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It’s funny, those conspiracies are now the establishment. New fresh relevant conspiracies buried in my threads!
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/24518-h.htm
Not a new phenomena, but rather a reminder of what civilizations often offer. =3
All 5g gay frogs aside, this a power problem and not really a people problem. How many establishment institutions are left that citizens would wish to enthusiastically uphold? We have come to almost expect corruption and these days. This isn't a justification for irrational conspiracy theory (which are generally harmless, yet occasionally highly catastrophic). It's that the establishment whack-em-all approach is not…
This actually sounds like something from a fascist state. It's a completely contradictory, manipulative statement.
Where did you source that "research"? Orwell's Ministry of Truth?
If Democracy is simply Oligarchy with voting as a decoration and sometime even that was gamed, then to the hell with this democracy.
All 5g gay frogs aside, this a power problem and not really a people problem. How many establishment institutions are left that citizens would wish to enthusiastically uphold? We have come to almost expect corruption and these days. This isn't a justification for irrational conspiracy theory (which are generally harmless, yet occasionally highly catastrophic). It's that the establishment whack-em-all approach is not…
> this a power problem and not really a people problem It’s an education and channel incentive problem. Our kids’ literacy is crashing [1]. And most Americans get their news through channels that are incentivised by selling ads. [1] https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/us-students-reading-math-s...
The literacy crash is alarming, and is no doubt agitating this situation in a major way. However, I think what we are experiencing is something like a kind of siloing of private realities. Not the pearl-clutching 'echo chamber' discourse from 2019. But an increasing lack of social competency amongst younger people that is disallowing them to be present others in the world itself.
This is why I still think it is a power problem. Government, however incompetent, still has the monopoly on control and policy. They have experts yelling at them everyday about these problems. But their answer does seem to be more censorship and surveillance, rather than addressing the causes of these problems. As I mentioned, this only exacerbates the problem and makes it more socially dangerous.
I used to be a journalist before my career in tech. In my opinion, the real culprit is that news outlets now have the wrong incentives.
When people still used to buy printed newspapers, you had to pay for your news so you better get well researched articles for your hard earned money. [1]
With the rise of internet news, that incentive is no longer in place. Yes there are paid news outlets on the Internet but the majority of people don't pay for a subscription. What gets you most views does rarely align with high journalistic standards. [2] In a way, everything is a tabloid now.
[1] If you are at least as old as me, you might remember that reading a certain newspaper rather than another was almost seen as a status symbol. I remember journalists saying things like "I love working at [newspaper X] because of our fine readership, they challenge me to write high quality articles".
[2] With a few obvious exceptions like Panama Papers etc.
IMHO - distrust in the establishment is not the cause, but a side effect of the real cause. I used to be a journalist before my career in tech. In my opinion, the real culprit is that news outlets now have the wrong incentives. When people still used to buy printed newspapers, you had to pay for your news so you better get well researched articles for your hard earned money. [1] With the rise of internet news, that i…
All 5g gay frogs aside, this a power problem and not really a people problem. How many establishment institutions are left that citizens would wish to enthusiastically uphold? We have come to almost expect corruption and these days. This isn't a justification for irrational conspiracy theory (which are generally harmless, yet occasionally highly catastrophic). It's that the establishment whack-em-all approach is not…
I wouldn't undersell the harms of general conspiracy theories. Most of them become more harmful the more people believe in them and the social media that I see has a tendency to spread the more harmful types of conspiracy theories (medical or political misinformation I see all the time on the internet now).
As you say, the medical conspiracies have really evolved since covid. I'm just glad we had covid when we did, because I feel that 5 years later people are so much more ignorant and less willing to all go through something together for the greater good.
With that said, I think the lot of conspiracy that just doesn't really hurt anyone but the believer. Aliens, moon landings, illuminati, etc. Kind of the modern day opiate of the masses.