Fascinatingly, a similar effect shows up in science. "Science Studies Most Likely to Be Wrong Are the Most Widely Read":
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-05-24/...
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-05-24/...
> Studies that can't be verified and may be untrue are much more likely to be cited in the media because they tend to be more interesting
"Interesting" -- ha!
A media business knows its clientele and shovels useful fodder to fill the clients' daily trough. The difference today is that people carry a portable trough with them everywhere.
What is "interesting" to people varies, but what is profitable to media business is clear: purveying ignorance is more lucrative and sustains marketshare.
This may be the biggest socio-political problem of the era. Democracy depends on the success of education and social discourse. I think people _do_ want education and healthy discourse... but their worse impulses are being nourished.
Even old-style media companies knew how to turn nonsense into profit. There is a clientele for prepackaged, facile ignorance. It's the art of propaganda.
Social media has revealed that significant numbers of people proudly maintain and propagate brutish thinking. The modern educational system seems helpless to counteract this phenomenon.
Using modern portable tools, it has become easier than ever to propagate ignorance. It's not just the people, though. It's the people and the "corporate citizens" who are looting civilisation.
...Outrage --> Hate --> Gratification --> Outrage --> Hate...
Step 1. Outrage: Strike the audience with some gross injustice - true or not - it's always useful to exaggerate. Make sure to use an echo chamber so no one can diffuse the emotion with a different perspective.
Step 2. Hate: Define a target. Demonize this target to create an emotional investment by the reader. Pile on ancillary "facts" to give the illusion of rigor. Truth is irrelevant as few will research independently.
Step 3. Follow up with some form of "justice" (usually better to do this at a later update). It doesn't matter if the subject was really hurt, as long as you can make it appear that the "bad guys" actually won in some way.
repeat.