Collective Outrage

[Faye]

The general trend manifests as follows:

1. Some person either says or posts something that someone did that is stupid. So stupid, in fact, that it is dubious whether or not it actually happened.

2. People come along and rant about how stupid the event in question was.

3. Repetition of 2 ad infinitum.



My question is: Why aren't people smart enough to do any fact checking? What are so many of these people friends with me on facebook? And finally, why do people get outraged over dumb things that don't matter?

There are things that people should rant about, but then people like to single out things that don't matter and rant about them like crazy. A good example is when the Friday video came out. People went insane talking about how terrible of a singer she was and then people had to argue with the people who were calling it bad, and the only reason it became famous is because people were so agitated by it for no reason.

I've given up on humanity.

 

[MikeINvalid]

My guess is that it is so easy to get behind hating on something that doesn't really matter... Or that is an obvious something to hate on. It's much harder to come to such a strong opinion on complex issues. I think that's why the straw man fallacy is used so much in arguments.

 

[detectivepope]

Things would work properly if everyone thought or checked about things. Now where is the fun in that world? Nowhere, that's where...

 

[Nixie]

What is the point here? Outrage over outrage?

 

[Faye]

What is the point here? Outrage over outrage?

Yes.

 

[Peppermint]

Mob mentality.

 

[Nixie]

Sheepies will Bah Bah Bah [MENTION=2434]Black Sheep[/MENTION]

 

[Sloe Djinn]

@Stormy1

But it makes me feel like I know stuff about things... -_-

Seriously though, what's up with X?

Edit: Ba bow bow bow bow bowwww

 

[Nixie]

X? Malcolm X? What chu talking about Willis?

 

[the]

Cause it is more fun.

 

[mochi]

Mob mentality.

Exactly.

It baffles me how people want to gang up on someone, even if what they did was relatively harmless. The entire Friday video wasn't that bad. x3 Or what I mean is, I've definitely seen much worse.

[MENTION=834]Dragon[/MENTION] I have given up on it too. XD

 

[Feelings]

Oh I have this one FIGURED. People like being pissed off sometimes. They literally enjoy feeling that way and expressing it. Righteous indignation. And a feeling of being a part of something. A feeling of certainty. A feeling of superiority.

 

[Trifoilum]

From the alternative side, people hate to be wrong. Learning about facts can made something become more ambiguous, and "....should I hate this? Should I not? I don't want to know about this fact that may turn me into the wrong one."

Outrage is one of the worse emotional output; it glosses over truth and facts over emotions and 'justice'. Appealing to emotions.

 

[Feelings]

From the alternative side, people hate to be wrong. Learning about facts can made something become more ambiguous, and "....should I hate this? Should I not? I don't want to know about this fact that may turn me into the wrong one."

This made me think of religion, and how easily many religious people get offended when respectfully challenged. Their sense of identity is all wrapped up in their religious beliefs. Casting doubt on those beliefs would devalue the religious person by association.

 

[Trifoilum]

This made me think of religion, and how easily many religious people get offended when respectfully challenged. Their sense of identity is all wrapped up in their religious beliefs. Casting doubt on those beliefs would devalue the religious person by association.

Yes; avoiding cognitive dissonance.
It's not always about religion, although it is one big example of it. It can be anything; music, games, literatures, politics, life in general...

 

[Feelings]

Yes; avoiding cognitive dissonance.
It's not always about religion, although it is one big example of it. It can be anything; music, games, literatures, politics, life in general...

Yes of course. A person's identity/ego gets wrapped up in being correct. The logic goes "If I'm wrong about this then I'm a dumbass and I fail at life". I used to play a lot of PvP World of Warcraft. I would see teenage boys and perhaps young adults have ego wars all day long. Their ego/identity was so wrapped up at being GOOD at the game, even though they obviously sucked. Clearly. The truly good players don't say shit. The good players are thinking game mechanics and strategy. They're not thinking "duuuuh you're a fag, you suck". They're thinking "he's inexperienced. He should have counterspelled that fear, he blew his trinket too early, iced blocked too late, and his positioning was horrid". The players talking shit clearly suck, but they're trying to show off how good they are by talking shit in the chat box. Veerrry irrational. My favorites were the ones who were at the bottom of the scoreboard, talking shit to me when I was at the top, and saying "score doesn't matter". It doesn't per se, but I don't see how you can effectively contribute to a battle if you're not outputting damage, or healing, or killing anything. Did I just rant?

Here's more shit talker techniques:
If someone's really good at WoW, then tell them that they clearly have too much time on their hands, and they have no life.
If someone sucks at WoW, call them a noob, tell them they suck, and that they're a dumbass, and laugh every time they die.
If YOU suck at WoW, and someone calls you on that, tell them that you're on a friend's account and you've never played that character in your entire life.

 

[Trifoilum]

Your example has a grain of truth; the cases of 'gamers talking shit about other gamers' (or 'literatis talking shit about Twihards, Twihards talking shits about Harry Potter / Hunger Games / Vampire Diaries / Gossip Girl / anything', or 'heavy metal listeners talking shit about pop / jazz / techno' or 'everyone talking shit about Justin Bieber') is one of the most visible one there.
It has slightly different modifiers between each other that were affecting their position. (skill, for the game cases; or taste, or...lots of things) however the importance is that there tend to be skewed facts. (I know no fact. it's not most of the Internet debates or Facebook complaints for you Americans.)

More complex case would be someone arguing inbetween builds and equipments. Which skill is the best? When or what should you choose when you're level 80? Why? In this case, their position is somewhat similar.