Twisting the Truth Around America’s Latest Viral Sensation // Variant Perception #30

A few times a year, America gets swept away by a viral sensation. Well, maybe more than a few times a year… damn do we love someone getting their 5-minutes of fame.

The most recent viral craze has been Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North Of Richmond” country song. From nowhere, Anthony rocketed to the top of the cultural consciousness and received 30 million views on his video in two weeks.

Whenever something goes viral like this, it piques my curiosity. Anthony’s song struck a nerve within the consciousness of America, a direct hit to the cultural center. ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ speaks to a large group of Americans of all walks of life who both feel pain and frustration for their position in life, their perceived lack of ability to change that, and the all too real feelings of unfairness surrounding many peoples’ lives in 21st century America.

If you haven’t watched the video, go and watch it. I’d like for you to have the context before reading the rest of this newsletter.

So, how come this song is speaking to millions of people? What’s in it that’s capturing the spirit of a moment?

If you ask the media, they’ll make it a partisan trend. If you ask individuals, they share how this song evokes strong emotion. The pain and anger erupt out of Anthony when he sings. What’s so interesting to me, as well, is that the song does not appear to only resonates with a stereotypical country music audience (even though, as I’ll show, that’s what the media wants to report).

A YouTuber who self-titles himself as a “BLACK LIBERAL” reacts and questions why this song is being categorized as a “conservative anthem” (the only reason he asks that is because that’s what certain progressive political media establishments were calling it).

Countless other people (of all walks of life, backgrounds, and races) have posted reaction videos where they show raw, genuine emotion connecting to this song.

However, the video below is my favorite. Some unsung hero of the internet made a compilation video stitching together three minutes of reactions to this song.

I cannot recommend watching this video enough because it makes the second half of this newsletter make much more sense.

Because while individual people, the people who are our neighbors, friends, and family, resonate with the pain, anger, and frustration Anothony expresses in the song, the media has a different take.

In his book “What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies, " one of my favorite authors, Tim Urban," speaks about how our politicized media practices “information twisting.” It’s a method to appeal to our lower biases in service to whichever ordained group they support and “leaves no room for mixed message[s].”

MSNBC must support the progressive perspective. Fox News is the conservative. End of story. That’s their motive and their playbook.

Urban illustrates information twisting with a comedic imaginary world where the dominant narratives are either pro-raccoon or pro-dog. He shows us what that fictional world looks like through these six events.

These neutral descriptions above represent local news or Walter Cronkite's style of reporting, just the facts. However, that’s not what much of our national, political media does.

Our political media takes events that, as Urban states, “align with the narrative” and twists them to be viewed as trends. Each party, in this case, the pro-dog party and the pro-raccoon party, have media arms that get to work twisting these six events to reframe their side as the “good” side and the other side as “bad.”

That’s how we end up with this:

After each side gets its paws to work, we end up with two versions of reality: the pro-dog and pro-raccoon sides. Feel familiar? The headlines above are more entertaining, sure. But they do not paint an accurate picture of what’s happening in the world. Reality is far less interesting, far less inflammatory, and far less indicative of intentional trends.

It’s no different for our friend Oliver Anthony.

One of my favorite activities is to google whatever is the “thing” going on today. It gives me a clear window into the talking points of the establishment groups.

Reading these headlines, I see many organizations with a firmly held pro-dog or pro-raccoon point of view. Reality must always get sorted into one bucket or the other with these media businesses.

MSNBC says, “‘Rich Men North Of Richmond is all anger, no analysis,” subtly or not so subtly, implying that Oliver Anthony is a simple rube who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Fox News has a great headline proclaiming, “Liberals pile on Dem Senator for sharing ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ viral sensation,” as if the “liberals” viciously attacked someone who “supported” this song.

Then, take the local news Richmond Times-Dispatch and their just-the-facts headline, “Farmville Signer Oliver Anthony Goes Viral with ‘Rich Men North of Richmond.’”

Information twisting divides our country by appealing to our tribal selves. The us versus them, reactionary, inflammatory parts of our animal minds. It works so well because it appeals to two specific cognitive biases that run like ancient software programs in the human mind.

The first is the anchoring effect. This is the tendency for people to rely too heavily on the first piece of information they encounter (the "anchor") when making decisions. The initial information can unduly influence one's judgment even when presented with subsequent information.

If you’re a dedicated Fox News reader, you’re anchoring onto the first piece of information Fox News wants to feed you. It’s how our brains process patterns and store information, and it’s perfectly natural.

Then, once beliefs have been anchored, confirmation bias sneaks in. Once someone has formed an opinion based on a piece of information (like the first thing they hear about a topic), they are more likely to seek out and believe subsequent information that confirms that belief while disregarding information that contradicts it.

Anchoring effect and confirmation bias run in the background of our minds. They’re ancient programs that helped us to survive back when we lived in and among nature; however, when a group of people (aka the politicized media) actively attempt to manipulate these biases, these programs work against us.

Watch the reaction videos on youtube, read the comments, and see people from all walks of life resonate with the frustration, pain, and anger that Anthony beautifully expresses.

Does Anthony have the most articulate lyrics accurately describing WHY he feels this pain and frustration? No, he does not. That doesn’t matter in this context, however. He’s not an academic presenting a thesis on why many Americans feel stuck and angry.

Great music is about expressing, harnessing, and transferring feelings and emotions. Whether the specifics of the lyrics are factual or not does not matter.

Humans are emotional creatures. We connect through how we feel. His voice and intense expression move people to tap into their feelings of injustice and pain. He’s singing from pain. The feeling he emotes matters even more than the specific words or their correctness.

For me, I felt the song and his voice were beautiful. What’s even more beautiful, however, was watching all the reaction videos of all the people who felt their own pain and struggle and empathy for anyone else who has felt it too.

The media will continue to try and organize this country into an us versus them context. Why? It’s how they make money. If they can keep whipping people up into an enraged fervor and getting clicks to their pro-dog or pro-raccoon “analysis,” they’ll keep up with the same tricks they’ve been doing.

Our job as informed citizens is to recognize when we’re getting manipulated and choose how we prefer to respond. I choose unity.

-Jared

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