Interesting new ContraPoints video about cringe culture, disgust, and the klan fallacy. https://twitter.com/ContraPoints/status/1259488394872307712

The association fallacy, AKA the Klan fallacy, is a simple con that you should be aware of so you don't fall for it.

If someone wants you to hate a minority group, they can simply find a bad person who happens to be in that minority group. They can then fixate on that person, suggesting they represent the whole group, which they emphatically do not.

As all minority groups have a lot of people in, this trick is easy to pull off with *any* minority group. You could, for example, look up left-handed murderers, and talk endlessly about any you find, until you've convinced people that *all* left-handed people are bad.

You could hypothetically do this with majority groups too (it would be easier to find overlaps, what with the group being bigger), but you'd have a harder time convincing people to be afraid of the majority group because THEY'RE NOT ALREADY AFRAID OF THAT GROUP.

It's easier to convince people of things they already feel. Easier to use flimsy "logic" to convince them of what they already viscerally believe. And that's that people who look different to them are SCARY, and people who think differently are WEIRD and perhaps LYING.

Thinking again about this article I read: https://twitter.com/zoeblade/status/1258693278003847168

"I just found out other people picture things in their mind's eye. I can't do that."

"I don't believe you."

That's a visceral reaction, denial that people can be different in ways you can't see.

But I digress.

It's easier to pander to people's existing fears. This is why film monsters so often look like insects.

And in unchecked capitalism, this supply-and-demand of focusing on stories (even true news stories, that are just very selectively cherry-picked), reinforces people's existing biases, further vilifying people in minorities.

There's a quote in Nightcrawler that sums up this abhorrent state of affairs quite well:

"We find our viewers are more interested in urban crime creeping into the suburbs. What that means is a victim, or victims, preferably well-off and white, injured at the hands of the poor or a minority."

"The best and clearest way that I can phrase it to you, Lou, to capture the spirit of what we air, is think of our newscast as a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut."

Of course, film monsters don't ALWAYS look like insects. Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, and Ace Ventura have a certain other very specific idea of who the audience is already afraid of or disgusted by.