Culture
The 2024 Summer Olympics Showed Media Gaslighting At Its Worst
The Olympics Opening Ceremony drag show and the women’s boxing controversy brought out strong and immediate reactions – which the media has tried to downplay and dismiss since.
By Emily Holland4 min read
It’s a common setup in cartoons and comedies – one character walks in on a strange situation only to have another character insist, “It’s not what it looks like!” Cute and funny in these contexts, its more insidious psychological cousin is called gaslighting. Psychology Today defines gaslighting as a situation where someone is deliberately fed false information, leading them to question what they know to be true. Consistent exposure to this type of manipulation leads people to wonder whether they can trust themselves at all.