Very common things or technologies that have been around for many years can be made to be sound ultra-dangerous when described in a certain way, and I wonder if they made their debut in today's climate if they would be accepted.
- Over 40k people die in the United States each year in automobile crashes. If 40k people died each year in commercial air travel in the United States - hell, if 1k people died each year in commercial air travel - which transports far more people each year than automobiles do, it would be a national crisis and airplanes might not be allowed to fly. You know how there are those electronic signs above interstates that show how many people have died YTD on that state's roads? What if there was a sign at every airport showing how many people had died in crashes of planes that either took off or landed at that airport?
- Also, cars run on gasoline. Gasoline is an extremely toxic, dangerous, and highly flammable substance, yet 16-year-old kids with cash or a credit card can go to a pump on any street corner, dispense 20 gallons of gas on the ground and all around the gas pump, and burn everything in sight. It's available everywhere, and the automobiles described above, which kill 40k year anyway, run on this stuff. In fact, they carry around extremely large tanks to hold the gasoline the car runs on.
- As the technology becomes more mature, a lot of social media platforms (particularly Twitter) are going to be viewed like talk radio is today. If on a talk radio show a string of callers is outraged about a topic, you probably chuckle and change the channel. No reasonable person takes, say, Paul Finebaum seriously. If someone is legitimately effected by something they heard on Finebaum, you think they're kind of crazy. If on social media a horde is outraged about a topic, it becomes a national news story and a company, a politician, a celebrity, etc. could be forced into apologizing or doing something to remedy the situation. It's a big deal that big segments of the population take seriously. Then 24 hours later, the mob has moved onto someone else.
I think social media has the outsized grip on society that is does currently is because it is a new medium, and we are still trying to figure out how to react to what it says and how to "place" it in our society. For starters, we can begin taking it waaaaaaay less seriously.
