White fear gets confirmed regardless of whether the feared crime is real.

Evidence

In 2014 the national media for a brief moment took up the horror of a supposed new game in American cities called “knockout.” Videos on the Internet showed different groups of black men randomly “knocking out” unsuspecting strangers with one punch. The media was frenzied. News anchors were outraged. Lawmakers rushed to make the game a felony. Police announced more patrols. Panic gripped the public. You never know when or if it will happen to you. But whether or not the game had actually gone viral didn’t ultimately matter. White fear was confirmed. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 216

Categorization

• XREF: Knockout game and superpredator both fit the reader’s moral panic template where media frenzy drives policy regardless of evidence.
• SHARE: Good specific example for anyone interested in racialized crime panics specifically over the role of viral Internet videos in the knockout panic.