the.com/alarmism
Crying wolf for a living, then acting shocked when nobody runs.
means The habit of exaggerating dangers or spreading excessive fear, often to provoke a reaction disproportionate to the actual risk.
from Built from 'alarm' plus the '-ism' suffix that turns a thing into a practice or doctrine. 'Alarm' itself traces back through French to the Italian battle-cry 'all'arme!' — 'to arms!' — the shout that sent soldiers scrambling for weapons. So alarmism is literally the ideology of perpetual battle-cries: taking that urgent, weapons-up shout and sounding it long after the real threat, if there ever was one, has left the field.
- origin
- from alarm, as in the bell, not the feeling
- key move
- treats worst-case as most-likely case
- side effect
- breeds the exact apathy it fights
- cousin
- doomerism, minus the dark humor