Anyway, it doesn’t matter, i can finally say I’ve found my people now, @thebirdsarentreal :-) (its a satirical take on belief systems that vehemently denies it’s satirical which is just chef’s kiss)
Fast forward 10+ years and people actually believe it. Someone recently launched themselves in a homemade rocket to prove with their own eyes the flatness of the earth (and died for their efforts).
I love birdsarentreal, but part of me isn't looking forward to finding out what happens to it as more people come across it.
> People [...] sense instinctively that the [...] truths [...] don’t go together, that [the promoter is] not being logical, that [they're] not speaking in good faith. But they’ve been told that God is mysterious, unfathomable, so to them incoherence is the closest thing to God.
This tangles up with the appeal of being an "initiate", "on the inside", and knowing the secret truth, and the combination is powerful.
Satire and irony used to be effective. In last 20-years cynical distance and ironic posturing have become so prevalent that it is no no longer considered subversive. Citizens can consume outrage passively through various satirical media products, displacing outrage and abstaining from more active forms of resistance.
People consume satirical content, and think they are above it all, while just participating in cynical ha-ha.
All that is needed is honest discourse and a good educational system.
But what twaddlevision did to US society in the pre-WWW period, social memia is now doing to subsequent generations.
The circle is unbroken. ^_^