Have you ever noticed that there are many nonsensical and foolish viewpoints that go against common sense, which are widely shared in our social circles, various groups, and are rampant, especially phrases like "we are a loving family" and "if you don't share, you're not Chinese"? The ability of these foolish viewpoints to spread freely must have its roots in a very low level of understanding and deliberate brainwashing.
In this era of advanced information dissemination, we might imagine that everyone shares their opinions, breaking down information barriers and broadening the perspectives of people from different classes, professions, and ages.
However, in reality, the development of the internet has merely allowed a group of ignorant, foolish, and prejudiced individuals to find each other, band together, and ultimately become more entrenched in their foolish viewpoints.
Based on this, today we will discuss through the lens of communication theory: why do the most foolish viewpoints become the most popular?
There is a pioneer in communication studies named Walter Lippmann, who was a highly influential journalist and commentator in the 20th century. He said: the less trained a person's thinking is, the more likely they are to force a causal relationship between two things they are focused on. Thus, they narrate something with crude logic and strong emotions, and in the end, they have a large audience. Why is this?
Lippmann published a book in 1922 called "Public Opinion," which came out shortly after the end of World War I. At that time, he witnessed how the media used carefully woven lies to manipulate the lives and deaths of millions. Generals packaged their disastrous defeats as "strategic retreats," newspapers glorified massacres as "heroic sacrifices," while the public cheered within the high walls of their information cocoons, completely unaware that they were merely pawns on a chessboard.
As a journalist, Lippmann witnessed the propaganda filled with lies and deception, leading to great skepticism about rational public opinion. Thus, he proposed the concepts of "pseudo-environment" and "stereotypes," which are two core issues that lead to irrational public opinion.
First, what is a pseudo-environment?#
Faced with a complex world, ordinary people do not have enough time or energy to directly understand it through their limited abilities. Therefore, they can only rely on the information conveyed by mass media to understand various events, such as newspapers, magazines, television news, social media, and so on. Mass media will inevitably selectively process and reconstruct this information, presenting the public with a "simplified version of reality," which is an important concept in communication studies—pseudo-environment!
The public easily recognizes this simplified pseudo-environment as the real environment and thus makes corresponding judgments and actions. During this simplification process, the media is often influenced by social power and other factors. Therefore, the "pseudo-environment" that is simplified, intervened, and deliberately edited is the first culprit for the irrationality of public opinion.
Imagine you are wearing a special pair of glasses that only allows you to see the content that the media wants you to see. For example, when the news reports "the situation in a certain country is turbulent," it may only focus on brief conflict scenes in that country, ignoring the daily lives of the vast majority of ordinary people there. If you are constantly bombarded with such viewpoints, over time, you will come to believe that this country "only has war." But in reality, this is just a partial perspective filtered by the media.
Second, the public's stereotypes!#
Most people are often irrational when thinking about social issues. Their most common method is "stereotyping." This means categorizing others based on standards such as gender, race, age, and occupation, thereby forming fixed impressions of certain groups. For example, we often think that left-handed people are smarter, southerners are better at business than northerners, and Westerners have more open views on sexuality—these are all typical stereotypes.
So why do people like to understand the world through stereotypes? Because everyone has limited time, lacks specialized knowledge, and is too lazy to spend energy on trivial matters to discern, while the information they encounter daily is simply overwhelming. Thus, people need to make judgments in the shortest time possible. At this moment, stereotypes become the easiest method.
Although this approach saves time and energy, it easily overlooks individual differences and leads to misguided judgments. The greatest harm of stereotypes to public opinion is selective memory, especially the tendency to choose information that conforms to existing stereotypes, repeatedly reinforcing the original impressions. A vague memory can lead one to firmly believe in their previous assumptions. This is the second culprit of irrational public opinion.
For example, if you believe Zhang San is kind, you will always find various events to prove Zhang San's kindness; if you think Li Si is evil, you will also find various events to prove Li Si's evilness; and for the evil experiences of Zhang San or the kind events of Li Si, you will adopt a blind eye and deaf ear attitude.
This is the reason why in our real society, the more foolish the viewpoint, the more popular it becomes. To put it simply, I hope more people can learn to think independently and break free from binary oppositional thinking. I also hope that when encountering different viewpoints in the future, everyone can rationally recognize and analyze things, expressing constructive opinions rather than outputting emotions based on assumptions.