“For whatever reason, many of us are predisposed to accept findings that seem to highlight the prevalence of terrible injustice.” – People have been being told for decades about how bigoted society is. They are primed to believe it. Additionally, large swaths of current politics & policy are predicated on there being widespread serious prejudice. Plus it gives people an excuse to be righteously indignant.

So if not enough hate is happening to support your favored hobbyhorse or victimhood claim, well then go out and make some! So now you have hate hoaxes (faked incidents), hate hypochondria (malice inferred where none existed), and hate hallucinations (distorted/exaggerated instances). Extreme hoax example: Israeli kid is responsible for roughly 2,000 threatening calls over 2 years across multiple countries, including the U.S.. He was doing at least some of them for money.

Or this one: Some of you might remember that brouhaha a year ago about a racial slur written at an Air Force academy supposedly targeting a room housing some African-American cadets that lead to a semi-viral speech by the overseeing general. Turns out a student wrote it on his own door.

Smollett isn’t new, just blindingly obvious and high profile. This won’t be the last incident, by far. “Hate” is the new moral panic. A good rule of thumb is that the more inflammatory the incident, the more likely that it is either outright fake or otherwise being distorted.

P.S. First time trying to use the HTML tags for links. Hopefully they come out right.