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Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube

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Re: Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube

#41

Post by l33tbro »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24
l33tbro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree about literacy being huge, and would actually extend it to going beyond literacy. 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 i…

> their answer does seem to be more censorship and surveillance, rather than addressing the causes of these problems The power hypothesis doesn’t explain Flat Eartherism. That’s just stupid people believing what I cannot imagine started as anything but a tantrum.

Yes but a flat-earther is a useful idiot for precisely zero dangerous social movements. They are irrationally angry at nature, not the establishment.

Re: Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube

#42

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

mastazi wrote: post #17

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…

I read a good editorial recently by George Potter about how advertising is good because it allows news orgs "pay their own way" and helps keep the press free.

Re: Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube

#43

Post by krapp »

l33tbro wrote: post #41
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their answer does seem to be more censorship and surveillance, rather than addressing the causes of these problems The power hypothesis doesn’t explain Flat Eartherism. That’s just stupid people believing what I cannot imagine started as anything but a tantrum.

Yes but a flat-earther is a useful idiot for precisely zero dangerous social movements. They are irrationally angry at nature, not the establishment.

>Yes but a flat-earther is a useful idiot for precisely zero dangerous social movements.

Incorrect. As with most if not all conspiracy theories, flat-earthism incorporates anger at "the establishment" because "the establishment" is hiding the truth. And this is the hook. If you can be convinced that a secret cabal is manipulating all science, controlling all governments, censoring all media and filtering all information in order to keep the basic nature of reality hidden from humanity - which flat earthers do believe - then you're susceptible to someone suggesting who that cabal might be. You know who.

Re: Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube

#44

Post by krapp »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #32
brikym wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wackiest conspiracy theories are probably the ones most promoted by the establishment since they taint all the plausible theories.

> wackiest conspiracy theories are probably the ones most promoted by the establishment Not really. They’re wacky because being believed by the establishment, they have consequences. I’m not bothered by flat Earthers and vaccine deniers. I am bothered when they’re in power, because now their beliefs have influence.

They're wacky because people want to live in a wacky world of cults and Satan and aliens and ciphers and wheels within wheels, where at least something is in control and there is an order to reality, however obscure and evil, as opposed to a world of chaos and mundane grasping evil where there is no purpose beyond rich bastards getting richer.

Re: Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube

#45

Post by markus_zhang »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #37
markus_zhang wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on who the Monarchy is. It was like asking, do you really think you will be treated better under Augustus or the Senate? I bet back then a lot of people would want the Monarchy — after all Augustus won and the Roman Empire was born. In general we consider democracy > monarchy because good monarchies are rare and far between, so democracy is the least bad option. And no, I don’t think Trump could be…

> depends on who the Monarchy is We have a pretty good hint! > do you really think you will be treated better under Augustus or the Senate? Augustus’s rein started with him engineering a peninsula-wide famine and economic collapse. He grew up after the civil war. But promptly after him you got Trajan. > we consider democracy > monarchy because good monarchies are rare and far between, so democracy is the least bad op…

Yeah you definitely have to be a patrician to be the Emperor. But you gotta remove many other patricians too.

My thought is, the US reached the peak of all Empires. It is Pax Americana, and every empire imploded whenever it stopped expanding. We had some pretty good time in the late 1800s and better time back in 1945 and 1990. There were struggles but we always managed to plow through because there were spaces to expand, and the elites back then, TBF, were better than this batch (I was reading Baltzell's books a while ago). But the good time was over, and there is not much space to expand, so the "safer" way is to reform -- but we rarely saw this happen, e.g. both Brother Gracchus were killed by the Senate -- and eventually Caesar came up and swept the floor, and I have no faith in this batch of elites.

Re: Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube

#46

Post by CamperBob2 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24
l33tbro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree about literacy being huge, and would actually extend it to going beyond literacy. 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 i…

> their answer does seem to be more censorship and surveillance, rather than addressing the causes of these problems The power hypothesis doesn’t explain Flat Eartherism. That’s just stupid people believing what I cannot imagine started as anything but a tantrum.

The fact that Flat Earthers believe the earth is flat isn't the problem. The fact that people of such low intellectual quality have so much power over the rest of us is the problem.

Re: Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube

#47

Post by l33tbro »

krapp wrote: post #43
l33tbro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but a flat-earther is a useful idiot for precisely zero dangerous social movements. They are irrationally angry at nature, not the establishment.

>Yes but a flat-earther is a useful idiot for precisely zero dangerous social movements. Incorrect. As with most if not all conspiracy theories, flat-earthism incorporates anger at "the establishment" because "the establishment" is hiding the truth. And this is the hook. If you can be convinced that a secret cabal is manipulating all science, controlling all governments, censoring all media and filtering all informat…

True. I was being hyperbolic, but I hoped it was clear that I meant that flat-earthers are nowhere near the threat-level of something like a qanon or antivax movement, who are far more politically-activated, willing to take matters into their own hands, and likely to incite actual physical harm through ideological-driven behavior.

Re: Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube

#48

Post by tdb7893 »

l33tbro wrote: post #20
tdb7893 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Yes. It has become mainstream. As soon as Kirk died, people were spouting antisemitic BS conspiracies that 'it was all Israel', even though he was the biggest shill of Israel's policies! 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 fo…

Are those examples at all indicative of what conspiracy theories are anymore, they seem stuck in the last century? The only one of those I've literally ever seen, even online, is aliens (and just UFO videos). On the other hand I personally know a lot of people who consistently buy into medical and political misinformation (and social media pushes it to me at least weekly, no matter how much I try to say I'm not interested).

I know a lot of people who have had to cut off family members because they got too deep into conspiracy theories and it's pretty much always weird political ones.

Re: Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube

#50

Post by JumpCrisscross »

markus_zhang wrote: post #45
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> depends on who the Monarchy is We have a pretty good hint! > do you really think you will be treated better under Augustus or the Senate? Augustus’s rein started with him engineering a peninsula-wide famine and economic collapse. He grew up after the civil war. But promptly after him you got Trajan. > we consider democracy > monarchy because good monarchies are rare and far between, so democracy is the least bad op…

Yeah you definitely have to be a patrician to be the Emperor. But you gotta remove many other patricians too. My thought is, the US reached the peak of all Empires. It is Pax Americana, and every empire imploded whenever it stopped expanding. We had some pretty good time in the late 1800s and better time back in 1945 and 1990. There were struggles but we always managed to plow through because there were spaces to exp…

> you gotta remove many other patricians too

What are you basing this on? The patrician families continued to rein under the Empire. Which side do you think backed Sulla’s dictatorship? Which side do you think felt (and feels) constrained by elections and democratic norms?

> It is Pax Americana, and every empire imploded whenever it stopped expanding

One, source? Because plenty of great civilisations across history reached stable states for hundreds if not thousands of years.

And two, America is still expanding. The economy is growing. Post industrialisation, there are more routes to goodies than conquering territory. (I can’t think of a single war of conquest since China annexed Tibet that has gone well for the invader since WWII.)

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