Feels like wherever you turn, you see a high-trust society disintegrating into a low-trust one.
We used to sell _literal_ "snake oil" as a curative. What you may actually be witnessing is a low awareness society turn into a high awareness one. What is being highlighted is you never should have had that trust in the first place.
Actual snake oil in the 1800s came from Chinese water snakes, and Chinese laborers who immigrated to the U.S. shared it with fellow workers as they helped build the transcontinental railroad. This type of snake oil, Pedersen says, was indeed an effective anti-inflammatory.... Enter the mysterious Clark Stanley in 1893.... Standing on stage in front of a growing crowd, Stanley pulled a rattlesnake out of a sack resting near his feet. In dramatic fashion, he slit the rattlesnake open with a knife, placed the snake in a vat of boiling water, and watched as its fat rose to the surface. Stanley sold his product, dubbed “Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment,” in liniment jars, boasting about its healing powers. Of course, Stanley’s snake oil was a marketing gimmick from the very start.
Stanley's oil's actual ingredients: "mineral oil, beef fat, red pepper and turpentine". (Above article).
His and others' deceptive practices lead to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-snake-oil-beca...>
Wikpedia has more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil>