Corporate Virtue Signaling, Meet Compassion Fatigue
Alleviating the world’s suffering is a never-ending battle. Are advertisers really prepared to fight it?
Where once there were many yard signs, banners and tee-shirts, now there are few: “Pray for Ukraine,” “Support Ukraine,” and, “Get Out Putin!” and the irascibly obscene, “Puck Futin.”
It isn’t that Americans don’t still care about Ukraine: They do. Dollars continue to pour into ongoing humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. The media landscape remains filled with think pieces and op-eds alternately entertaining the notion Ukraine might need to make land concessions in order to end the conflict and expressing outrage at the very idea.
But the media landscape is, as President Joe Biden reminded America last night, not unlike a minefield of clickbait and sensationalist journalism these days. The Weekly World News is what sells in today’s marketplace and hawkers are clogging up the airwaves with a near-constant inundation of negative news stories.
A steady drum-beat of doomsayers have pounded the delicate sensibilities of our unwary populace into a pretzel of anxiety and existential dread over the past few years in particular.
Censorship? We should be so lucky.