Moving at the Speed of Hype

It's easy to notice that the more connected we are and the faster our communications networks become, the more hype becomes a factor in our lives.  Politicians, news media and advertisers take every opportunity to persuade us using exaggeration, misrepresentation or scare tactics.  The choice is to react to it or deal with it.  People with perspective find it much easier to deal with; they question and usually ignore it.

To begin with, take three recent news stories:  the Target promotion I referred to on 9/16, the satellite falling to earth in late October, and a story telling us that the people we hang around with affect our eating habits. 

A week after my original comments we find that Target was unable to meet the demand for their limited-time designer special.  They were forced to turn away customers and refund money to others.  One complained that she was refunded $700 spent on clothes, plates and a bike instead of the receiving the goods.  (What are your real values if you spend money on a designer bicycle?)  The next item, mentioned daily for almost a week, was the satellite falling to earth – we know not where.  It was the size of a large bus, weighed 6.5 tons and was plummeting!  Despite the odds of anything hitting you being 1 in 21 trillion, it was a major item on the news for days.  It turned out to be nothing.  Finally, if your friends and family are overweight, chances are you are too.  Let’s all go out for pizza and decide if this is really newsworthy or more common sense dressed up and hyped up to appear surprising and distressing.

In their attempt to manipulate us to watch, listen, or buy, do you notice how often the news people use the words “warning”, “danger”, “threat”, and “crisis” or attempt to undermine good news by following it immediately with the word, “but”?  Do you notice how they ask the most emotion-laden question hoping to get the subject of their interview to break into tears?

Politicians are as crafty.  Without naming names (after all, this blog focuses on our behavior, not on politics), let me give some general examples.  Several politicians give the impression that those who don't agree with their stance on the issues are totally against Social Security and Medicare.  They try to scare older people and give no one a chance to address, question or try to fix a system that people have been concerned about since the early 1980s.  (Yes, it has been that long and I have the yellowed Wall Street Journal articles in my desk to prove it.)  They are not saying these things because it doesn’t need fixing, it’s hype, scare tactics to discredit their opponents.  Another favorite is to call attention to a particular problem by singling out one heart-wrenching example implying there are millions more in the same situation, and immediate action is called for. 

It requires perspective and critical thinking to see these for what they are, more attempts to get us to react with a vote or a purchase, before we think things through.  It’s all hype.