Op-Ed: The words that make the news – Idiocy, incompetence, stupidity, fraud, crime, etc.

Australian legislation could force social media firms to take steps to prevent those under 16 years of age from accessing platforms such as X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File Michael M. Santiago

There’s a pattern forming in common usage in media. These words and their equivalents are almost entirely unavoidable in the news. They are admittedly mostly opinionated words, but words like fraud and crime are equally hard to avoid.

These words are all used to direct the audience to a point of view, a specific perspective All sides of any debate use them. That doesn’t quite explain why they’re so prevalent. It just explains why nobody solves problems.

You’ll notice that words like fraud and crime are not opinionated words. They’re “qualifications” of their information. They have solid unambiguous meanings, every second of every day.

The word “idiocy” is a case in point.  A search of “idiocy” on Google News indicates that the word is very popular to the point of being almost a default headline worldwide. The word “incompetence” is equally at plague levels on just about any subject.

The point here is that in any type of situational analysis there are strong indicators of core issues. Statisticians could spend years tracking the use of the word incompetence in so many contexts,

Market researchers could explore whether constant references to idiocy are important to audiences. Maybe not? Maybe the market samples are so used to idiocy that they don’t notice it anymore.

These could be very useful studies. A PhD or so could be written about the tireless coverage of apocalyptic idiocy, or chronic sycophantic incompetence, for example.  

…Or maybe someone might like to find out why these topics dominate just about every bit of information regarding the whole of human existence right now.

The social dimension to these expressions and their usage is truly interesting, particularly in social media, that fountain of human perception:

If someone continuously yells “Fire!” other people might notice, particularly if things are falling down and collapsing. They might even do something about it.

If people constantly yell “idiocy, incompetence, stupidity, fraud, crime”, etc. absolutely nothing happens.

Any theories, geniuses?