Betty Sue makes $286,000 per month on Etsy. She started with nothing, and now she’s filthy rich.
Come on, man. The chances of that happening to the average person are close to zero. Stories like this give people unrealistic expectations.
First of all, the vast majority of media cares only about crafting and publishing stories that people want to read, instead of stories that people should read. Think about clickbait articles. Their purpose is to get people to read the story and therefore give them money (either by seeing ads, buying a physical magazine/newspaper, or signing up for a paid subscription), as oppised to actually informing the public about things they should know
Second, capitalism needs the working class to think that they can get rich too if they just work hard, and thus people spend their lives working because they’ve been told that they can get rich. Allow me to illustrate:
I think other people covered the main points, but when I haven’t seen mentioned yet here is the fact that, for the news to catch your attention, it has to be something exceptional. That shouldn’t be true, but many publishers believe it. They compete to have what’s new or different or exciting.
I blame this mostly on the big media companies, and also partly on consumers who believe that consuming news is a passive activity when in reality it’s an active choice. They could go find online websites and create their own RSS feed, for example, and then they wouldn’t be stuck listening to drivel. But it does take some work and some awareness.
For example, and I don’t want to go into details about specific political parties, think about all of the polls about the election. Those are mostly meaningless. We’ll find out exactly what public opinion is on Election Day. It’s not that you couldn’t have a poll, but if you’re posting new polling data every day it’s because you’re desperate to cover up for the fact that you don’t have anything new to say.
Mark Twain said, there are lies, damn lies and statistics.
Because people will read them?
Because people would believe them instead of taking actions against the billionaires.
Propaganda.
That’s it
That’s literally just it.
People are more likely to accept an inherently flawed economic system if they thing they have any chance of “beating” it. Stories like this, although actually very rare, help reinforce that narrative.
I have had someone tell me that they’d rather live in an economic system “like we have in America” where people have a chance at rags to riches, than a system “like Germany, where the social safety net means the average person doesn’t have a chance at making it big.”
If anyone ever tells you wealthy people are intelligent, don’t believe them.
Gotta keep that dream alive. Besides, why would I want to tax the rich when I’m this close to being rich myself! /s
People like to read those stories because it gives them hope it also happens to them. Media print stories that you want to read, that’s how they make money.
Other stories people like to read: how to world is going to shit (evolutionairy important to prepare to survive), what someone that’s familiar to you did (evolutionary important to be social to work together to survive), stories about how someone else did something stupid (complaining about that toghether gives yoh a sense of belonging) and stories about how a pet cat was retrieved (tickling that instinct to care for others again).
As you can see, media is looking for stories that tickle your most basic insticts and needs, because they know that’s what you will be interested in, making you read their stories so they can make more money.
Welcome to capitalism, you are the product.
Filthy capitalists, giving people what they want!
Indeed, instead of what they need. It’s like only giving sugar to your kid to eat instead of vegetables, because that’s what they “want”. Oh wait that’s actually what happens as well
That only confirms my hypothesis that leftists don’t want a system of governance, but mom and dad…
I just want the climate not to collapse.
the hell are you doing on lemmy then
Isn’t that the case with all news? When a self-driving car kills a person it’s newsworthy but the million times it doesn’t is not. By definition the event needs to be something out of the ordinary for it to spark the interest of most people.
They use sensationalism to make things sound worse than they are.
They selectively report information, leaving out details that don’t fit their agenda.
They use misleading headlines, knowing that people often only read the headlines. They use words like “horrifying,” “catastrophic,” and “viral.”
They manipulate charts, graphs, statistics, and photographs.
Balanced reporting isn’t balanced if it pits a scientist against a conspiracy theorist.
Gotta keep the American dream alive.
Give people hope.
People with hope don’t revolt because they still have something to lose.
Wouldn’t want a class war brewing.
“Bread & circuses” is an ancient protocol, and hasn’t been absent from any government policy since the invention of bread, beer, etc. #TheMoreYouKnow
The irony is that far right IS actually people revolting
They’re doing it wrong I think
They rage in favor of the machine Rage Against the Machine rages against
They are in favor of printers?
Yo dawg…
It’s pretty common that angry revolutionaries are used by another rich bastard to get into power by usurping the movement. The classic “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
Rules for Rulers
The rulers change, but the rules do not.
CGP Grey is a treasure
The guys who they need to be revoting against are the ones telling them who to hate…
Left has similar falacies.
Not sure. I mean, yeah, the racist fascist narcissistic dementic monster doesn’t looks like the ideal candidate in a democracy, but if your intention is to fuck the system that fucked you, while giving you a feeling of superiority, it looks like a perfect match. For too long, the difference between the Democrats and Republicans was cosmetic at best, some are pragmatic but some just want to fuck the system.
Well, they certainly are revolting, I’ll give you that.
The peasants are revolting… They certainly are!
-Monty Python
More that they are generally revolting people.
It isn’t ironic that they are revolting people, though…
Capitalist propaganda.
“Aspiration” to be more precise, it’s one of the ways capitalists convince large segments of the public that they’re temporarily embarrassed millionaires, who just need to pull their bootstraps up hard enough, and they will make it, like the people in the programme did (conveniently they never address things like racism, sexism, queerphobia, ableism, and other barriers that many people have to face just to survive, never mind thrive, and the fact that all of these barriers are artificial and created by people who benefit just as much from dividing society up and pitting us against each other, as they do from selling us rags-to-riches bullshit to get us to work harder to make them money).
I’ve never understood “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” which is impossible. No matter how hard you pull, you can’t, say, jump a fence. The rich are inadvertently telling poor people that becoming rich by working hard is impossible.
I think it may be subtle way to say fuck you
I think that’s the point, just like with “a few bad apples”, the original intent of the saying has been subverted to help those in power keep the rest of us down (if you just do this impossible thing, you’ll be just like us! Why don’t you just do that impossible thing already, you useless lazy bastard? And so on. It’s part cognitive dissonance to make themselves feel like they’re “self made”, part gaslighting convincing us we’re just not trying hard enough).
The chances of that happening to the average person are close to zero.
That’s the whole point. People don’t watch the news to hear “dog bites man” they watch it to hear “man bites dog”.
No one wants to watch a 2-3 hr long movie about someone’s regular Tuesday at the office they want to watch something that doesn’t happen everyday like an adventure, the perfect couple meeting, or the world ending.
Warhol, Kaufman, et al’d like a word.
Neither of those people were ordinary in any way tho.
As directors, etc., but sure.
Fair enough
To pacify you by convincing you that you could be next, as opposed to you are regularly fucked by the rich.
“Momentarily embarrassed millionaires” is the target market, yep.
Sensationalism sells.
Z peasants require copium to stay docile.
