by Tobin Smith
The punchline? Azarian makes the point that we all must understand that when it comes to our human mind, believing is more of a reflex than a careful and methodical action.
After meeting thousands of Foxhole addicts, you will get no argument from me on this.
CHAPTER 15
The Facts About Fox News TV Addiction
According to Nielsen Media Research, Inc., in 2018 the average American watched TV for 4 hours 32 minutes every day. As you know now, Americans over age 65 watch 7.2 hours a day.
The time people have spent in front of the TV, in spite of the warnings about obesity and other harmful effects, strongly suggests that America had a severe addiction to TV before Fox News. In fact, a Scientific American study and multiple other longitudinal studies have found that yes, TV acts on the brain like any addictive drug.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ADDICTION TO TV AND ADDICTION TO FOX NEWS’S TRIBAL IDENTITY PORN IS THE KEY
The question on TV addiction is, “How many different channels do you watch?” According to the latest Nielsen report, the average household receives about 190 channels—up 45 percent from 2008. Over the past six years, however, the number of channels consumers watch has remained consistently around 17.
What we have found is that the one key marker of Fox News addiction is that the Fox News addict watches primarily only one Pay TV channel (other than sports coverage): Fox News.
What differentiates the regular TV addict from the Foxhole addict is the sheer amount of time spent on just the Fox News channel. Back-of-the-napkin math says the Fox News addict may consume up to more than 7,900 hours of its potent brand of tribal hate pornography per year.
When we asked the spouses, children, relatives, and friends of Fox News addicts, “How often is the main TV in the home tuned to Fox News?” the overwhelming majority answered, “All day. Their main TV is always on Fox News. They never turn it off!”
Major Point: Addiction to television to zone out, kill time, or stop boredom is one thing. Binge-watching three or more hours of Fox News tribal identity hate porn every day is a whole other thing.
Vegging out to TV shows and visiting imaginary TV friends is a form of estrangement, without question. But the critical difference between the everyday TV addict and the Fox News addict I have found is that the everyday TV addict is not:
proactively poisoning family and friend relationships.
pushing people away with radicalized tribal partisanship and dogma.
developing degenerative and emotionally corrosive feelings of hate and fear toward (or conspiracy theories about) people of color or people of other political perspectives.
desocialized to the point of becoming estranged from spouses, children, relatives, and friends.
There is clearly a spectrum of desocialization related to TV addiction. That spectrum begins with “benign desocialization” (so much TV watching the addict does not have time or interest in much social behavior) and ends with “radicalized partisan desocialization” (tribal political/cultural behavior and opinions of the addict are so intense and socially obnoxious that family and friends are pushed away, resulting in chronic loneliness for the addict).
FOX NEWS ALERT: IF YOU HAVE A FOXAHOLIC IN YOUR FAMILY OR CIRCLE OF FRIENDS, YOU CAN TELL THEM ODDS ARE THEIR FOX NEWS ADDICTION IS KILLING THEM
New public health data shows up to 60 percent higher risk of premature death in desocialized and estranged Americans aged sixty and over. Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, reports, “There is robust evidence that desocialized isolation and loneliness significantly increase risk for premature mortality, and the magnitude of the risk exceeds that of many leading health indicators including obesity, alcoholism, and smoking. With an increasingly aging population, the effect on public health is only anticipated to increase.”
Guess what? Many Foxholes age sixty and older are by definition desocialized via their social derangement disorder, and many are estranged from family and friends because of their radical hyperpartisan behavior.
The most controversial research I am presenting in this book is the connection between Foxaholism and up to 60 percent higher rates of premature death from the chronic loneliness that results from the Foxaholic’s family and friend estrangement.
According to polling from my firm Transformity Research and published public health data, desocialized addiction to Fox News that results in close family and friend estrangement is more lethal to senior Americans than obesity or smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.
How can that be?
The 2017 report out of Brigham Young University on the chronic loneliness epidemic in seniors shows that chronic loneliness is deadlier than either obesity and smoking and should be considered a significant public health hazard in America. In this review, BYU researchers looked at 218 separate studies of the health effects of social isolation and loneliness involving nearly four million people over age forty. They discovered that chronically lonely people have a 50 percent increased risk of early death compared to those with good social connections. Similar studies show 60 percent higher rates of premature death in this group. In contrast, obesity raises the chance of dying before the age of seventy by around 30 percent. As Julianne Holt-Lunstad puts it, “we are facing a ‘loneliness epidemic.’ The challenge we face now is what can be done about it.”
Here is Dr. Dean Ornish, the founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, on the effects of chronic loneliness: “I am not aware of any other factor — not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery — that has a greater impact on our incidence of illness, and [chance of] premature death than chronic loneliness.”
NOW WE KNOW WHY AND HOW CHRONIC LONELINESS PREMATURELY KILLS SENIORS
Chronic loneliness has been linked to everything from heart disease to Alzheimer’s disease for decades. It is no secret to anyone who cares for or lives with seniors that depression is common among the lonely. Oncology research shows that cancers tear through their bodies more rapidly, and viruses hit them harder and more frequently than socially engaged seniors. But a new long-term research study out of UCLA’s biologic psychology department suggests why this is. It turns out the pain of chronic loneliness activates the primordial caveman response of—wait for it—our amygdala triggered fight-or-flight response!
Now hmmm, let’s see—which kind of people have been proven by neuroscientists to be genetically more sensitive to fight-or-flight fear? You got it—self-identified conservatives! When I first read this study on why chronic loneliness raises the risk of prematurely killing seniors I was blown away.
Yes—this is the same involuntary amygdala response that comes from frightful images and sounds being flashed on viewers’ screens. It turns out that our caveman logic tells our brain that being lonely is imminently dangerous. Our caveman logic sees loneliness as the equivalent of being literally forced out of our tribe and back in the fearful food chain of nasty predators. To your still primordial brain, feeling lonely is a signal to prepare your body for being at high risk of being attacked.
Once again, let’s follow another self-reinforcing negative outcome feedback loop for intense radicalized Fox News tribal identity hyperpartisans. This time, the end result is not just tribal activation and validation—this outcome is deadly:
If you are a self-identified conservative, neuroscience has proven you are significantly more sensitive and reactive to fearful images and sounds than self-identified liberals or politically unaffiliated people.
As such, you are much easier to emotionally manipulate into tribal mode using fear-based TV images, sound, and copy sent into the safety of your home.
When you viscerally react to fearful images, your brain involuntarily kicks into fight-or-flight mode and you are emotionally and physiologically engaged.
When you are emotionally engaged, you are much easier to manipulate with the carefully orchestrated cascade of tribal activation and validation
opinion segment triggers.
The pleasure chemicals released to a tribal viewer from feeling the visceral Fox News emotional dump then air punching righteous victory segments are highly addictive.
If you become an addicted and desocialized Foxhole watching thousands of hours of Fox News’s tribal activation and validation pornography,
You are at high risk of becoming desocialized and estranged from family members and long-time friends by your political and cultural intensity which ultimately pushes them away.
Which in turn results in you becoming chronically lonely.
The net result of this degenerative self-reinforcing feedback loop is simple: Self-identified conservatives who watch many hours a week of Fox News’s tribal identity pornography are more at risk of becoming hyper-tribalized Foxholes and chronically lonely than normally socialized Fox News watchers—which raises their risk of premature death up to 60 percent over normally socialized non-hyperpartisan senior Americans.
Period.
According to a recent NPR article on this new research by Angus Chen:
For decades, researchers have been seeing signs that the immune systems of lonely people are working differently. Lonely people’s white blood cells seem to be more active in a way that increases inflammation, a natural immune response to wounding and bacterial infection.
On top of that, they seem to have lower levels of antiviral compounds known as interferons. That seemed to provide a link to a lot of the poor health outcomes associated with loneliness, since chronic inflammation has been linked to everything from cancer to depression. The human body isn’t built to hold a high level of inflammation for years.
Loneliness in essence “hits the switch” on the defense plan our bodies initiate in the face of mortal danger, Cole thinks, if isolation is somehow truly lethal. “At this point, my best guess was that loneliness really is one of the most threatening experiences we can have,” he says.
Where does this hardwired human instinct come from? You guessed it—back to our innate primordial caveman logic. Go back to your tribal psychology. Our ancient forebears banded together for food and for protection. More important—“‘to be ostracized from your tribe was a death sentence,’ says Charles Raison, a psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. . . . ‘In that case, the stressful response to loneliness would simply be the body’s way of trying to survive exile.’”
So now we know the physiology and pathology related to chronic loneliness resulting from family and social estrangement. Now let’s home in on the part that Fox News brain plays with hyper-intense tribal partisan behavior.
WE ALSO KNOW THE MAIN CAUSE OF ELDER ESTRANGEMENT
Granted fewer Americans aged sixty and older today are married and have as many children as seniors a generation ago. Many retired Americans move to Florida or elsewhere in the Sun Belt and away from regional family and friends. Yet in a massive UC San Francisco research project, the No. 1 cause of family estrangement from elders was not geography or divorce; it was “pushing away loved ones” as in desocialized seniors pushing family and longtime friends away with their intense hyperpartisan behavior.
Twenty years into the age of Fox News, one of the most common ways that the elderly push away family members is by becoming that radicalized, hyperpartisan obnoxious nut job whom no other family member wants to be around.
As author Edwin Lyngar shares in his book How I Lost My Father to Fox News:
How did I lose my Dad? He consumes a daily diet of nothing except Fox News. He has for a decade or more. He has no email account and doesn’t watch sports. He refuses to so much as touch a keyboard and has never been on the Internet, ever. He thinks higher education destroys people, not only because of Fox News but also because I drifted left during and after graduate school.
SO WHAT, WHO CARES, AND WHY DOES THIS MATTER?
I’m sure at this point you are asking how much of this epidemic in geriatric estrangement and increased risk of premature death of estranged seniors is a direct result of Fox News brain and Foxhole social derangement syndrome.
I will be using part of the proceeds of this book to commission a research study on that very question, but the early evidence suggests that the answer to the question is “massive.”
I have more than enough evidence from e-polling and from reading thousands of stories from people estranged from Foxaholic family and friends to estimate that Foxaholism affects hundreds of thousands of American families and millions of American relationships.
Key Point: At this point, Foxhole social derangement disorder is undeniably correlated to the epidemic of increased premature geriatric death in many parts of America.
As I’ve shared with you, because of the latest biological and social psychology and neuroscience research, a few things have become crystal clear to me with regard to Fox News’s powerful brand of tribal activation, validation, and arousal pornography:
Tribally hardwired human beings in general are not psychologically evolved or prepared to continually binge-watch tens of thousands of hours of viscerally emotional and tribally arousing video pornography without sustaining damage.
Because of their sensitivity to fear images and sound stimuli, self-identified conservatives are especially psychologically unsuited to binge-watching tens of thousands of hours of this material.
The most vulnerable people on the planet to Fox News’s political and cultural tribal identity and activation pornography are the more than one hundred million Americans living in ALICE households whose everyday personal trauma is so profound and self-esteem so depleted that the best source of positive self-esteem in many cases comes from what they see on Fox News.
The First Amendment has become weaponized and algorithmicized to enlarge and inflame America’s political and cultural divisions to pre-Civil War levels solely for the profit of commercial tribal identity media and entertainment enterprises.
Part of the bad news here is social science psychologists tell us “loneliness is contagious.” Older adults who feel lonely are more prone to behave in ways that may cause other people to not want to be around them—like becoming a Foxhole.
Psychologists from the University of Chicago who analyzed data from the Framingham Heart Study, a long-term ongoing cardiovascular study, found that solitary seniors tend to further isolate themselves by pushing people away and not making efforts to engage with others.
Let’s not forget the backfire effect embedded in our hardwired tribal cognitive bias: Social psychologists tell us that with the radicalized self-identified right-wing tribe member, any perceived slight against their tribe from anyone feels emotionally traumatizing to them. Psychologists also report that after enough rejections and being made to feel like an outcast, a tribalized Foxhole begins to believe that people—even their family members and friends—are cruel and will never “get” the moral and political superiority of his tribe and ultimately are not worth the effort to stay connected with.
Social scientists say that because these tribal hyperpartisans begin to perceive people as threats to their sworn allegiance, they disengage from those threats, family member or not.
Just what we all needed, right? The final phase of the self-reinforcing tribal activation and validation digital feedback loop is the addict’s disengagement from the only people who give them unconditional love. Still think massive doses of tribal hate pornography are just harmless fun?
CHAPTER 16
What Then Is the Only Logical Conclusion About the Power, Intent, and Pathologies of Fox News’s Tribal Warfare Playbook in 2019?
All my inside Fox News stories, my producer conversations, my social and evolutionary psychological research, my meeting thousands of Fox News fans, and my meeting and reading the words of hundreds of Foxholes up-close and personal brings me to this dangerous conclusion: that allowing the unchecked growth of emotionally toxic, nuclear-grade, digital, white tribal activation, validation, and amplification video porn content is ultimately a national and
inter-family relationships suicide pact.
Said more simply: When big tech’s predatory technology exploits our innate primal weaknesses with Fox News’ video content, it’s Fox News that gains control of your psyche and your brain stem—not the technology. The $100 billion-plus digital surveillance and content redistribution industry is simply the delivery vehicle. Without tribal fear and hate-based media content, big tech has nothing with which to exploit mankind’s numerous, easily hackable, psychological flaws, in general, and the hackable flaws of proud self-identified political and cultural conservatives (and liberals), specifically.
We’re all proud of what we consider our virtues, but something is way messed up when a person feels virtuous when hating on thirty to forty percent of their fellow citizens. Especially if you consider these “others” as your existential, cultural, or political enemy, whom you actively despise, loathe, and hold toxic contempt for during most waking hours of your life.
Big tech’s information and digital-communication technology and platforms do indeed spread nuclear-grade right and left wing tribal fear and hate activation content to over 200 million Americans every day. But unlike the lack-of-recognition that addiction to watching three-plus daily hours of Fox News’s white tribal identity porn is profoundly unhealthy for many Americans (yet we acknowledge the emotional toxicity of sex porn?), addiction to big tech applications for hours per day is now considered by all experts to be mentally unhealthy.
We have identified and are researching an epidemic of anxiety in young people due to their living online for many hours per day, but we don’t recognize the serious emotional toxicity issues directly related to binge-watching hours upon hours of Fox News’s extremely powerful white tribal identity porn.