Oscar’s Laminar Flow Theory of Elite Trolling

Instead of Tech Tuesday this week, I have a somewhat short post prompted by Pillsy in the comments of Burt’s post.  So before I get to my theory, I have to explain my analogy.

In Fluid Mechanics, Laminar Flow is flow that is even and layered.  If it helps, think of a molecule of a fluid traveling from point A to point B.  In laminar flow, that molecule will follow a straight line, for the most part (it might wibble and wobble a bit, but the direction of travel will always be towards point B).  If the flow is turbulent, that molecule will be all over the place.  It will eventually get to point B, but along the way it’ll go up, down, left, right, and back towards A.

Another feature of fluid mechanics is what we call the “no-slip” condition.  This states that if a fluid has a viscosity greater than zero, some of the molecules of that fluid will stick to the any given surface (the ‘wall’, in the parlance) they travel along, causing the fluid at the wall to have a velocity of zero.  Since the fluid at the wall has a velocity of zero, the molecules just a bit away from the wall will have a velocity just a smidge above zero, and the molecules even further away will have just a little more velocity, etc. until you get to what we call the free stream, where the fluid molecules are not feeling the effects of the wall.  The region between the wall and the free stream is called the boundary layer.

So it is within this laminar boundary layer that my analogy lives.  Imagine a laminar boundary layer, the fluid all nice and layered near the wall, moving kind of slow, but very even.  As you move away from the wall, the fluid becomes faster as it approaches freestream, and thus is at a higher risk for becoming turbulent, especially if it encounters an obstruction in the flow.

Think of this as a flow of public perception.

Now imagine all of us regular, low profile people exist near the wall.  We are not seen, we are not part of the public perception.  The closer you are to the freestream, the more you are in the public perception (think of the freestream as wide spread fame; Will Smith and Chris Rock exist full time in the freestream, as do most politicians).

Now for my theory:  “Cancel Culture”, or “Cancelation”, is (for the most part) elites trolling the masses.  Not the elites who exist full time in the freestream¹, but those a bit further down, the ones who think of themselves as elite, or want to be elite, but don’t want to be in the freestream.  Those elites like being able to say whatever crosses their minds, but they don’t like being forced into the turbulence of the freestream because they don’t really like the taste of shoe leather when they shove their foot in their mouths.

What’s my evidence for this?  It’s who is setting the narrative.

It’s all the news links I see that are click bait about the latest hot take about some problematic bit of entertainment.  Hot takes that usually ignore massive amounts of context that undercut the entire argument for X being problematic.  All to stir up trouble for the creators of the media, or signaling on the part of the author of the essay.

Or news links telling me that some offensive brain dropping on social media has gone ‘viral’, without the media ever really having to prove it went viral before the ran the story.  Is something truly going viral if the mass media puts it on blast when it’s only got a couple of hundred re-tweets or what have you?

In short, think of all the times you heard about a cancelation, or potential cancelation of a nobody going viral, and then think about how often you heard about that thing BEFORE the media reported on it?  You can probably count it on one hand and still have enough fingers to drink a cup of tea.

So what’s the motivation?  Partly it’s the clicks, baby.  Gotta bring in those advertising dollars.  But IMHO, it’s also a measure of self-preservation.  If those of us who are who have close to zero existence in the public perception (those of us closest to the wall) become afraid of being forced into the turbulence, we will become less tolerant of people who engage in public shaming, regardless of the righteousness of it.  So the media likes to shove a stick in the flow and expose everyone to the turbulence, so we all feel the anxiety.  It’s the media expertly trolling us.  They want us to have a negative reaction to the cancelation, and that is what they are getting.  It’s expert level because the media gets to lay the blame for inciting a negative reaction at someone else’s feet (whoever tried to start the Cancelation).

It’s along the same vein (if not an exact alignment) of media reporting of violent crime.  Media attention belies the reality of violent crime.  Violent crime is trending down, and it tends to be isolated to people already involved in crime and violence (i.e. it doesn’t happen to random people in middle class suburbs or urban neighborhoods, except by random chance).  Where I live, we are more likely to be a victim of catalytic converter thieves and porch pirates² than gun crime, but people still fear violent crime to a greater degree.

Media is aware of it’s power, it’s naïve to think they don’t exercise it whenever they can.  So before we as a people get upset about some Twitter Mob Pile-On of some poor schlub, think about the how and why you are even aware of said Cancelation, and instead of venting your spleen at a nameless woke activist, save some of that ire for the media that chooses to blast some nobody out of the water.  Because chances are pretty good if the media hadn’t decided to run that story, the extent of the ‘viral’ post would be limited to a couple of hundred annoying activists that are easy to ignore.

1. Although they sometimes join in, when it suites them
2. And I swear, the next time I see a Ring or Nextdoor post about someone being a victim of package theft at 0200… Why the hell is your package still on your porch at 0200?