{"id":98162,"date":"2026-01-04T01:00:55","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T06:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=98162"},"modified":"2026-01-03T09:31:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T14:31:48","slug":"qotd-the-boomerang-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/01\/04\/qotd-the-boomerang-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The boomerang effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’ve noticed a common phenomenon. Let’s call it the boomerang effect.<\/p>\n

Lament the rise of an opinion or policy without noticing how your preferred policies helped cause it.<\/p>\n

Vaccination rates down — because you wrecked the reputation of vaccines during the pandemic by over claiming.<\/p>\n

Anti-immigrant feeling leading to difficulties for legal immigrants — because you welcomed millions of illegal immigrants and prevented them being deported.<\/p>\n

Prosecution of political opponents — because you did it too.<\/p>\n

Dislike seeing people cancelled for their opinions — because you started it.<\/p>\n

Rising climate scepticism — because you censored reasonable criticism of climate extremism.<\/p>\n

Anger at trans rights activists — because you shouted down concerns about men pretending to be women in sports and prisons.<\/p>\n

Government attacks on universities — because you turned them into ideological madrassas.<\/p>\n

Patriotic nationalism turning uglier — because you told people flags were racist.<\/p>\n

Criticism of judges — because they became nakedly political.<\/p>\n

Defunding of biotechnology — because you failed to call out dangerous gain-of-function virology as the likely cause of the death of 20 million+ people.<\/p>\n

Etc etc<\/p>\n

Matt Ridley, The social media site formerly known as Twitter<\/em><\/a>, 2025-09-27.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve noticed a common phenomenon. Let’s call it the boomerang effect. Lament the rise of an opinion or policy without noticing how your preferred policies helped cause it. Vaccination rates down — because you wrecked the reputation of vaccines during the pandemic by over claiming. Anti-immigrant feeling leading to difficulties for legal immigrants — because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,41],"tags":[459,245,554,244],"class_list":["post-98162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-censorship","tag-climatechange","tag-immigration","tag-publichealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-pxg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98162"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100101,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98162\/revisions\/100101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}