-Did you see this? I'm so angry.
-I'm pretty sure that didn't happen. Source?
-Hey, I'm not a journalist, I'm a regular person and FURIOUS.
Saw an unironic exchange like that, and the idea that it's not real so you don't need to be mad about it offended him.
Illustrates something about discourse.
And look, interesting lies can be rhetorically effective, the challenge then is to make the mistruths uninteresting.
“It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true…But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.” (Whitehead)
100%. I think a large chunk of human suffering comes from us pursuing interesting and untrue things, and ppl who want to be more truthful/accurate have the unfair burden of dressing up a lot of truths in interesting framings.
The problem is that for many the anger has become their identity. So pointing out that many of the causes of that anger are… unfactual then becomes you undermining their identity. Which just makes them even angrier.
