This may be the single best descriptor I could think of for what is now the primary mode of modern journalism. One 'bombshell' headline after the next keeps people feeling a perpetual state of crisis, while also making it super easy to gloss over the fact that nearly every one of the previous bombshells was misleading or entirely false.
No need to tell people the truth or carefully unravel the misinformation that people have now aggressively committed to memory through forced amygdala hijacking. Instead, just put up a new and even scarier bombshell story (that will also later turn out to be false) and everyone will forget all about the last one just in time for it to get quietly retracted.
Quote:
"The American Napoleon generated controversies at such a fantastic rate that stations like CNN and MSNBC (and Fox too) were able to keep ratings high by moving from mania to mania, hyping stories on the way up but not always following them down. The moment the narrative premise of any bombshell started to fray, the next story in line was bumped to the front.
News outlets paid off old editorial promises with new headlines: Ponzi journalism.
This technique of using the next bombshell story to push the last one down a memory-hole — call it Bombholing — needed a polarized audience to work."
Polarization, of course, is super easy when nobody talks to each other and other factions of media and social media are pushing censorship as hard as they can, ensuring that nobody ever interacts with people who have a different perspective (other than the most extreme voices who break through the epistemic bubbles via sheer absurdity).
What a world we've created. Good job.
