Anxiety Industry

What a great name! Wish I'd thought of it!

In a world where "news" is whatever will rivet the attention, the more anxiety you can generate, the more people will watch/listen, hoping there will be some kind of resolution ... which never comes.

And, in the time-honored tradition of the SoapOpera?, you don't ever end the story, you just fade into the next Anxiety Scenario.

This is the vehicle for "terrorism" -- without the cooperation of a media desperate for ratings it couldn't work. Terrorism is really anxiety-ism. Keep people anxious, worried, looking over their shoulders. Sure, there's a moment of terror for the luckless up-close witnesses to the explosion, but the real payoff is the persistent anxiety that follows. With a little help from media and government, you can parlay this into compromised liberties and a whole host of DegenerativeFeedback? situations, progressively crippling the object of your "terror" tactics.

Fabulous. Without mass media, especially TV, you couldn't scare whole populations at once. "Stay tuned, we have a News Alert for you, after these important messages!" Testing here -- GarryHamilton

I thought of the term "Addiction Merchants" :) -- dl

I managed to weave your page into PandemicResponseDiscussions :)

Episode 5 the US MaxHeadroom? series (titled "War") showed a TV network cut out the middle-man and started hiring terrorists directly. They got exclusive footage of bombings and such. Very funny stuff. -- EH

Who are typically responsible for and ErsatzScandal?, a fake or faux scandal which typically distracts from a real scandal. MartinSpamer

CategoryTelevision