Have you ever noticed that there are many foolish viewpoints that go against common sense and are not worth debating, which are widely circulated in our social circles, various groups, and 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 cognitive understanding and deliberate brainwashing.
In an era where information dissemination is so advanced, we would imagine that people would share their opinions and break down information barriers, allowing individuals from different classes, professions, and ages to broaden their perspectives.
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 forcibly find causal relationships between two things they focus 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." The book was released shortly after the end of World War I, during which he witnessed how the media manipulated the lives and deaths of millions with carefully woven lies. 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 the rationality of public opinion. Thus, he proposed the concepts of "pseudo-environment" and "stereotypes," which are the core issues that lead to irrational public opinion.
First, what is a pseudo-environment?#
In the face of 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, and social media. 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 identifies this simplified pseudo-environment as the real environment and thus makes corresponding judgments and actions. In this process of simplification, 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 putting on a special pair of glasses that only allows you to see the content 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 often think about social issues irrationally. 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 believe 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 prefer 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 the truth, while the amount of information they encounter daily is overwhelming. Thus, people need to make judgments in the shortest time possible. At this point, 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, thereby reinforcing 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 believe Li Si is evil, you will also find various events to prove Li Si's evilness; while ignoring any evil experiences Zhang San may have had or any kind acts Li Si may have performed.
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 thinking. I also hope that when encountering different viewpoints in the future, everyone can rationally recognize and analyze things, expressing constructive opinions instead of outputting emotions based on assumptions.