No Stupid Questions

Gotta keep the American dream alive.

Give people hope.

People with hope don’t revolt because they still have something to lose.

The chances of that happening to the average person are close to zero.

That's the whole point. People don't watch the news to hear "dog bites man" they watch it to hear "man bites dog".

No one wants to watch a 2-3 hr long movie about someone's regular Tuesday at the office they want to watch something that doesn't happen everyday like an adventure, the perfect couple meeting, or the world ending.

To pacify you by convincing you that you could be next, as opposed to you are regularly fucked by the rich.

People are more likely to accept an inherently flawed economic system if they thing they have any chance of "beating" it. Stories like this, although actually very rare, help reinforce that narrative.

Capitalist propaganda.

"Aspiration" to be more precise, it's one of the ways capitalists convince large segments of the public that they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires, who just need to pull their bootstraps up hard enough, and they will make it, like the people in the programme did (conveniently they never address things like racism, sexism, queerphobia, ableism, and other barriers that many people have to face just to survive, never mind thrive, and the fact that all of these barriers are artificial and created by people who benefit just as much from dividing society up and pitting us against each other, as they do from selling us rags-to-riches bullshit to get us to work harder to make them money).

Gotta keep that dream alive. Besides, why would I want to tax the rich when I'm this close to being rich myself! /s

People like to read those stories because it gives them hope it also happens to them. Media print stories that you want to read, that's how they make money.

Other stories people like to read: how to world is going to shit (evolutionairy important to prepare to survive), what someone that's familiar to you did (evolutionary important to be social to work together to survive), stories about how someone else did something stupid (complaining about that toghether gives yoh a sense of belonging) and stories about how a pet cat was retrieved (tickling that instinct to care for others again).

As you can see, media is looking for stories that tickle your most basic insticts and needs, because they know that's what you will be interested in, making you read their stories so they can make more money.

Welcome to capitalism, you are the product.

First of all, the vast majority of media cares only about crafting and publishing stories that people want to read, instead of stories that people should read. Think about clickbait articles. Their purpose is to get people to read the story and therefore give them money (either by seeing ads, buying a physical magazine/newspaper, or signing up for a paid subscription), as oppised to actually informing the public about things they should know

Second, capitalism needs the working class to think that they can get rich too if they just work hard, and thus people spend their lives working because they've been told that they can get rich. Allow me to illustrate:

Isn't that the case with all news? When a self-driving car kills a person it's newsworthy but the million times it doesn't is not. By definition the event needs to be something out of the ordinary for it to spark the interest of most people.

Its the US version of Arbeit macht frei

Its Capitalist Propaganda.

Sensationalism sells.

Because people will read them?

Keeps the poors content

Z peasants require copium to stay docile.

For-profit media sells whatever makes them the highest profits. (Those who won't, make way to those who will, or remain in obscurity e.g. how many people have even heard of Ian Danskin of Innuendo Studios.)

They will sell anything it seems, with little to no regard for facts. Then they leave it to you to determine the lies of omission, while hunting for the real truth, i.e. to do the true work of journalism. But usually unpaid, painstakingly, and again you'll never be able to share that message by virtue of being in conflict with the for-profit sources. Or if you do, who would even understand you, especially among the sheeple who either cannot and/or also will not bother to read anything at all.

Some people like Jon Stewart have railed against this for decades... but he lost, and it's worse than ever before. Adjust your expectations accordingly. This is the world.

Because people would believe them instead of taking actions against the billionaires.

By highlighting singular instances of a sharp rapid success story; people can be shown a mirage-like image which encourages others to follow suit.

If by following the formula it works, then there should be an explosion of successful entrepreneurs in the market. This is untrue otherwise the market distribution would look unlike how it currently is (probably more mid class, less low income class, higher top income bracket).

The reality is that most of the time (>60% I'd approximate), replicating "rags-to-riches" strategies does not produce the same successes as the exhibited highlights. Sometimes a person stumbled onto gold, and by putting a spotlight on that instance you're showcasing only the business ventures that happened to pay off, sometimes it's skill, perhaps a combination of both, other times pure RNG🎲.

Ex: Sharktank, from the start you only see a fraction of the people that can even afford to start ventures show up as a contestant, just how many are able to get an investment, and what are the chances that they'd succeed without an investor, publisher, starting funds, etc?

To me "rags to riches" are a prime example of a combination/parallel of a couple of things:

• Survivorship Bias
• Focus Group
• Misdirection Propaganda
  • by repeatedly showcasing exception cases, the perception of common norms is deliberatly changed ("this is how people usually get rich", "Huh maybe I have a shot at getting rich too, maybe I should spend time to replicate their successes and turn it into my own🤔")

If rags to riches worked, I and many others would be millionaires if not billionaires.

Personally I don't trust the systems that these stories are built on and displayed as. I think the shows are entertaining but only that and nothing more.

Work hard for your boss every day and you, too, can be rich! Bootstraps, people.

I think other people covered the main points, but when I haven't seen mentioned yet here is the fact that, for the news to catch your attention, it has to be something exceptional. That shouldn't be true, but many publishers believe it. They compete to have what's new or different or exciting.

I blame this mostly on the big media companies, and also partly on consumers who believe that consuming news is a passive activity when in reality it's an active choice. They could go find online websites and create their own RSS feed, for example, and then they wouldn't be stuck listening to drivel. But it does take some work and some awareness.

For example, and I don't want to go into details about specific political parties, think about all of the polls about the election. Those are mostly meaningless. We'll find out exactly what public opinion is on Election Day. It's not that you couldn't have a poll, but if you're posting new polling data every day it's because you're desperate to cover up for the fact that you don't have anything new to say.

It would feel hopeless if they didn't give you some "feel good" every once in a while. Just feels like the orphancrushingmachine sometimes