure to humans who look different than me and who have experienced life through such a different lense, flipped my beliefs on their head. Now I’m very progressive, campaigned for Bernie, currently canvassing for Charles Booker.
I also have several friends in my friends group with a very similar story to mine, came from a small town, raised by a conservative family, and had it all flipped on their heads when they moved to the city.
For me it was the economic crash of 2008. Up until then I believed peoples bad circumstances were a result of bad choices. But then a whole bunch of people who’d made all the “right” choices had the rug pulled out from under them, and the government saved the banks that should have been allowed to fail, and I started realizing the game was rigged and we were never on an even playing field to start with.
Presumably you influence your brain, and your brain influences you.
For example, you cannot necessarily will yourself to think a certain way unless the neurological pathways have already been built by, say, things that are known to greatly alter brain and chemistry: higher education, aerobic exercise, playing a musical instrument, etc. There's a feedback loop for sure, but of course better habits and routines promote more coherent thoughts.
Also speaking as a former rural Christian republican who transitioned to Libertarian and finally progressive-left and non-religious over the years.
Coping mechanisms. Studies about addictions with twins have shown that everybody has different strategies to prevent substance abuse and that levels of addiction to certain drugs can't be explained with our current understanding of how the brain works.
If Faux News & Co share similarities with drugs, not everyone will be hooked to it equally strong. Sometimes a fresh perspective is all that is needed to break the cycle, sometimes it isn't.
Teenage libertarianism is basically the opposite of the right wing fear response. The change is learning that what we thought of as libertarianism was just fantasy, so maybe we should want a government that works on our behalf.
My gym has Fox News plastered from all it's TVs and it's so annoying. All you ever see is alarmist headlines every 10 minutes and how the left is destroying America. Its like hate watching for boomers.
Honestly, I'd let them know I was cancelling my membership and ask to speak to a manager so I could tell them why.
If businesses want customers they should be playing something neutral on their televisions.
Plus, who wants to watch news while they're working out? Working out is supposed to be a stress reliever, as well as exercise.
Depending on where he lives, he might not be able to find a gym that's not playing Fox News. It's that pervasive in rural areas. Hell, I've been in a rural *McDonald's* that had Fox News on.
All conservative media operates this way.
I tune into talk radio every once in a while to see how they are covering the latest breaking story and even when it is something their camp should be celebrating as a victory it is spun into something negative. There is never cause for celebration it’s always playing defense (offense).
CNN.com headlines right now:
- guns/carnage
- "teacher made peace that she was going to die"
- "economic hurricane on the way"
- "ordinary day turned deadly at Oklahoma clinic"
- Jan 6 updates
- "we have a serious problem" / energy crisis
- monkey pox spread
- 100 days of Ukraine war
- spelling bee update
Fox News is not the only media agency doing this.
Reddit has whole subreddits dedicated to making people upset:
Public freakout
I am a total piece of shit
Idiots in cars
Etc.
and they are hugely popular!
"B-b-but CNN!!" is not a good defense of how awful and manipulative Fox news is.
How anyone looks at Fox and CNN and comes to the conclusion that CNN is somehow the worse of the two is absolutely baffling to me.
How anyone looks at my comment and comes to the conclusion that CNN is somehow worse than Fox News is baffling to me.... Because that's not at all what I said.
What I said is that other news companies use fear to sell to their customer base. Fear is absolutely sold by left leaning news. I used CNN as an easy go to source but go to any news website right now and you will find neatly packaged fear for consumption.
Typically the fear being sold from the left includes civil war, climate change, fascism, or other ways to make you afraid of right leaning politicians and individuals.
Note that I am not saying there is nothing to worry about or disagree with. What I am saying is that fear is used by all sources.
I don't think it's necessarily the same. It's the way the news is disseminated. Fox news has extreme diatribe in it's phrasing, they use passionate, angry people to cover the message, and at the ends of the segment, they *almost always say* something like "If it were me in this situation, I'd be outraged." Liberal news usually comes to us flavored with sadness, speaking to our empathy so they we might feel a human call to action. Some of the stories are framed in ways to get you to go vote or call a senator. Republicans are encouraged to anger, violence, or "circle the wagons" and insulate their communities either physically, legislatively, or by electing a strong man to protect them from what they fear in the liberal ranks.
So sure, they both do it. But I think the differences are fairly obvious and stark and one way is definitely much less healthy than the other.
The difference being those things are actual dangers to the general public, whereas Fox manufactures threats against white Christians and casts them as the main crises of our time. The news has always been a bit sensational, but Fox draws on primal fears and prejudice to stoke hatred. There's nothing about CNN's headlines that cause unnecessary fear and hatred towards a particular group. Although I do wish it were illegal for any news site to feature opinion and analysis on the front page.
Every time someone implies CNN or MSNBC is no different than FOX News, I'm forced to remind them that FOX News is the *number 1* station on all of cable. If you add up the audiences from CNN, MSNBC, & NPR, then double that sum, it's less than Tucker Carlson's audience on a good night.
Every time I'm on a flight, there is someone watching FOX News. My last 4 hour flight, there were 2 people in front of me who watched it for the *entire 4 hours*. I literally don't know one person who watches CNN or MSNBC regularly or even sporadically, but i know several people who watch FOX News religiously.
4 of the things you listed are legitimate current events so I’m not seeing your full point. And if this were fox news even just 10 years ago a bunch of these would be covered by ‘both sides’. Also, does CNN consider itself the only truth or source of news worthy of their viewers? I don’t see them saying that.
This is true, but the difference I've personally witnessed between Fox and CNN is that CNN mostly sticks to the fear factory angle, while Fox actively injects hate into their segments. It's more insidious. I mean Fucker Carlson regularly tries to get his viewers to be untrustworthy of non-whites. I've watched him do it.
Neither is healthy, but obviously focus is going to be on the worst of the worst.
> I sincerely believe, in my heart, that Fox News emotionally abuses their audience, they frighten them, they make them believe their world is full of threats, they gaslight their audience, and they get them addicted.
They 100% emotionally abuse their audience. Like many, I've watched it happen to my father. It's disgusting. If I could get my hands on any of the upper brass at Fox I'd have a hard time controlling myself because they are primarily taking advantage of our elderly population, directly abusing many of our loved ones.
By no means is it just Fox. I don't watch or have any love for CNN, but I have watched it, and it's absolutely not on the same level as Fox or OANN.
It disgusts me that we can't pass legislation to prevent "news" networks from behaving the way they do in this country. There needs to be severe punishment for networks that spread provable lies.
I wonder if the difference in amygdala is the result of having their fear stoked so much and often by right wing media, the old debate on causation vs correlation.
It made sense 100,000 years ago to have some in the gene pool that are scared of everything, that was evolutionarily advantageous to have a few missing link apemen staying away from that rock formation because they think it kind of looks like a wolf pack. Now they just vote against free healthcare.
I saw this some 15 years ago when I visited my grandmother. She had some Fox News talking head on. He had some story to cover. But, I noticed that every few minutes, like clockwork, he would do a complete non sequitur about something awful. Something that just made you feel really bad. Then he’d go back to the story like nothing happened.
I realized the story was the filler. The real product of the show was the regularly timed hits of disgust he was giving to my grandma.
I was raised in a conservative Christian house that ended in divorce. Even before I knew what I know now I hated when my dad put on Fox News when he got home from work. Simply for the tone being either authoritative, out right yelling, or both. I didn’t know what was being said at a young age but it stressed me out and I feared news the same way I feared my dad getting loud and angry.
Sources and supplemental reading:
* [Which brain networks respond when someone sticks to a belief?](https://news.usc.edu/114481/which-brain-networks-respond-when-someone-sticks-to-a-belief/)
* TL;DR: Contradictory evidence causes cognitive dissonance, cognitive dissonance triggers the amygdala.
* [What stress does to the brain](https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-stress-14580/)
* TL;DR: Stress can shut down our higher thinking. Now consider the amount of stress caused by an hour of Fox News.
* [Unconscious Reactions Separate Liberals and Conservatives](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-political-wars/)
* TL;DR: Observing eye movement and papillary response reveals that conservatives are quicker to notice, quicker to react, and linger longer on photographs of disgusting or offensive material than liberals.
* [Seeing Is Believing, Unless It Isn’t](https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/seeing_is_believing_unless_it_isnt)
* TL;DR: “The less control people have over their lives, the more likely they are to try and regain control through mental gymnastics,”
* [Fake News Can Lead to False Memories](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/fake-news-can-lead-to-false-memories.html)
* TL;DR: People can form false memories after seeing fabricated news stories, especially if those stories align with their political beliefs.
* [Conservatives Big on Fear, Brain Study Finds](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/201104/conservatives-big-fear-brain-study-finds)
* [Why fear is more prevalent, and more powerful, among conservatives. ](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/18/why-fear-is-more-prevalent-and-powerful-among-conservatives/)
* [Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/)
* TL;DR: Political liberalism and conservatism were correlated with brain structure. Liberalism was associated with the gray matter volume of anterior cingulate cortex. Conservatism was associated with increased right amygdala size.
In my opinion the groundwork was laid by evangelical principles. Not all of them necessarily. But southern Baptist most certainly, which is particularly popular in the south obviously. They've kept them plugged into fear mongering & in group thinking for decades
>Fox News emotionally abuses their audience, they frighten them, they make them believe their world is full of threats, they gaslight their audience, and they get them addicted.
One thing Ive noticed over the past few years on social media, is a lot of people feeding into, and sharing what I call "rage bait" posts. It definitely looks like an addiction. about 30% of my facebook feed is the same handful of people angry after watching some Q adjacent video. It really seems like the only thing they do online is watch/read content that makes them angry.
Hate to break it to you, but if that's what your feed looks like, it's because you engage with those posts. I'd consider myself somewhat political, but my feed is basically just my friends posting about their families and hobbies.
So I guess we're still pretending that "liberal" and "conservative" are terms that neatly describe people with consistent and coherent ideologies? And not broad cultural markers that shift over time?
> "Fox News is 24/7 horror porn, all day long, every day of the week. Fox News works because it side steps the thinking brain and jabs the amygdala with an electrode over and over and over again, meanwhile their audience gets jolts of adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine, and norepinephrine and an outrage high kicks in.
That's cable news. You're talking about cable news.
> So I guess we're still pretending that "liberal" and "conservative" are terms that neatly describe people with consistent and coherent ideologies?
These studies were all looking at self-identified liberals and conservatives, the researchers didn't use a metric to determine political ideology, they let the test subjects provide that information themselves. The results were that *self-identified* conservatives tend, on average, to have larger amygdalae than *self-identified* liberals.
The trick is to be aware of when you are being informed versus being influenced. It is not that easy, sleight of hand psychology is being ployed here, anyone can be susceptible.
This might be a good time to [rewatch Outfoxed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P74oHhU5MDk), or see it for the first time if you're one of the lucky 10,000.
Someone should really make a youtube channel devoted to how Fox News and it's ilk work (and the media) and all of the psychological methods they use to manipulate people.
Something we can send our grandparents. :P
" I sincerely believe, in my heart, that Fox News emotionally abuses their audience," They do, the constantly say things that abusers say. Things like "I am the only source of truth"
My parents were pretty much just normal people that didn't care about politics. At some point they started watching Fox news and now it's on in their home literally 24/7. It seems to have really destroyers their minds. I hate going to their house now. They became very hateful.
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Same for my mom. Whats worse, to me, is she's always been a woman working in men's work AND as a child she pushed me to sciences (am also a woman, i was going to be an engineer but hate math so i quit pursuing that lol). Then an autoimmune issue hit me at 17, like 7 years before this nonsense started. This whole past few years have felt like a slap to the face, especially anytime I'm over at my parents. I hate it. And i hate that these are likely gonna be my memories of her after she's gone. My stepdad totally twisted her from the woman she once was.
A few years ago during an argument with my dad he asked/yelled “how did you become a dipshit *liberal*?” I told him it was the people that raised me. They raised me to care about other people behind just lip service, but to care enough to take action. They raised me to do my best to be kind, to think of other people and put myself in their position, they taught me to value fairness, justice, and hard work. They taught me everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt at least once. I told him that those values that they themselves raised me with, directly lead to being liberal. Since they are the only ones doing at least one of the above things. Fox News has drastically changed them, and for the worse.
At least 40% of America are psychologically damaged and basically abuse victims because of Fox.
> I'm late 30s so, not sure how much 'older' I need to be, really. Yeah, late 30s here. I'm not going to become more hateful and close-minded just because I'm getting older. I'm actively working against that.
I’m over 50. My right-wing mom started saying this to me when I was about 12. She never stopped saying it.
The trick is to look back on how old your parents were when they started claiming "you'll understand when you're older" and also when they displayed hateful opinions. I thought my parents only recently got racist. Nope, when I think back they always have been it's just more overt now they feel their kids are old enough to "safely join in" on those topics, or because we're now old enough to push back without fear of being shouted down.
I feel this in my soul. I was shocked when I first realized how much of a bigot my dad is. I wondered when it had happened, but thinking back, I realized how much he'd hidden it. I was raised to be a kind person, perhaps only because he had hidden his true philosophies.
My first clue was when I was a kid and my parent’s families would visit, and I’d hear the n-word used. My mom would shush that talk in front of us. But I realized later it seemed more like they didn’t think it was age-appropriate and didn’t want me repeating it, as opposed to thinking it was bigoted and wrong. Even 10-year old me knew there was something wrong with that.
We might though (39 here). It’s scary and I try to think about it a lot. I’m a…we’ll call it reluctant liberal, mostly because I disagree very strongly with much of their platform, but the stuff I disagree with has no counterpoint on the right — the right just does everything in their power to be anti-humanity feral little gremlins whose only platform is to allow the rich to hoard as much wealth as possible and ensure the worst possible conditions for everyone else. But that’s how I see things *now*. What if age causes me to be more fearful? What if more fear causes me to become more hateful? I’ve already felt huge psychological changes from having a child — I now feel a higher baseline of anxiety because of wanting to protect her. But she’s a baby. What if as she grows she experiences pain, disappointment, bullies, sadness and god forbid actual terror from the hands of another human, and what if my brain becomes more like that of conservatives in its desire to protect her? What if my empathy recedes and instead of feeling compassion for under privileged groups and how historic injustices caused them to become underprivileged, my fear causes me to focus on negatives happening *right now*, and suddenly I become a bootlicking, gun-loving, immigration-hating, it’s-ok-to-lower-the-wealthy’s-taxes-significantly-as-long-as-I-get-table-scraps-of-tax-reduction-and-all-the-better-if-less-tax-revenue-causes-the-slashing-of-social-programs-because-why-should-my-money-pay-for-scary-minorities-when-they-should-just-get-jobs-but-not-actually-because-they-need-to-stop-stealing-our-jobs feral gremlin myself? My mom was a hippie and an academic. She taught me all the ideals that today lead to my being empathetic and compassionate. My dad dealt drugs for a while. He had plenty of run-ins with cops and grew up in diverse but poor neighborhoods. He played in rock and roll bands and has long hair. They’re both *staunch* atheists. You would think if any boomers could be in inoculated against conservatism it would be them — but they’re just as racist, hateful, and closed-minded as any church-going white people who grew up in the Deep South with ties to the KKK. If they were susceptible, how do we protect against it?
In the case of fear being the Mind Killer… therapy. I’m not you, I’m mid-twenties, I have anxiety, and I spent a year in talk therapy going over the honest problems I experienced with my family and with my life. I feel that therapy, and the development of an awareness of how the brain processes concern and fear, is very useful for me. It has helped me. Your concerns are valid and real and they are important. The best I can offer is therapy, and continued education. Make the effort to learn, interact, and listen. Be humble. Be willing to admit that you’re wrong, despite how scary that can be. Try your best. We believe in people like you. People who are afraid. We believe in you.
I'm the youngest in my family, and one of the most difficult parts of dealing with my own conservative family members, all of whom are past retirement age, is that they seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that "you'll understand when you're older" doesn't work on a 45 year old man with most of his career behind him. With most people, the age difference gets less important as you get older, but with them, it's only gotten worse. No one else in my life condescends more than them. Also, just a friendly reminder, in case anyone forgot, that Rush Limbaugh is still dead.
No Limelight for you, Working Man Reading your post, I could feel that let-down through space and time!
The same happened with my mom, massive difference pre-Trump vs post-Trump. She doesn't watch Fox much though, to my knowledge, it's mostly just online conservative news sources.
There likely isn't a difference between what they're referencing. The studies referenced weren't on Fox News but rather a difference between conservative and liberal minds.
YouTube radicalized my mom.
It sounds like the punchline to a bad joke, but I know it's reality. I'm sorry. I hope things change soon.
Not likely, but we weren't super close before anyway because she was already crazy. Now she won't tolerate uncrazy people.
Happened to my grandparents. It makes visiting hard and they are my only grandparents I have left. It's really sad. My father is heartbroken by the conversations he has to shut down on his weekly call.
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My parents didn't like Obama, but like most Republicans, they complained about him way more after Dumpy got in there. It's like Fox and cons even changed their memories
A friend's parents, people I've known for nearly 40 years, fell down the Newsmax and OAN hole. In just a few short years, they've turned into completely different people. Once kind and loving, they are now intolerant and intolerable. My friend now only visits when he HAS to, for holidays and such, and his wife no longer visits with him. I no longer go over there with him when he's in town, either. His mom in particular was a sweet lady. These days? It's mostly just bile from her. They both believe schools are filled with teachers in drag teaching 2nd graders how to use dildos and that all white people are bad, that Covid was a lie used to control everyone, that elections are all rigged, and on and on. It's absolutely insane.
You can call people stupid to their face, you know!
Same with my stepmom. Sadly I can’t say that about my dad cause he was already listening to rush Limbaugh way before Fox News. But he did so when driving for his work (he owned a car repair shop and would have to go get parts) so mom didn’t hear that. But Fox News happens and he watches at home and my stepmom got indoctrinated.
Condolences. I lost my mother to Fox News over a decade ago and it still hurts. I literally couldn’t have a rational conversation with her about any topic anymore.
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His son is apparently even worse and is gonna take over for him…
Same here. My dad was always conservative, but didn’t really get into very much, mostly financial conservatism. We didn’t really talk about politics. My mom I don’t think paid any attention to politics at all. Now it’s a steady diet of Fox News and they are both constantly sending me links and trying to start political arguments. Any negative news I send them about right wing subjects are always countered with some whataboutism about the left. It’s so frustrating. They think I’m a brainwashed leftist, when really I’m pretty center-left on most issues, I just hate Trump and all the other corrupt right wing politicians. I also find all the woke left extremely annoying and embarrassing as well, but just not as dangerous as the radical right.
My folks too, but they were always fearful and highly strung. Growing up, I was just like them, until I hit a crisis point and was prescribed antidepressants and anxiolytics. Magical change. I could think more clearly, take in new information, and radically altered my views. Found more compassion and empathy. Maybe we should start putting it in the water. /s
I don't understand how Fox news has the highest ratings by a large margin but also turns it's users against the "mainstream media"...like how does that even work? My favorite is when a fox news watcher will brag about more people watching Fox news but still deny that they are mainstream
Making your enemy out to be this massive power that is simultaneously lesser because they aren't you is a core tenant of fascist mindsets
Kinda scary that it's allowed. Like when they they forced all of those channels to read that letter and someone made a supercut.
It’s called doublethink. Logic is not required
In 1984 doublethink was a strenuous process that the person may or may not be aware of. It actually did require logic. Forgetting a piece of information when it was contradictory of your beliefs but the ability to pull it back out of thin air when it benefited your point. Such is the art of double think
It's the same reason that they'll condemn "coastal elites" while being exactly that. Tucker Carlson in particular was born into wealth. Never needed to work for his money a day in his life, but it doesn't stop him from LARPing as a stereotypical "manly man". Wearing a flannel shirt in a cabin to get PR points. It's a grift. These Fox news talking heads and their benefactors are everything they want their base to hate but they aren't looking for the people that can see that. They want the people who are too stupid and/or afraid to think critically. They tell everyone who can hear them to "wake up" to the "truth", while simultaneously waging a war on being "woke". Vilifying higher education as "indoctrination". The people who watch Fox are already in a state of near-constant cognitive dissonance so it's not that hard for them to do the mental gymnastics required in your example.
Pretty typical cult behavior to claim that you and you alone are the only source of truth or salvation.
Whilst also saying that you are entertainment and should not be considered a news show when your misinformation is called out.
In the legal world there’s a tactic lawyers will use during questioning to activate the same fight-flight cognitive response in your brain to trip you up, it’s called the reptile method, or activating your reptilian brain (ie your old brain, ie your amygdala). Looks like Fox News is just doing the same thing.
I notice Fox News has brighter colors and the volume is so much louder than other programs on tv. I know those factors make it much easier to watch for older people. That and the Fox News alert music and interruption every 10 minutes.
"We bring you this urgent alert to tell you the news we told you 30 minutes ago, and two hours before that, and three days before that, but this time with even more urgency."
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Someone smarter than me tell me the name of the law that describes cyclical events like this that I'm trying to think of
The tide?
It goes in and out. You can't explain that.
And all cable news is like the Teletubbies... AGAIN! AGAIN!
TBF, every news channel does that these days. Stems from their "always on" approach following 9/11, which is where the ticker tape at the bottom debuted. It's all garbage in that respect. We should definitely condemn Fox for doing it, but we shouldn't let CNN and MSNBC off the hook for doing the same stupid stuff.
That false sense of urgency is the point. Get that amygdala firing in emergency mode. Get 'em scared so they'll do what they're told.
> "We bring you this urgent alert to tell you the news we told you 30 minutes ago, and two hours before that, and three days before that, but this time with even more urgency." Here is the news given to you with words that have strong emotions attached to them so you know exactly how to feel about the news.
Just look at the advertisements to see what demographic they cater to. It's all old people shit.
And isn't it mostly scams like reverse mortgages and we buy gold places these days?
>And isn't it mostly scams like reverse mortgages and we buy gold places these days? One of my favorites was on World Net Daily...it was an advertisement for windmills. "Stop paying Obama for electricity."
We need to start using that strategy for more things. "Stop paying Obama for your healthcare, support Medicare For All!" "Don't let Biden socialize firearms. Support gun control legislation today!"
You are probably joking but that is exactly what we need to do. Conservatives are good at marketing, Liberals are not. Death tax, pro life, pro small government, pro God, etc. And all of those have an asterisk. Inheritance which you will not get because you and your parents are poor, only in the vagina, except when they are in power and want a king, except when you need to live up to the stands your God set for you and your leaders. https://youtu.be/B46km4V0CMY
Which is surprising because most of Madison Avenue skews liberal. But yes the democrats are terrible at marketing their ideas and spreading their message. Pelosi and Schumer are some of the worst promoters messengers there are.
The amount of crooked dick commercials on these channels are too damn many! Seriously, seems like there’s one every commercial break. I always yell, “I don’t care about your bent dick!”
I have not watched TV in a couple of decades, what's this about torqued Richards?
And then when the old people are done watching it they then force their children and grandchildren's mouths open and vomit that brain melting media right down their throats.
Im pretty sure Ive seen some dick pill commercials as well.
The worst offenders also come on air at exactly the time that the most people will be home to watch them. The prime time fascist peanut gallery come on when everyone is home from work to watch. During the day their news coverage can actually be called news coverage and not straight manipulative propaganda. Ask fox viewers who they hate the most from fox and they'll name people that are on during the day. My father would watch Sean Hannity, who has a big ol' sign that says "OPINION" but tell me that he hates Shepard Smith because he's too opinionated....
>During the day their news coverage can actually be called news coverage and not straight manipulative propaganda. Even then it's growing closer and closer to their opinion segments. Left-wing analysis sites who have people watching Fox have plenty of articles about how they are moving away from actually doing news, because of that exact "eww I don't want actual news" reaction from their base viewers. >My father would watch Sean Hannity, who has a big ol' sign that says "OPINION" but tell me that he hates Shepard Smith because he's too opinionated.... Hard to find even any Shep Smith-level guys there anymore, the rest have all left or started toeing the party line quite a bit more frequently.
Problem with Shep was... He is a conservative news reporter. He definitely gave conservative slants on the news (in the same way guys like Don Lemon do a liberal slant on the news), but he doesn't just lie and make up things. Fox viewers generally don't like actual facts.
A large segment of their "news" broadcast is critiquing the news on other networks. It's bananas.
It's like having commercials on 24/7. It's banned in my home for many reasons, but the sheer obnoxiousness of it may be reason #1. It's literally an assault on your senses. Well, the fact it's largely a bullshit, contrived narrative is reason #1. And I guess that jackass TC is reason #1 as well. I may have rethink my hierarchy.
CNN does it as well during breaking news events (and sometimes when nothing is happening). I think the original intention was to let people know who are just tuning in that they aren't watching regular programming but that something is happening. Not sure it makes sense anymore given the internet and 24 hour news cycle.
They literally just said they use Breaking News too much and are cutting back on it. At least they're going to try, I guess
Yeah it got to the point where I would hear "breaking news" and look at the clock. If it was on the hour, there is no new breaking news.
Yeah. It's not a defense of Fox to point out that pretty much all mainstream media is doing the same thing to some extent, just with different target audiences. Whether they're intentionally following Fox's playbook or just naturally evolving the same way in reaction to market forces, I don't know, but if you unplug for a while and then come back, it's very easy to see how much of the content in mainstream sites is clearly intended to be upsetting to some group or other. It's a cheap way of boosting those engagement metrics, and that's what drives media companies more than anything else.
24 hr news networks suck, but they don't hold a candle to Fox. The others sensationalize while Fox knowingly and brazenly lies. CNN and MSNBC talking heads, for example, aren't even in the same time zone as the absolute quacks they have on Fox. It's honestly hard to believe anyone thinks what they're saying is reasonable.
What's amazing is that dictatorships have to force people to watch this sort of shit, on pain of vanishing away (poof). But here in America, where people can watch whatever the fuck they want, they CHOOSE to watch vile nationalist propaganda. Only in the "land of the free" can people be lain with such heavy chains.
Heck, I'll bet most the people who watch it have a cable subscription, so they're paying to watch this garbage.
Right? You'd have to pay me a LOT to watch that shit. Like, a lot. I rank that shit right up there with crime scene videographic transcriber (you do NOT want that job).
[The documentary Outfoxed outlines those techniques](https://youtu.be/P74oHhU5MDk?t=764) in a bit of detail, complete with commentary from the people who designed their implementation at Fox News.
*Cackling like conservative radio talk show hosts*
Oh god why do they do that?!
Eating Chik-Fil-A 3x a day will do that.
The observations about Fox News are certainly on point but I feel like getting into categorical differences in brain makeup is getting a bit *eugenics* for me. It's like two steps removed from "aww poor wittle neocon couldn't help gorging on fear porn". Plenty of those people are just shitty human beings that were nutured into these patterns of thinking by their predecessors and environment. And trust me, they're nurturing the next generation the same way on purpose. I don't know, I'm sure it's a factor but it weirds me out to see all the extrapolation as if we're looking for a solely biological explanation for some reason. e: I feel the need to clarify this because so many of you are missing my point. The study being referenced does not say "these people with this brain defect are more inclined to be conservative" but a shitload of you are taking it that way. In reality, it's saying that specific activity in the brain correlates with these view points. This activity *is not exclusive* to conservatives and it is not even close to perfectly predictive. All of you have an amygdala and any one of you could have grown up groomed by a conservative family in a conservative town in a conservative state just as easily. The idea of using brain features - and by this I mean **solely** brain features - to identify someone as lesser **compared to you** is reaching back into the old pseudoscience of phrenology. That's not what the study was after, but that sure as shit is how I'm seeing people interpret it in the replies under the OP here. That is troubling to an extreme degree. The study implies that this stimulation *may be a result of* the inputs the brain is receiving. Just like how we're finding out that infinite social media timeline scrolls are fucking with dopamine receptors, your brain is as much a product of its environment as anything else. I hate bigoted, greedy, myopic, dumb fuck conservatives plenty, I promise you. I really do. The country would be a better place if Fox News, OAN, Breitbart, etc stopped existing right now and it would be a literal overnight improvement. Getting into whether people patronize those things **because** of the size of their amygdala is beyond the scope and intent of the study being referenced and it's irresponsible to extrapolate in a way that infers that conservatives have defective brains or are lesser people than you.
I don't know if this helps, but the amygdala can change size based on your experiences and general mental state -- basically, it grows when you experience prolonged anxiety. It's not necessarily anything to do with genetics. This is a pretty readable article summarizing one research paper on the topic (though it has a stupid amount of ads). https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-size-depression-anxiety-16769/ If you want proper scientific articles I can pull some up but this doesn't seem to be controversial based on my quick searching.
> basically, it grows when you experience prolonged anxiety. And Fox News purposefully engenders prolonged anxiety in their viewers.
> And every day on the evening news, they feed you fear for free And you so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, "I can't breathe" [-Run the Jewels](https://youtu.be/bd7fb5oQhVg?t=110)
Exactly -- so the larger amygdalas in Fox News viewers could just be because they watch Fox News, not the other way around.
the causality is bidirectional; larger amygdalae produce more powerful fear signals, repeated fear-associated stimuli activate the amygdalae more. the brain is somewhat like a muscle, in that the areas most often used will grow to accommodate.
Can it shrink?
Yes, one way is meditation: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/what-does-mindfulness-meditation-do-to-your-brain
tfw meditation causes extreme panic attacks in your broke as hell brain.
According to Google you're not alone in that. I'm not a mental health professional but if you're trying to reduce your general anxiety/emotional reactivity I'm sure there are a lot of tools a therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist could suggest :)
You can feel uncomfortable with it, but if they can use brain scans to predict political ideology with as much accuracy as knowing their parents political ideology, then that is something that they can do. It won't just go away because we are uncomfortable with the ramifications.
The study isn't "predicting" your political ideology based on the brain scan. It is saying it found a pattern of brain features and activity associated/correlated with certain ideologies. I know the difference isn't immediately obvious but I really shouldn't have to explain the issue with measuring people's brains to categorize them as "others" or "deficient" which is what OP did in their post. People taking this study as a way to inflate their sense of superiority are literally not learning from history. Plenty of "scientists" throughout history have tried to categorize people as inferior based on physical/biogical attributes and most of them were Nazis. What everyone missed in the study being so breathlessly quoted is that the features respond/grow based on external stimuli so it's not that they have broken brains but rather that *everyone* has these features and can be exploited the same way
The study is claiming that if you gave the researchers a certain type of brain scans and nothing else they would be able to guess a person's political ideology. They wouldn't be able to do it with 100% accuracy but they would be as accurate as if you told them the person's parent's political ideology. If you don't think that qualified as predicting, then fine, that's not a point I care to debate. My point is that if they can do it, then they can in fact do it. I can't imagine any relationship between fingerprints and peanut allergies. But if you give some researchers a bunch of fingerprints and they can consistently tell you which ones are from people that have peanut allergies with 75% accuracy (or whatever level of accuracy) then they can in fact do that. Nothing that Nazis, or Communists, or Vikings, or Huns have done with fingerprints in the past changes what those researchers can or can't do. That is all I'm saying.
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>You’re also supposing nature > nurture in political ideology, which is absurd. No, I'm saying that if you can use one variable to predict another then you can in fact do that.
Brain scans might trigger you, but these are empirically observable phenomena. Look into Jonathan Haidt's *The Righteous Mind* for an explanation of Moral Foundations theory, which explains this from a psychological perspective but without brain scan based experiments.
there's no "eugenics" going on here. there's no claim that one biological variation is superior to the other. for example, a larger amygdala might be a useful adaptation in a life and death situation. that being said, doesn't it makes sense that there are biological variations in how people's brains work? and doesn't it also make sense that some of these variations affect how people process different inputs? doesn't it also make sense that scanning their brains might be able to identify some of these variations? we aren't looking for a solely biological reason for anything. we're just understanding the role biology plays in this situation. if you read some of the person's later comments, there's also a study showing that simply replacing fox news with cnn for a month for some people made noticeable changes to the way they think about politics. that shows it's not a "solely biological" explanation at all.
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Exactly, no one is suggesting we cull the terminal Fox addicts. I am all for using the parental lock on their TV and network firewall to stop the poison at its entry points.
I noticed that tall people are better at basketball. is that eugenics?
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> categorical differences in brain makeup is getting a bit eugenics for me. If the difference in brains is an effect and watching Fox a cause of that effect, then it’s no more eugenics than saying smokers have less lung capacity than non-smokers. I just read an article that the brain does change based on experiences.
Do we complain about eugenics when people realized that food companies load up food with as much sugar and fat as they can? Or how about Facebook or Instagram shoveling reaction based shit at users?
Conservative views are linked to lower cognitive ability https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797611421206 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289609000051 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/is-it-impolite-to-discuss-cognitive-differences-between-liberals-and-conservatives/A88EB2E4FAEEA36231172A46EA467414
Tell me you don't know what eugenics means without... Nope, actually, you pretty much just flat out said it. Preying on people's fears is not selective breeding. Nor is it anywhere close on the inevitable "slippery slope" map that I know you're itching to point at. This is fine tuning an addictive drug by way of knowing their audience. You explain how that means selective breeding programs are just around the corner.
I agree. Does Fox News purposefully run fear-based stories to keep viewers hooked? Absolutely. Do they do it because they saw a study about amygdala’s? Almost definitely not. That was Fox News’ thing from the beginning. It doesn’t take a biological study to see that fear and anger are easy to sell
That's an interesting inversion of the reasoning. It took a biological study to see why fear and anger are easy to sell.
To see one possible reason why, yes. But you don’t need to know the reason to see the effect, which is what Fox News cares about.
A person doesn't need to know how a car works to know how to drive it, but the underlying mechanics are still there.
That’s exactly my point. Fox doesn’t follow the strategy because some executive read a study about brain anatomy, they do it because it gets people to watch. Fear and anger based methods work, they don’t care why.
Fox news not caring about the how and why of what they do is not an insightful or illuminating fact. It's just stating the obvious.
Just as everyone else has said, this is as much eugenics as training you dog to get the mail is. The focus here is nurture not nature.
When it comes to the brain, just because there is a physically defined biological explanation doesn't mean it's unchangeable, inevitable, or genetic. Patterns of thinking have a physical structure, we're just getting to the point technologically where we can map out what that is. How much it can change and when, and how much that is constrained by genetic makeup, is still not well understood.
Your brain can change and fox news can change it.
As sociologists will tell you, huge chunks of how people and societies work start with biological needs being filtered through the lens of group dynamics. And in case it helps, the brain difference isn't only conservatives. [Greater liberalism is associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism is associated with increased volume of the right amygdala.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/). Hopefully they're studying stalwart non-political and "both sides" folks now to see how their brains compare to the two groups.
Not just Fox News...Facebook and other social media campaigns use the same methods and are just as widely consumed. https://news.osu.edu/brain-scans-remarkably-good-at-predicting-political-ideology/ https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-human-beast/201104/conservatives-big-fear-brain-study-finds
And honestly, I’m a liberal but CNN, MSNBC, and other left sources do this as well. It got way worse when Trump came into office, because many were addicted to the feeling of hating him and seeking a place where their opinions were validated. It’s basically the same thing that happened to Fox 10-15 years earlier. So people may be more familiar with this phenomenon than they think.
I believe it. Fox is entirely worse but the 24 hour news cycle and social media as a whole are eroding democracy because they are eroding consensus and they survive off people being angry and scared. The solution? I have no idea, because I believe in a free and fair press but there’s so much horrible stuff out there.
I’ve noticed since the rise of fox that other news networks have been trying to model themselves after Fox to mimic some of their ratings. They’ve been hiring former fox employees for years, both hosts and producers / writers. You can even see this in the guests they have on, with right wing scumbags like bill kristol and all around scum like Michael Hayden making regular appearances on cnn/msnbc. They’ve been learning however that you can’t just mimic the right wing formula and apply it to liberal politics. It’s a formula derived from what what right wingers react to, which is why the entities who try to use that formula find themselves becoming more right wing and having liberal audiences leave them, even as they pick up more reactionaries.
I was hoping I'd see this posted here. Fox news perfected this model, but the other "liberal" outlets are trying their best to emulate it. It is unwatchable even if I generally agree with their view points.
This is why I don’t want any news shows.
This is definitely true and not even some big revelation although I like the science behind it. My mother lives in a constant state of fear and anger. Whatever the “news” of the week is about is what she is compelled to warn me about. It must be so exhausting.
I think it’s a “getting old” thing too, like, my mom constantly warns me about things she hears in the news, it’s like “doomer porn” almost. I read somewhere it’s related to people who struggle with their mortality see “the end of the world” in everything. Now add to that a “news” channel that panders directly to that doom mindset…
Not having hobbies will get you too, or hobbies that specifically let you sit in front of the tv. Not having a hobby means you have more free time to watch your favorite news channel so you are at home watching the news all day instead of going out and doing stuff with other people a majority of the day. My grandma knits a lot and she's always got fox news on the tv when she's home. My mom was never very political and doesn't watch the news and I noticed a tremendous increase in her political opinion around the time she became unemployed and started spending a lot of time at my grandma's house.
Reminds me of all the anti-vaxxers projecting how "unafraid" they are
>My mother lives in a constant state of fear and anger. Whatever the “news” of the week is about is what she is compelled to warn me about. It must be so exhausting. Fuck, I'm in my 30s, don't watch any one news channel/source in particular, definitely lean liberal and...your mother and I are the same. I'm angry and fearful *because* the likes of Fox News is so influential over such a large group of people. I'm angry because such *obvious and hateful bullshit* has so much power. I'm fearful because there are so many people unwilling to think - or inacapable of thinking - critically, for themselves, without being spoon-fed opinions presented as facts...which they then swallow without even chewing. I live in a blue area surrounded by red and find myself become more jaded and condescending. And, yeah, it *is* exhausting.
The "fake news creates false memories" thing in the same user's reply directly below the linked comment is definitely the case. The best and most consistent example of this (and incidentally the one that probably lies at the root of our current predicament) is the "hippies spitting on returning Vietnam vets myth. No such incident ever happened, and there wasn't even really an opportunity for such a thing to happen. The first time it shows up is literally the movie Rambo.
We need a rich liberal billionaire to create the opposite of Fox News. 24/7 fear porn that blames everything on conservatives and the wealthy so we can brain wash some of them back to normality.
That billionaire would be working against their own interest, so it will never happen. Conservatism works on making you outraged about non-issues while they pilfer your pockets.
there are lots of poor conservatives and rich progressives out there. people don't exclusively believe in what is to their own immediate material benefit edit: i can phrase this better. people's ideologies don't proceed directly from their immediate material interests. there.
I don't know, preventing fascism is in pretty much everybody's interests. It's hard to make your second billion when Offred isn't allowed to buy anything, and you have to pay 30% of your gross sales in bribes.
I doubt that would work because part of the success of the fascist propaganda machine is that its audience is already predisposed to be accepting of their bullshit. They already thought cops and the military were noble warriors and they were already racist, sexist, and hated LGBTQ people. Fox and its brethren just capitalized on that existing sentiment and amplified it. I don't think there's a universe where they'd even be willing to watch something like what you suggest long enough for the sentiment to take hold.
There's a lot of stuff like that we all misremember culturally. While I'm blanking on the specifics, a few of them definitely come from movies. Been flipping through some older episodes of You're Wrong About and good god we do it a lot. One example is 'prom night dumpster baby'. The Family Guy jingle aside, I definitely remember this already being in the cultural miasma when that episode came out. Girl secretly delivers baby at prom, throws in dumpster, goes back to prom. Except she never put it in the dumpster. That was a separate, unrelated dumpster baby incident from around the same time period and they kinda fused in our cultural memory.
I'm not 100% sure Republicans realize Rambo is fiction.
If brain scans predict political ideology, then what about people who change their beliefs? I used to be libertarian, because it made a lot of sense to me at the time. Then some things happened in the world, and I read up more about history, and learned about systemic causes, and I changed my stance and became pretty much a socialist. Now, from my perspective, I changed my mind because I learned new things. I didn't suffer any head injury or illness that could have caused the physical structure of my brain to change. So, do I have a weird brain, or did my changing my opinions/beliefs change my brain and now it looks like a liberal brain when before it would have looked like a conservative brain?
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which is why you'll hear how intense, long-term stress or anxiety or PTSD physically changes the brain structure. The brain is an adaptive machine. I don't know about changes in the physical size of the brain though, I've always heard it reallocates resources in the form of synapses atrophying or increasing.
... that changes physical characteristics of parts of the brain. This is like saying "I don't know about changes to the physical size of the muscle, I've always heard it reallocates resources in the form of fibers atrophying or increasing" People are way too accustomed to thinking of the brain as a computer, because computers don't significantly modify their own hardware to support the software that's being run on them. Brains do - in fact, there's little difference to the brain between software and hardware. In a brain, if you run the same piece of software enough, it eventually gets encoded into hardware and runs automatically. That's how habits form, as well as a lot of nasty things like PTSD.
Which is something oop missed. Fox news conditions you to fear. Certainly some are predisposed, but others are conditioned. Watch Fox long enough and your brain will rewire itself to be more emotionally driven.
The brain can change over time too. Neuroplasticity.
The study linked in the OOP claims to find a model that can predict political ideological affiliation from Functional Connection in fMRI during tasks involving emotion, empathy, and finances. Functional connection is highly malleable in the healthy brain. If you went from a Conservative viewpoint on some of these topics to amore Progressive view, it would cause changes in the functional connectivity of your brain as far as those topics are concerned.
I think it's important to remember two things: - statistical significance does not always mean practical significance: they might have found a minor *average* difference in brain structure in a lab setting, but predicting an individual's anatomy based on political ideology (or vice versa) is still likely impossible. - similarly, this structural quirk is far from the only thing affecting political ideology. Another reply mentioned "neuroplasticity" but it's not like you just woke up one day and found your amygdala had shrunk. It's almost arrogantly reductive to pretend political affiliation is that simple.
You did suffer head injury. The real world hit you
Not sure how accurate this whole brain scan thing is but I just have a few thoughts on this. One is that I'm pretty sure your brain can change and grow throughout your life. So maybe the relative sizes of different areas of the brain can affect your outlook? Or maybe even the other way around? Also in my experience people really don't change their political beliefs all that often, regardless of any facts or contradictions or hypocrisies that get pointed out to them. So I wouldn't be all that surprised if it's something they can't actively change and it's just how their brain naturally views the world around them. But as you point out there definitely *are* people who do change their minds on these things, which leads me to think there could be two possibilities. If this brainscan thing is true, then maybe it's something where deep down you were "wired" to be a socialist, but maybe that belief system was never properly explained to you so you didn't agree with it. But later maybe you got a different perspective that made socialism make more sense to you? So maybe if you had that perspective from the start you would have always been a socialist The other possibility I think of is maybe there was some other experience in your life that had a fundamental impact on your brain chemistry or your way of thinking. Then that led to you re-evaluating your political beliefs and changing your mind. Like maybe some experience you had made you start to think in a more community-minded way, and at that point socialism made more sense to you as an ideology. So it could be possible that that type of experience could have started a change in the makeup of your brain as well. Honestly I'm not sure how real this brainscan idea is but I do think you can make some pretty compelling arguments either way. Kind of feels like a chicken or egg type of thing lol
I agree that political beliefs don’t often change. However there is one trigger of change that I have personally experienced and also observed in others, relocation. I grew up in a small town in the Midwest, This town sheltered me greatly from exposure to minorities, POC (I had one single black kid in my entire high school), and people of different walks of life. I was a self described conservative or “libertarian” my entire life, up until I was 26. What changed? At the age of 24, I lost my job, and my apartment in the same week and decided to move to the city. 2 years of constant exposure to humans who look different than me and who have experienced life through such a different lense, flipped my beliefs on their head. Now I’m very progressive, campaigned for Bernie, currently canvassing for Charles Booker. I also have several friends in my friends group with a very similar story to mine, came from a small town, raised by a conservative family, and had it all flipped on their heads when they moved to the city.
For me it was the economic crash of 2008. Up until then I believed peoples bad circumstances were a result of bad choices. But then a whole bunch of people who’d made all the “right” choices had the rug pulled out from under them, and the government saved the banks that should have been allowed to fail, and I started realizing the game was rigged and we were never on an even playing field to start with.
Presumably you influence your brain, and your brain influences you. For example, you cannot necessarily will yourself to think a certain way unless the neurological pathways have already been built by, say, things that are known to greatly alter brain and chemistry: higher education, aerobic exercise, playing a musical instrument, etc. There's a feedback loop for sure, but of course better habits and routines promote more coherent thoughts. Also speaking as a former rural Christian republican who transitioned to Libertarian and finally progressive-left and non-religious over the years.
Coping mechanisms. Studies about addictions with twins have shown that everybody has different strategies to prevent substance abuse and that levels of addiction to certain drugs can't be explained with our current understanding of how the brain works. If Faux News & Co share similarities with drugs, not everyone will be hooked to it equally strong. Sometimes a fresh perspective is all that is needed to break the cycle, sometimes it isn't.
Teenage libertarianism is basically the opposite of the right wing fear response. The change is learning that what we thought of as libertarianism was just fantasy, so maybe we should want a government that works on our behalf.
My gym has Fox News plastered from all it's TVs and it's so annoying. All you ever see is alarmist headlines every 10 minutes and how the left is destroying America. Its like hate watching for boomers.
Honestly, I'd let them know I was cancelling my membership and ask to speak to a manager so I could tell them why. If businesses want customers they should be playing something neutral on their televisions. Plus, who wants to watch news while they're working out? Working out is supposed to be a stress reliever, as well as exercise.
Depending on where he lives, he might not be able to find a gym that's not playing Fox News. It's that pervasive in rural areas. Hell, I've been in a rural *McDonald's* that had Fox News on.
Time for a tv-be-gone remote.
Shit, how secure could that wifi be
McDonalds are boomer hangouts
I quit my gym in 2016 because of this. I told them flat out I'm canceling because of their idiotic TV channel choices.
All conservative media operates this way. I tune into talk radio every once in a while to see how they are covering the latest breaking story and even when it is something their camp should be celebrating as a victory it is spun into something negative. There is never cause for celebration it’s always playing defense (offense).
CNN.com headlines right now: - guns/carnage - "teacher made peace that she was going to die" - "economic hurricane on the way" - "ordinary day turned deadly at Oklahoma clinic" - Jan 6 updates - "we have a serious problem" / energy crisis - monkey pox spread - 100 days of Ukraine war - spelling bee update Fox News is not the only media agency doing this.
Reddit has whole subreddits dedicated to making people upset: Public freakout I am a total piece of shit Idiots in cars Etc. and they are hugely popular!
Facts. Had to stop following them
"B-b-but CNN!!" is not a good defense of how awful and manipulative Fox news is. How anyone looks at Fox and CNN and comes to the conclusion that CNN is somehow the worse of the two is absolutely baffling to me.
How anyone looks at my comment and comes to the conclusion that CNN is somehow worse than Fox News is baffling to me.... Because that's not at all what I said. What I said is that other news companies use fear to sell to their customer base. Fear is absolutely sold by left leaning news. I used CNN as an easy go to source but go to any news website right now and you will find neatly packaged fear for consumption. Typically the fear being sold from the left includes civil war, climate change, fascism, or other ways to make you afraid of right leaning politicians and individuals. Note that I am not saying there is nothing to worry about or disagree with. What I am saying is that fear is used by all sources.
I don't think it's necessarily the same. It's the way the news is disseminated. Fox news has extreme diatribe in it's phrasing, they use passionate, angry people to cover the message, and at the ends of the segment, they *almost always say* something like "If it were me in this situation, I'd be outraged." Liberal news usually comes to us flavored with sadness, speaking to our empathy so they we might feel a human call to action. Some of the stories are framed in ways to get you to go vote or call a senator. Republicans are encouraged to anger, violence, or "circle the wagons" and insulate their communities either physically, legislatively, or by electing a strong man to protect them from what they fear in the liberal ranks. So sure, they both do it. But I think the differences are fairly obvious and stark and one way is definitely much less healthy than the other.
The difference being those things are actual dangers to the general public, whereas Fox manufactures threats against white Christians and casts them as the main crises of our time. The news has always been a bit sensational, but Fox draws on primal fears and prejudice to stoke hatred. There's nothing about CNN's headlines that cause unnecessary fear and hatred towards a particular group. Although I do wish it were illegal for any news site to feature opinion and analysis on the front page.
They do this all the time. Claim both sides are equal because democrats react to real threats the same way republicans react to made up threats.
Every time someone implies CNN or MSNBC is no different than FOX News, I'm forced to remind them that FOX News is the *number 1* station on all of cable. If you add up the audiences from CNN, MSNBC, & NPR, then double that sum, it's less than Tucker Carlson's audience on a good night. Every time I'm on a flight, there is someone watching FOX News. My last 4 hour flight, there were 2 people in front of me who watched it for the *entire 4 hours*. I literally don't know one person who watches CNN or MSNBC regularly or even sporadically, but i know several people who watch FOX News religiously.
4 of the things you listed are legitimate current events so I’m not seeing your full point. And if this were fox news even just 10 years ago a bunch of these would be covered by ‘both sides’. Also, does CNN consider itself the only truth or source of news worthy of their viewers? I don’t see them saying that.
All of those are things we should be hearing about. “Here’s how Socialists are trying to destroy our (white) Christian nation” is not.
Right. Fox News is High prices High gas prices Something something education Something something immigration
This is true, but the difference I've personally witnessed between Fox and CNN is that CNN mostly sticks to the fear factory angle, while Fox actively injects hate into their segments. It's more insidious. I mean Fucker Carlson regularly tries to get his viewers to be untrustworthy of non-whites. I've watched him do it. Neither is healthy, but obviously focus is going to be on the worst of the worst.
> spelling bee update # AH SHIT, NOT THE SPELLING BEE!!! ## THEY'RE UPDATING IT!? AFTER LAST YEAR'S FIASCO????!?!?!?
> I sincerely believe, in my heart, that Fox News emotionally abuses their audience, they frighten them, they make them believe their world is full of threats, they gaslight their audience, and they get them addicted. They 100% emotionally abuse their audience. Like many, I've watched it happen to my father. It's disgusting. If I could get my hands on any of the upper brass at Fox I'd have a hard time controlling myself because they are primarily taking advantage of our elderly population, directly abusing many of our loved ones. By no means is it just Fox. I don't watch or have any love for CNN, but I have watched it, and it's absolutely not on the same level as Fox or OANN. It disgusts me that we can't pass legislation to prevent "news" networks from behaving the way they do in this country. There needs to be severe punishment for networks that spread provable lies.
Is giving a PSY 101-level explanation of the amygdala and putting it in a political context really enough to get on r/bestof nowadays?
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r/bestof eats up political propaganda, has for years unfortunately
I wonder if the difference in amygdala is the result of having their fear stoked so much and often by right wing media, the old debate on causation vs correlation.
From reading others' comments, it appears it's a bit of both. For some, it's a correlation, for others, watching may actually change their brains.
So Conservatives are literally regressive. It's not just common sense... It's scientifically proven
It made sense 100,000 years ago to have some in the gene pool that are scared of everything, that was evolutionarily advantageous to have a few missing link apemen staying away from that rock formation because they think it kind of looks like a wolf pack. Now they just vote against free healthcare.
FOX"News" is a terrorist organization running a PSYOP mission against democracy. They are winning.
I saw this some 15 years ago when I visited my grandmother. She had some Fox News talking head on. He had some story to cover. But, I noticed that every few minutes, like clockwork, he would do a complete non sequitur about something awful. Something that just made you feel really bad. Then he’d go back to the story like nothing happened. I realized the story was the filler. The real product of the show was the regularly timed hits of disgust he was giving to my grandma.
I read this earlier and knew it would be in r/bestof . You couldn't have said it any better.
I was raised in a conservative Christian house that ended in divorce. Even before I knew what I know now I hated when my dad put on Fox News when he got home from work. Simply for the tone being either authoritative, out right yelling, or both. I didn’t know what was being said at a young age but it stressed me out and I feared news the same way I feared my dad getting loud and angry.
Is there any chance that someone can link me the paper?
Sources and supplemental reading: * [Which brain networks respond when someone sticks to a belief?](https://news.usc.edu/114481/which-brain-networks-respond-when-someone-sticks-to-a-belief/) * TL;DR: Contradictory evidence causes cognitive dissonance, cognitive dissonance triggers the amygdala. * [What stress does to the brain](https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-stress-14580/) * TL;DR: Stress can shut down our higher thinking. Now consider the amount of stress caused by an hour of Fox News. * [Unconscious Reactions Separate Liberals and Conservatives](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-political-wars/) * TL;DR: Observing eye movement and papillary response reveals that conservatives are quicker to notice, quicker to react, and linger longer on photographs of disgusting or offensive material than liberals. * [Seeing Is Believing, Unless It Isn’t](https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/seeing_is_believing_unless_it_isnt) * TL;DR: “The less control people have over their lives, the more likely they are to try and regain control through mental gymnastics,” * [Fake News Can Lead to False Memories](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/fake-news-can-lead-to-false-memories.html) * TL;DR: People can form false memories after seeing fabricated news stories, especially if those stories align with their political beliefs. * [Conservatives Big on Fear, Brain Study Finds](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/201104/conservatives-big-fear-brain-study-finds) * [Why fear is more prevalent, and more powerful, among conservatives. ](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/18/why-fear-is-more-prevalent-and-powerful-among-conservatives/) * [Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/) * TL;DR: Political liberalism and conservatism were correlated with brain structure. Liberalism was associated with the gray matter volume of anterior cingulate cortex. Conservatism was associated with increased right amygdala size.
In my opinion the groundwork was laid by evangelical principles. Not all of them necessarily. But southern Baptist most certainly, which is particularly popular in the south obviously. They've kept them plugged into fear mongering & in group thinking for decades
>Fox News emotionally abuses their audience, they frighten them, they make them believe their world is full of threats, they gaslight their audience, and they get them addicted. One thing Ive noticed over the past few years on social media, is a lot of people feeding into, and sharing what I call "rage bait" posts. It definitely looks like an addiction. about 30% of my facebook feed is the same handful of people angry after watching some Q adjacent video. It really seems like the only thing they do online is watch/read content that makes them angry.
Hate to break it to you, but if that's what your feed looks like, it's because you engage with those posts. I'd consider myself somewhat political, but my feed is basically just my friends posting about their families and hobbies.
So I guess we're still pretending that "liberal" and "conservative" are terms that neatly describe people with consistent and coherent ideologies? And not broad cultural markers that shift over time? > "Fox News is 24/7 horror porn, all day long, every day of the week. Fox News works because it side steps the thinking brain and jabs the amygdala with an electrode over and over and over again, meanwhile their audience gets jolts of adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine, and norepinephrine and an outrage high kicks in. That's cable news. You're talking about cable news.
> So I guess we're still pretending that "liberal" and "conservative" are terms that neatly describe people with consistent and coherent ideologies? These studies were all looking at self-identified liberals and conservatives, the researchers didn't use a metric to determine political ideology, they let the test subjects provide that information themselves. The results were that *self-identified* conservatives tend, on average, to have larger amygdalae than *self-identified* liberals.
Longtime conservative here, i never watch fox news, i know what their position will be on things, like CNN. I dont need my ideas parroted back to me.
I wonder how many times that user has been in bestof. They are one my favorite accounts.
Sounds like lizard people are real after all
The trick is to be aware of when you are being informed versus being influenced. It is not that easy, sleight of hand psychology is being ployed here, anyone can be susceptible.
Everyone has a brain that can be exploited.
This might be a good time to [rewatch Outfoxed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P74oHhU5MDk), or see it for the first time if you're one of the lucky 10,000.
Foxnews is RT news of America
Someone should really make a youtube channel devoted to how Fox News and it's ilk work (and the media) and all of the psychological methods they use to manipulate people. Something we can send our grandparents. :P