I’m sure by now everyone has heard about the Scott Adams and Kanye West story . The media’s reaction demonstrates the divide between the the media and the general public, and how the mainstream media–but also celebrity media–continues to demonstrate how out of touch with reality it is. When the story broke of Kanye approvingly tweeting Scott Adams’ videos, the media instantly rushed to denigrate Adams, calling him a Holocaust revisionist/denier, etc. They also went on the attack on Kanye West, too, for stepping out of line. Their assumption was that the general public was on their side. After all, we don’t need to make up our own minds when the media can do that for us…how nice of them. Except, it backfired. In the comments, people overwhelmingly supported Kanye and Adams, including even liberals and blacks, who may not agree with Trump’s politics but can respect his authenticity, as well as West’s right to have his own opinion rather than having to conform to the black-victimization mentality. People were like “yeah, I don’t agree with Trump’s politics, but he’s authentic, and Kenye West is expressing his intellectual and artistic freedom, and Scott Adams may be wrong about Trump, but he’s open-minded and has some interesting insights into the world and isn’t beholden to ideology…blame the media for trying to divide the nation, not Trump or Scott Adams.” The media’s jumping to conclusions and efforts to foment consensus, just like how they tried to fan Facebook backlash (and failed), is why it’s failing. People no longer need the media to decide for them. They don’t need to tune into the ‘nightly news’ to be told who to vote for and how to think–they can go on social media, 4chan, Reddit, etc. and have much smarter and diverse opinions. They don’t need to be conditioned to believing they are victims or that white people and the patriarchy are evil, when evil is malevolence wrapped in good intentions.