How Our Society Glamorizes Poor Choices

In a lot of ways, my old website Right Wing News was on the cutting edge of what the media has almost universally become in 2023. Based on the name, you might think that our most popular articles were all news. Right Wing News to be more precise. Au contraire, my friend. Our most popular stories were mostly what I used to call, “human interest stories.” These were stories that evoked emotion, made you angry, or made you go, “Wow, I can relate to that.” Here are some real-world examples of stories we did that got at least 400,000 views:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Forwarded this email? [Subscribe here]() for more [How Our Society Glamorizes Poor Choices]( [John Hawkins]( Sep 23   [READ IN APP](   In a lot of ways, my old website [Right Wing News]( was on the cutting edge of what the media has almost universally become in 2023. Based on the name, you might think that our most popular articles were all news. Right Wing News to be more precise. Au contraire, my friend. Our most popular stories were mostly what I used to call, “human interest stories.” These were stories that evoked emotion, made you angry, or made you go, “Wow, I can relate to that.” Here are some real-world examples of stories we did that got at least 400,000 views: She Places Two Eggs Inside A Plastic Bag & What She Did Next Changed Breakfast Forever! Video: This Body Camera Footage Might Have Saved These Cops From Prison (Disturbing) Video: Man Proudly Films Fence He Built To Keep His Dog In The Yard. Wait For It, It’s Hilarious VIDEO: Maggots ate his face so he hid in a hole to die, what happened next will truly amaze you! His Parents Found Out He Disrespected His Teacher And DO THIS To Teach Him Some Manners! Looking at it now, you’re probably thinking, “This looks like the same crap I see on Twitter and in the Daily Mail every day.” It is. It’s just that we were doing it all the way back in 2015 and 2016. Now, you may have never thought about what makes stories like this so irresistible, but as someone who was in the business of putting them out, I have. First of all, they were interesting titles, albeit not world-shaking. You see, only on rare occasions can you KNOW something is going to go viral. Most of the time, it’s like, “That can do well,” and then, almost unexpectedly, it explodes. The titles are also very “clickbaity.” There’s an unanswered question involved there that gets people’s brains whirring. Additionally – and this is very important – because these stories were not being widely discussed, we had an opportunity to be the only news source feeding them to a large portion of our audience. That last part was critically important back then and is much more important today. This is because there are an almost unlimited number of news sources out there. You may get your news from Cable news, AM talk radio, Twitter, Facebook, newspapers, or an almost countless number of online sources. The formula that we had dialed in seven years ago? That’s still how it’s being done, except with so much more competition, people have realized the value of “creating” the news. How do they do that? They find a tweet, a clip on TikTok or they interview people -- and what do they look for? Certainly, not real news because most real news is fairly dry. Also, not the same old, same old. After all, “dog bites man” isn’t a story, but “man bites dog” is. Furthermore, do you know why they don’t do “positive,” “uplifting” news? Because for whatever reason, probably something deep in human nature, most people won’t look at it. A story about healthy, happy successful people who adhere to societal norms doesn’t draw flies. We need emotion, drama, or at least to get that smug feeling of superiority that comes from having our view of the world validated. Controversy is great too, particularly because the more people that get engaged, even if it’s just to fight in the comments section, the more the algorithms on social media that drive so much traffic these days like it. What fits that bill? Quite a number of things potentially, especially when you consider that negative attention can be almost as lucrative as positive attention in many cases. Being hated by one group is often the key to being loved by another just as being attacked by one group can make you sympathetic to another group because you’re a “victim.” Have you ever heard of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold? Adam Lanza? Stephen Paddock? Who were these people? Disturbed nobodies – until they killed a bunch of people, which, for a few brief weeks, had more people talking about them than any senator, actor, or rock star. If you want attention bad enough to die for it, bad enough to kill for it, our society will deliver it: How about the “Karen” or “weirdo-teacher” of the day? The way this plays out varies over time, but basically, it’s someone behaving badly who is savaged by people online for a day or two before they move on to the next target of the day. Can being an inappropriate a**hole make you famous? Yes, it can: How about people promoting how great it supposedly is to be trans? It’s, “Oh, I got my breasts cut off yesterday, look at my scars! It’s so great to be a boy now.” This gets pushed by the people doing it and activists, but you don’t hear a lot of talk about the massive numbers of surgeries that have gone wrong or all the people who realize it was a mistake and then kill themselves. It’s kind of like seeing dozens of stories about how much fun it is to play Four Square in the middle of the freeway at 4 AM without ever seeing follow-up stories telling everyone how it worked out later. Similarly, [newspapers promote weird alternative lifestyles to their readers]( on a regular basis with no warning about why it’s a bad idea or follow-up showing the havoc it causes in people’s lives long term: Our culture is also obsessed with pushing victimhood. The Black Lives Matter movement spent most of 2020 and 2021 turning career criminals who attacked police officers or resisted arrest into martyrs that everyone should aspire to be like. George Floyd was a junkie with a long criminal record who once held a gun to a pregnant woman’s stomach during an armed robbery. When he died after being brutally detained by the police for passing a counterfeit bill, he was high on meth and fentanyl. After he died, people put up statues of this horrible human being like he was George Washington or something: Today in America, there is also an endless parade of increasingly ridiculous “victims” that are trumpeted to the general public. We have people bemoaning the mediocre salaries certain companies pay low-wage workers as if they didn’t willingly choose those jobs. Black Americans are “victims” if they can’t figure out how to get ID so they can vote. People with college educations are “victims” because they’re expected to pay back the loans they took out to pay for those degrees. Over the last week, Senator John Fetterman has been treated like a victim because he likes to dress as if he’s going to work at a car wash and the Senate had a dress code that forced him to wear a suit or not go on the Senate floor. We glamorize black gangbangers and thugs as if they’re representative of most black Americans. We incessantly promote confused, damaged trans advocates like Dylan Mulvaney. And every kid in America seems to think they can be a social media influencer, but why in the world would we want to encourage that? Also, at what point do we go, “Maybe we should stop glorifying divorce and single motherhood” since statistically, we know it destroys a lot of kids? We have people glamorizing [being overweight]( these days, which is nuts. What about drug use? Even if you choose to ignore the [enormous amount of evidence it’s bad for you]( it’s pretty clearly not good for you. Is it a good idea to make it look cool? You’re certainly not going to introduce drugs to any area and see it improve people’s lives unless those people happen to be the ones making most of the profit from it. When do we get back to glamorizing truth, justice, and the American way again? How about the Constitution, capitalism, and the Founding Fathers? Cleanliness, Godliness, and morality? Working hard, saving your money, and staying together for the good of the kids? How about glamorizing what has been successful in the past? What brings us together instead of what pulls us apart? How about pushing things that turn people into winners with happy lives instead of sad losers with a perpetual sense of victimhood? If we all know that a community full of hard-working, married, Christians is going to be safer, more productive, and better in almost every way than a community full of Critical Race Theory touting furries and mentally ill pronoun people, why isn’t our society glamorizing what works? The danger of building a societal system that rewards damaged screw-ups, mutants, and deviants with attention is that we may all end up surrounded by people who’ve been convinced that being damaged screw-ups, mutants, and deviants is the best way to “get noticed.” That’s why a smart society holds up examples of what it wants, not what it doesn’t want. --------------------------------------------------------------- [Upgrade to paid]( [Share]( [Leave a comment]( [101 Things All Young Adults Should Know]( You're currently a free subscriber to [Culturcidal by John Hawkins](. For the full experience, [upgrade your subscription.]( [Upgrade to paid](   [Like]( [Comment]( [Restack](   © 2023 John Hawkins 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 [Unsubscribe]() [Get the app]( writing]()