Jonny Thomson on Instagram: "The dead cat strategy is a kind of misdirection where somebody will say something so ridiculous, or do something so outlandish, that it takes your attention away from where they don’t want you to look. The idea is that, as you are talking, somebody comes into the room and throws a dead cat on the table, and suddenly no one is talking about anything else. For example, let’s say that the Prime Minister or president is coming under lots of criticism for a failed policy decision, and so they decide to announce, in that moment, a controversial foreign policy: they’re going to invade a country, they’re going to ban certain nationalities from coming in. In his 1989 work, Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky argued that public attention can only be held and directed for so long, so creating an unmissable spectacle occupies the spotlight while lots of other things can happen off stage. In other words, if people are too busy debating the outrageous or the ridiculous, they won’t spend their time looking at the politically important stuff. The problem is that the dead cat strategy is really hard to beat, because both the masses and the media love a good headline, but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. Don’t be fooled by misdirection. Don’t look at the dead cat. Look where you are told not to."

43K likes, 560 comments - philosophyminis on October 11, 2025: "The dead cat strategy is a kind of misdirection where somebody will say something so ridiculous, or do something so outlandish, that it takes your attention away from where they don’t want you to look. The idea is that, as you are talking, somebody comes into the room and throws a dead cat on the table, and suddenly no one is talking about anything else. For example, let’s say that the Prime Minister or president is coming under lots of criticism for a failed policy decision, and so they decide to announce, in that moment, a controversial foreign policy: they’re going to invade a country, they’re going to ban certain nationalities from coming in. In his 1989 work, Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky argued that public attention can only be held and directed for so long, so creating an unmissable spectacle occupies the spotlight while lots of other things can happen off stage. In other words, if people are too busy debating the outrageous or the ridiculous, they won’t spend their time looking at the politically important stuff. The problem is that the dead cat strategy is really hard to beat, because both the masses and the media love a good headline, but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. Don’t be fooled by misdirection. Don’t look at the dead cat. Look where you are told not to.".