The Culture of Fear

 The Culture of Fear

The culture of fear concept is the idea that people will encourage fear to the public or their colleagues to get an advantage in the political, social, or emotional world. The original theory was invented by Frank Furedi and then later fully developed by Barry Glassner. This theory explains how we invest billions of dollars each year into protecting ourselves from hypothetical situations like Pedophiles on the internet. We set up a bunch of protective barriers on computers, and tell our children to be careful when realistically most child abusers are actually family relatives. Or how for years parents wouldn't let their children eat candy because of strangers poisoning it on Halloween, even though the least suspicion of this act was in 1958. So all of these examples don't happen in the workplace, most likely because people in higher powers are telling their citizens, no need to be afraid of going to work! (even though dangerous work conditions are the cause of death of around 50,000 and injuries of 7 million people per year). The culture of fear theory is basically just outing the fact that people who are in control take advantage of easily dismissable and submissive people. When people create unrealistic fears like this, it can become very dangerous very fast. If anybody can profit from fear or idea, no matter how many people disagree with it or prove that it is incorrect, people will still talk and worry about it. A more recent example, the toilet paper crisis of 2020. The culture of fears biggest participate in the expose is politicians manipulating their voters by making widely exaggerating the amount of crime in their area and explaining how they will make America a safer place for kids and everyone around. Manipulators of fear mostly target children as their audience because society cares more about children than anyone else. The whole business of horror movies is just plainly based on the culture of fear theory. People analyzing unrealistic fears and turning into something profitable that can work to their own advantage. The darkness is one of the most manipulatable fears in the horror movie business. Without hearing any stories about what hides and lurks in the dark, children have no reason to be fearful. Once these stories are spread out and created, these kids are suddenly terrified and want their parents to buy night lights. Because the creators of horror movies study different behaviors, they pick up on people's biggest fears, no matter how unrealistic they are, and create a whole genre of specific fears.