They are all distractions. The thing is they are only kinda distractions from each other, but it’s a sleight of hand. What they are really distracting you from is action. It’s a really effective technique that keeps you constantly reacting to the stimuli of these “distractions”, so you can’t effectively plan ahead and take action. It also wears you down and saps your willpower, again making it difficult to take action.

On top of which it makes it difficult to coherently say why you’re angry in an easy to spread message. If you were paying attention during Occupy Wall Street, the media used that to basically make the apathetic and insulated just dismiss the concerns out of hand. They framed it as OWS just being angry hipsters that didn’t even know what they were angry about.

All of this is just one of the reasons I believe effective action has yet to be taken here in the U.S.