Generalizations and facts

Recently, I ran across a social media post with 100,000 followers which stated that “the media is the communist arm of the government.”

At first blush, it is easy to write off an outlandish comment like this as a function of a neurodegenerative illness or a psychological disorder.

Certainly, as a middle-of-the-road regular contributor to articles on the Think Tank page, I have never thought of myself as a communist. Truth be told, the Free Press neither offers me direction about what I write, nor do they pay me for my op-ed pieces. A post like this also does a grave disservice to the many dedicated journalists who ply their trade according to strict ethical guidelines.

At the same time, however, I realize that there are people who don’t read the Free Press because they believe that the mainstream media (MSM) have been co-opted and corrupted by government subsidies.

It is easy to generalize about a group of people like journalists and, in the process, present those generalizations as facts when they are nothing more than opinions. But the question is, what motivates people to engage in this kind of behaviour?

A good question to ask yourself when you see opinions presented as facts, is what is that person’s history with their subject matter. In the case of the aforementioned post, it turns out that the poster is also an anti-vaxxer who has been criticized by the mainstream media for his unscientific views.

A problematic history with certain subject matter though is not the only reason people engage in generalizations which distort the factual reality of their subject matter. Often it is the case that these people are uncomfortable with cognitive dissonance. As Paul Simon sang in The Boxer, “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” The danger associated with this kind of selective hearing is that it filters out anything that might challenge a person’s point of view.

Another recent post caught my eye. In this post it was opined that Olympic female hockey players were “promoting a LGBT agenda.” The poster in this case ignored the personal stories and accomplishments of these inspiring athletes and instead focused on their sexual orientation.

Again, what motivates someone to be critical and generalize when they could just as easily be caring and complimentary? The answer is that there are secondary gains associated with the ability to generalize about a group of people or a social issue.

These social gains are connected to the comfort associated with group solidarity and tribal identity. If your followers think that you possess esoteric knowledge then you are ahead of the game. And having a viewpoint that is not widely shared but impresses others can be a big boost to someone’s self-esteem and ego.

One of the worst recent examples of generalizing about a group of people has occurred because of the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting. Certain individuals have weaponized this incident to target transgender people. The facts are that of the 5,748 mass shootings in the U.S. between 2013 and 2025 just five, or 0.1 per cent, were carried out by transgender shooters.

Why then has this transgender rhetoric rolled across the internet and scapegoated the transgender community? It is another example of how quick some people are to generalize about groups of people that they know next to nothing about.

It is also an example of how easy it is to generalize about complicated scenarios in the process of trying to find simple solutions. As someone who previously worked on a Threat Assessment Team, I know that the roots of violence are multiple, intertwined and intricate. There are a variety of factors which may or may not predispose primarily adolescent males to engage in a school shooting.

Blaming transgender people for what happened in Tumbler Ridge benefits no one. All it does is engender hatred towards a group of people who need our help rather than our judgment and condemnation.

But that is the dark path we go down when we indulge in generalizations about groups of people.

Mac Horsburgh writes from Winnipeg.