Online bullying is a well-honed tactic for far-left activists: microscopic cliques like Sleeping Giants Bullies create dozens of social media “sockpuppet” accounts in order to overwhelm businesses with what appears to be a tidal-wave of public opprobrium. Lazy journalists whose idea of “research” is scrolling through their Twitter feed are happily bamboozled into what they delude themselves is “public opinion”.
What’s even worse is when journalists actively fabricate supposed social media “outrage”.
Freddie Burns, a British professional rugby player, was accused of “fat shaming” a walrus after posting a viral video to social media Monday of the captive animal doing “sit-ups.”
“Just under 2 weeks till the start of pre season #nobodypanic,” tweeted the English Rugby Union player, who stars for Bath and the English national team, in a caption accompanying the clip.
Wow, sounds like just the sort of venomous social media “outrage” mob that we see too much of, these days. Except…
The joke didn’t go over well with at least one commenter on social media, who took Burns to task for making light of “animal cruelty…Firstly I’m sure you are no where near walrus proportions and secondly using a video of a captive animal that is being made to complete unnatural actions is a bit shit,” the commenter wrote. “Despite how much your own ‘fat’ shaming might be funny, animal cruelty isn’t!”
“At least one,” in fact turns out to be precisely two. Of all the responses to the tweet, just two criticised it.
The user’s remark was subjected to the infamous “ratio.” Although nine other humans “liked” Burns’ post in an apparent indication of their agreement, most of the 50 replies were critical.
Many critics have lately complained of an increase in cultural oversensitivity and policing of language. They argue that progressives’ apparent quest to scrub all vestiges of un-woke ideology or “offensive” language from the culture has made comedy a minefield, especially on platforms like Twitter, where the threat of getting “cancelled” is always imminent.
pluralist
While this is true, it’s even more important that media not join in and go fishing for stuff they can beat up to ridiculous proportions.
Late last year, the American media went into hyperdrive about a non-existent “conservative backlash” against a leaked, ancient video of new congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doing a silly dance as a high schooler. Whaleoil has also reported on how the supposed “outrage” over Burger King’s Vietnamese ad was a complete beat up by legacy media vultures. In this case, the worst “shaming” came from the media, who not only bullied Burger King into a grovelling apology, but heaped “backlash” on a small-time Twitter user whose single brainfart was turned into a hypocritical crusade.
The problem of culture-war astroturfing is bad enough without the legacy media fishing for fake news to turn into click-bait.
