'They' are controlling you. 'They' are silencing you. – Washington Times
m.washingtontimes.com
m.washingtontimes.com
The best way to shut down rational discussion in an area is to promote sensational lunacy. Then everyone self censors to avoid sanctioning the lunatics. This is not entirely irrational… many of the nuts in question are really toxic and dangerous. Things like racism and antivax hysteria kill people.
Most of that stuff is grassroots, but it could certainly be weaponized. For example if I were a pharma company and wanted to cover up a problem with a vaccine I would promote hysterical antivax bullshit. That way you make it impossible to rationally discuss problems with vaccines. If I were running a child trafficking operation I would promote Qanon.
This phenomenon is not new per se but social media renders it devastatingly powerful today.
I don’t see a good solution. Every solution is either “let society be overrun by cults of idiots” or “implement some kind of exclusionary elitism or totalitarianism.”
Maybe the solution is for some well meaning person to purchase and erase Facebook and YouTube. That would at least render the problem less acute.
You can also not claim that this lunacy will be believed by innocents if you do not fight the information itself. That isn't ignoring it and elevates the claims in the first place.
Everyone that claims there is an "infodemic" probably just wants sensationalism where they can put crazy on pedestals for clicks.
Society won't be overrun be a cult of idiots, some just hold companies hostage to nudge them to censor undesirable content. There was bullshit on Youtube since its inception. It only became a problem when people said it is.
The problem isn’t doing your own research. It’s failing to understand or discern and falling for sensationalism.
You have to either know enough to understand the primary material or know enough about the nature of expertise to discern who likely knows what they are talking about.
If you can’t do one of those things then you’re better off not trying to do your own research.
"The topic I chose was frankly quite simple and straightforward; many might rightly suggest it was even boring and mundane"
The author knows disease immunity, in the current climate, is none of those things.
It invalidates the rest of the piece.
As part of that propaganda, the most important modern propaganda is the "fake news" narrative. The narrative that somehow everyone who gets their information outside the mainstream media is a conspiracy theorist who is too dumb to think critically and probably as dumb as people who think 5G causes coronavirus and earth is flat. The narrative that even speaking about vaccines or coronavirus is "dangerous" in itself and that the best way to deal with vaccine / lockdown / covid policy criticism is to bury the head in the sand and fill your ears with wax and cut their tongues. People are being trained to firewall themselves to true information coming against the mainstream consensus. They are being trained to consider their friends - who they personally know to be smart and rational - as conspiracy theorists and stick to the narrative of the media.
People who are convinced in their truth do not seek to silence a dialog. You only seek to silence conversation when you know the results will be against you.
Strikes me as "we don't make the laws and can't change them so why bother paying attention beyond the avoiding punishment from an adversarial state?"
Practical, yes, but I haven't despaired of our republic that much either.
The global high estimate is .68%