the.com/scaremongering
Selling fear wholesale, no refunds, because panic converts better than facts do.
means The deliberate spreading of exaggerated or false alarm to frighten people, often for attention, influence, or profit.
from Built from 'scare' plus 'monger,' an old word for a dealer or trader — the same one in 'fishmonger' and 'warmonger.' Monger traces back to Old English 'mangere,' meaning merchant, rooted in Latin 'mango,' a slave-dealer or huckster who dressed up shoddy goods to sell them. So a scaremonger is literally a merchant of fear, hawking dread the way others hawk fish — stale, but still moving product.
- origin
- 1930s British political insult, still accurate
- core tactic
- worst-case scenario presented as likely one
- media favorite
- outrage drives clicks better than nuance
- tell
- certainty about things nobody can actually predict