The Art of Outrage and Amplification
I don't like what you said about me! Your comments are hurtful not only to me but every other me in the world! We are all shocked and dismayed that you are so insensitive as to say what it was that you said! Furthermore, your apology is not welcome. It is too late for that! There is nothing you can say or do that will appease the outrage we all feel about your words.I make no apology for what I did that you didn't like. I was and always will be absolutely blameless in what I do. I have Right on my side. I did what I was trained to do and I did it. If someone else did not understand the situation, that is not my fault.
These and other scenarios play out every day on the world stage. This stage has gotten much larger since the advent of the Internet with Twitter, YouTube, blogs and personal social networks. What may have never have reached the light of public consciousness can get there even before the echoes of a gunshot have fully subsided. What might have taken days or weeks to bubble to the surface and burst into daylight now rushes us to comment and opine in real-time without careful vetting or the ramification of our words.
As a mere peon in the grand scope of published words, I can say anything I want to say and 99% or more of the country will never know I even exist much less opined about something I thought. If I were Aston Kutcher with a million Twitter-ites hanging on my every Twit, I could outrage half the population of the country in seconds with 140 characters or less. Those million Twitter-ites include news outlets that echo his words and can carry them to a far wider audience through cable news shows and other entertainment television programs .
If I were the President of the United States and I made an off-handed remark that anyone was anything for any reason, I could actually ignite a global conflagration. Once the initial statement is made, it is there forever. Even as the sound waves fade away there are they who keep chanting the and replaying those words to keep them alive for the goals and objectives that they themselves support.
It is a two part response. Take offense the personal affront and then declare that since you are no different that all these other people, the affront applies equally to them. Now the game is afoot. There is an offense and a defense just like in football. However, the measure of the effectiveness of the defense is measured by how much collateral damage can be piled up between the offense and the QB. In this game the QB is the one who was maligned and the offense is the person who made the remarks. The collateral damage is all the people who were drawn into the game through the Amplification process who had no reason to be there or involved.
This Game is just another Tuna Scheme. It trades on the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people who never should have been involved. The wounds run deep and are not easily healed. The scars likewise remain visible and serve as a reminder of the Game.
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