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Selling by Fear

I'm writing this post on April 30th (yep, I'm eight weeks ahead on posts again) because of a growing problem that isn't helping anyone but people who want to make a lot of money by terrorizing the public: fear mongering. If you're not familiar with the term, it's deliberately alarming people with questionable claims in order to manipulate their behavior, primarily in this country to sell products and services.

You've also been a victim of fear mongering if you bought something because the advertising made you afraid of what would happen if you didn't. When you need to sell anything from storm shutters to counter cleaners, frightening your targeted consumer is an excellent and effective marketing tool. You don't even have to be telling them the truth. Just scare the crap out of them and they'll hand over their money -- and people wonder why everyone's anxiety level is through the roof lately (According to this, in 2024, 43% of adults said they feel more anxious than they did the previous year, up from 37% in 2023 and 32% in 2022.)

Everything scary that is directed at us has an impact on us emotionally. Example: did I cite those statistic to back up my claims, or to scare you into believing my post about the consequences of fear mongering? Since I'm not selling you anything, and I gave you the source of the statistics, you judge.

Yesterday I went to the market to do our weekly shopping, and from all the fear mongering thrown at me the previous week I expected to see empty shelves. Alas, they were all full except one case of the cheapest 2% gallons in the milk section, which looked like they hadn't stocked the latest delivery -- but there were plenty of other options for people who wanted 2%. I got my lactose intolerant milk, no problem (I use it to cook and make sugar free pudding for me.)

Still, the tariffs just went into effect, so maybe it will take a couple weeks before the shelves empty and I'll have a harder time buying the food we need. That's why I built our emergency pantry and keep our freezers stocked, and my guy is growing veggies in the garden. It took me six months to build the pantry, and now I just maintain it. As long as I do that, we can survive comfortably for a year without buying any new food if we have to.

Everyone is also talking about predictions that the upcoming hurricane season will be one of the worst on record. They said that last year, too. Of course we had Helene and Milton, and they caused a lot of destruction, but that was two storms, and they were about average. We had no house damage and lost power for a couple hours. Would have buying anything made the storms more bearable? We've already stocked what we need. We learned that during 2004's four consecutive hurricanes, an absolutely horrendous storm season that shut us off from power and civilization for 21 days with soaring summer temperatures and bugs and debris everwhere -- and even with our simpler preps at the time we survived that, too.

Bottom line: you don't have to react to often ridiculous claims with no foundation in reality made just to scare money out of your wallet. Do your homework, make sure you can take care of you and yours during any emergency situation, and no matter what your fear, you'll be ready for it.

Image credit: Image by Tung Lam from Pixabay

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