In fact, Fox News itself specializes in reacting, rather than in reporting. They'll keep reacting to the same narrow range of issues, and the fabricated controversies and Twitter-dramas contingent to them, for weeks, while narrowing the parameters of discourse about those issues like blinkers on that horse pulling that cart. When Fox does come out with something "bold" (albeit late-to-the-table) which might prove those crazy conspiracy-theorists to have been right all along, it describes the matter in terms that ignore an essential portion of the information or matters of concern, accommodating disinformative official "narratives" to constrain the parameters of discourse. Rather than showing you the sweeping landscape, they crop-in to the cow standing beside the tree. Keep people reacting, and they'll won't have the cognitive faculties to take action.
Lest my dismay with Fox implicate me as a "Trump supporter:" I know that Trump was a fraud. That kinda ruins the whole game, doesn't it? If you'd let yourself have strong emotions about him either way, wipe the egg off your face. Such politicians are used for exploiting certain principles which resonate among the populace, and then come to represent them so that those principles can be vilified ad hominem. For example, the case against protectionism, national sovereignty and patriotism was built by demonizing Trump in the media. He was, and remains, a dramatic device. The so-called Left in America would not have gained so much support without Trump to hate as a “bad Daddy” figure. I saw this on the day he was inaugurated: liberals having nervous breakdowns, raging, grieving – right on cue – because people have no idea how remotely-controlled their minds and hearts are via ever-more-saturative media.
It is due to the ubiquity of social media that people in general are far more lower-brained in their views of the world and of themselves in it. In conjunction with this, the threat of being reacted-to negatively by others keeps people in line with what they say online. I myself have been banned from several forums, had an YouTube channel deleted, been locked-out of two Instagram accounts, been harangued and harassed by people I don't even know, and lost a few old friends whom I'd known for half my life, because I was saying or depicting things too close to whomever's inadmissible truth, transgressing their acceptable parameters of discourse. Somehow, I've survived to be able to write this essay that no one but the 'bots at G@@gle will read. Ultimately, being cancelled and rejected has only substantiated that I'd been in-the-right in what I'd said and depicted. The last time I'd checked, martyrs are revered for their intransigent representations of truth, after having been edified by their executions. Personally, I'd prefer that what I know to be true might not be something to "admit to."
The "echo chamber" of reactivity, as a product of this artificial environment, has insidiously influenced some unlikely persons. Two of these are men, aged about 55 and 70, with YouTube channels that specialize in presenting information on topics such as cryptids and mysteriously-vanished persons. These are old-fashioned "men's-men" types, who should know better than to let themselves be carried-away, especially publicly, by their emotions. The cryptids guy devotes up to 4/5 of a 50-minute video to histrionic ranting about how "the" Govt. is lying to us and so on (as though he were a college boy just finding this stuff out after an overprotective home life), and dismissing viewers who comment negatively about this, with, "I don't care. It's my channel," and such. I've learned to scan forward to where he's apparently reading from his iPhone the Bigfoot-story e-mails from viewers.
The vanished-persons guy has, for the past nine months, been saturating his videos with grieving over the suicide of his son (despite privately seeing a grief counselor), and pontificating about "mental health" (when he means "mental illness," but I've noticed this interesting but unsettling trend of people, as though unconsciously led to euphemize "mental illness"), and recently, thanks to the C-19 stuff and other political (as all should have figured-out by now that C-19 never was a medical issue at heart) matters rattling around in the empty oil can of the MSM (I'm talkin'bout you, Fox). Again, 4/5 of a video not devoted to that which is within the realm of his singular expertise. He receives enough positive and commiserative responses in the comments section to encourage him to keep "speaking-out about mental health (sic)," and his expanded awareness of having a "platform" emboldens his opinions about other matters. He mentioned that he'd regretted upsetting a man who'd taken him golfing recently, by mentioning his son's suicide in response to the man's asking him whether he had kids – but without any sense of irony he defiantly rationalizes obliging a bazillion people out in Internetland to watch him cry about it. As with the cryptids guy, he tells people – in politer terms – who find this cringeworthy to go f*ck themselves, because he's justified in how he's acting because he has feelings about such things.
As for this essay, I don't care about how you feel about what I've said – all that matters to me is how I've felt about what I've said, and that is all that should matter to you. (Comments have been disabled, of course.)