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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

I always find it interesting to watch the trickle down of news I find here on HN. I live in a very, very, very conservative part of the US. It always goes the same; see fake thing called out for being fake on HN. One week later, hear rumblings related to the fake thing in my community. One week after that, hear people openly talking about how that fake thing is true, but Google/MSM don't want you to hear about it.

Such as: Zelensky is a nazi, the Ukraine war is all CGI, anything related to Hillary or Bill Clinton (yes still), and so on and so forth.

Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be.

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Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be.

It’s simpler and more insidious than that. I’ll use the old Eleanor Roosevelt quote:

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

Most people are not that intellectual and probably spent most of their life gossiping. They wouldn’t know how to even discuss certain topics if the low hanging fruit of gossip and conspiracy wasn’t available to them to add something in a social interaction.

Take Reddit for example, some of them wouldn’t even know what to say if they couldn’t add that one immediate punch line (followed by sequential punchlines by other people). If you take this away, they will literally have no way of joining the convo.

They won’t be able to come up with an angle, ask a probing question, entertain an alternative perspective, provide analogues or metaphors, they’d simply have no voice. It’s akin to providing these people with ‘what do you think about the weather today?’ as a lifeline in casual social interaction.

This seems unnecessarily elitist. I mean, I would be glad if I could get away with just discussing theory and ideas, but reality and practical matters gets in the way. We vote for people, we evaluate people from events.

Exactly. We elect people not ideas.

This is highly debatable.

Politicians generally channel ideas in order to get elected - and then screw everyone over once they have power for 4 years.

Also, whether one likes Reddit or not, it has a huge userbase, and each subreddit is pretty much different than another. There are plenty of subreddits with really interesting comment chains.

It’s more frustration than elitism. Take the topic of Machine Learning for example, there’s really few people on planet earth that can discuss the implications of it in detail. To broaden membership into that discussion, you have to provide a lifeline in the context of ‘what are the implications of AI with respect to future work, will humanity ever have to work again?’ - ok, now most people can take part.

The frustration is, why is gossip and conspiracy lifelines necessary for topics that most people should have no issue discussing? You really can’t add anything without that stuff?

Anyways, I heard Hunter Biden is a drug addict, and Putin has cancer, and that’s why he’s invading Ukraine.

There are absolutely vast numbers of people who can comfortably discuss the implications of machine learning – people from all walks of life with many different perspectives, including technologists, artists, economists, politicians and more. This seems like a straw man.

Having a topic under discussion is hardly "gossip" or a "conspiracy lifeline".

Ironically, your comment is itself a perfect example of discussing an idea. In fact, I would argue that discussing people and events as proxies for the discussion of ideas does not fall foul of the maxim.

One thing is to discuss how candidate X chooses to dress, whether candidate Y cheated on their partner, or how candidate Z looked so stupid in that incident yesterday. Another very different thing is to discuss candidate X's personal background (and how it makes them more likely to understand a given issue), that candidate Y does not practice what they preach (and probably cannot be trusted), or that candidate Z has owned up to their screw-up yesterday (and self-criticism is a good trait for leadership).

You just spread "Fake News" about Eleanor Roosevelt:

See: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/11/18/great-minds/

It was on the back of my mind, I remember hearing this :p

> I’ll use the old Eleanor Roosevelt quote

The quote seems appropriate for a person that doesn’t want to be talked about.

I get what it’s going for but “only small minds talk about people” feels like it serves political elites very well. Don’t talk about me and my conduct. Talk about the generalised idea of conduct by people who are somewhat like me!

I studied politics at university and learned enough about political ideology to last me a lifetime. But my biggest takeaway from history is that ideology almost always plays a back seat to human beings that want to retain or expand their power. Ideas are pretty malleable around that aim.

Talking about people in politics is almost always a smoke screen. There are weakest links in every political caucus. Personal failings are a fine reason to dislike or vote against specific people, in most democracies we each vote for a person and who that is should absolutely matter, but it generally has nothing to do with the actual issues. The fact that you hate the Clintons (with you there) or can't stand Trump isn't really relevant IMHO to whether you vote for your specific local Republican or Democrat candidate.

Eleanor Roosevelt was instrumental in blocking the forced repatriation of large numbers of displaced persons to their various home countries that were in the USSR after WW2. A large number of these displaced persons were from the Ukraine(detailed numbers not known) and even though there was a huge effort by the USSR to get these people back, these largely failed and many countries settled them and gave them landed immigrant status. Exceptions were made for war criminals, who also tried to hide. Of those sent to the USSR, many were imprisoned/killed etc. Apologies for political stuff, but the spots on the leopard remain. (nothing against the beautiful leopards either)

http://www.dpcamps.org/repatriation3.html

She left off "Galaxy-brains discuss whatever is most pertinent to their interests and goals." :-)

I live in a very, very, very conservative part of the country and it’s nothing like the caricature you just mentioned. It is, though, safe, polite, and friendly. And people are happy to leave other people alone.

90% of the time, you are correct. I like living here because people leave me alone, mostly.

That being said, you are absolutely on your own. The hospital struggles, the schools struggle, the roads are awful, and anything remotely related to 'government' is funded just above the point of being dead. And if you do not seem to be 'from here' (read: white, straight, middle- to upper-middle class, or have the right last name) you absolutely will be excluded from most social, religious, and other institutions.

In other words, it's not all puppies and sunshine.

That other 10% is political discussion. Which is a hot garbage pile covered in blatant racism and antisemitism.

New Hampshire?

Living in rural America, where it is safe, and folks are polite and friendly and happy to leave you alone (if you're white), I have to say that doesn't mean people don't believe batsht crazy things. Because lots of them do. Or at least say they do, 'cause there is a big step between saying you believe something and actually acting like you do.

Believing batshit crazy things isn't unique to rural areas. In fact, I'd say it's more common in cities simply because there are more people there.

I know a woman who lives in Chicago who doesn't believe in dinosaurs. It's not a religious thing, it's just that dinosaurs don't fit into her mindset somehow.

I dated a woman in New York (native New Yorker) whose entire family believed that the moon landings were fake.

I know a guy in Houston who believes that drinking his own pee is helping him live longer.

Crazy is everywhere. It obeys no geographic, social, wealth, or political boundaries.

Crazy is indeed everywhere. And when it is individual crazy, it likely doesn't matter much (and might even be helpful).

However, organized, coordinated crazy is a problem, even more so when it is sufficiently organized and coordinated to become an effective player in our political system.

At one time, that weirdo didn't have anybody to talk to. So he wrote his weird ideas in a journal somewhere, and he'd maybe self-publish a book, and annoy people at the coffee shops with his ideas. Now the crazy finds friends. Somewhere out there in the internets is another weirdo who had your idea too.

Oh I agree.

> Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be.

If you include reactions, sure. But regular fluid dynamics very much leaves the substance intact. Water flows down a stream and is still water at the end.

I think there might be a sewage plant or two having overflow issues in the clear mountain stream of this analogy (your username is on-topic in this case).

>> Water flows down a stream and is still water at the end.

Even that has fish shit added.

There are actual models for this, I think they're often similar to a spin glass.

Perhaps there are models of waterway pollution that could shed light on it?

Whenever I stumble into a political conversation with someone who prefers to live in an alternate news reality, I find it effective to not argue back at them, but rather out-flank them: inform them that not only are they correct, but also I read that insert-like-minded-improvised-obviously-ridiculous-nonsense-here and say it with all sincerity ... and then let them respond with "Well ... I'm not sure about that ..." and then insist it's true "because I saw it on Faceboook somewhere" ... and then repeat until they realize they have been out-crazied.

I like this idea in theory, but suspect I'd be depressed how often people actually agreed with my attempt to outcrazy them in practice.

What's funny is they're doing the same to you.

> Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be.

Heisenberg supposedly said "When I meet God I’m going to ask him about relativity and turbulence. I think he'll only have an answer for the first".

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."

> Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be.

As similar as fluid dynamics are to a functional public education system

> I always find it interesting to watch the trickle down of news I find here on HN. I live in a very, very, very conservative part of the US. It always goes the same; see fake thing called out for being fake on HN. One week later, hear rumblings related to the fake thing in my community. One week after that, hear people openly talking about how that fake thing is true, but Google/MSM don't want you to hear about it.

The the root cause for that is probably the extreme distrust of the "MSM" that's been cultivated for decades. The ironic thing is many of the rank-and-file of those people think that distrust gives them greater access to the truth, when in reality it just makes them easier to lie to.

> The ironic thing is many of the rank-and-file of those people think that distrust gives them greater access to the truth, when in reality it just makes them easier to lie to.

Care to elaborate? Intuitively what you're saying sounds plausible, but not why that would be the case.

They are primed to ignore any contrary evidence, that would disprove lies they are being told, that they see on MSM or in fact anywhere. Once they believe a specific channel of information or community is the only one they can trues, they can be sold on anything.

What the last few years has really brought into sharp focus is that many people who distrust "official sources" (mainstream media, scientists, etc) seem to unquestioningly accept fringe sources, so long as it matches their prior beliefs.

Many of these same people consider themselves "skeptics" because they instinctively distrust the official sources.

(i) "this is the sort if story that, if true, would be widely reported by mainstream media or at least mainstream media of a certain political persuasion" is a pretty good heuristic for discarding stuff that sounds plausible and really big but is only reported on the comment section of AltFreeIndyInfo.net

(ii) if you can't believe mainstream media, it's hard to search for information that might contradict $radicaltheory, never mind trust someone else's thoroughly researched and sourced one. So even if it's a pretty wild theory that lots of other stuff seems to contradict and very little seems to corroborate, how can we be sure it isn't a coverup. Scepticism about well established facts leads to agnosticism about the veracity of well-established fiction.

(iii)"if you tell people this and they laugh at you and say it's ridiculous it's because they're the credulous idiots who believe anything they read in certain sources" is a very powerful meme.

(iv) people who don't believe in certain sources still tend to want to get stuff they can believe in from somewhere, and the average website that concurs that MSM is not to be trusted and embraces the meme that its reader base are the true freethinking sceptics publishes considerably more fake news and terrible takes than the mainstream media

> AltFreeIndyInfo.net

> Network Error: dns_unresolved_hostname

The globalist elites have had it taken down!

> just makes them easier to lie to.

It makes them easier to control.

> The ironic thing is many of the rank-and-file of those people think that distrust gives them greater access to the truth, when in reality it just makes them easier to lie to.

I've had some heated discussions with my father over this. He has a disdain for anything reported by main-stream media, that is at least partially warranted. But he overcorrects to this by accepting the reporting by fringe media outlets / decentralized media figures (podcasters, youtubers, etc) without the same critical lens that he would otherwise apply. If someone says something to the tune of: "the MSM won't report on this because <insert reasoning here>, but we will!", he almost always accepts what they say next. It's very frustrating for me since he will say this line as an automatic "I win this argument" trump card on any idea regardless of the independent merits.

This shouldn't be a bold statement, but I feel like some people need this shouted at them: Just because something is reported on by a main stream media outlet doesn't mean it's automatically true. And conversely just because something is reported on by a main stream media outlet doesn't mean it's automatically false either. Alternative media is perfectly capable of presenting misleading, or false information!

What I find funny is that the most popular cable news channel--Fox News--is still not the "main stream media".

The Clinton stuff is really funny. HN is not really the place for heated political commentary but there is deep irony there with regards to how a certain portion of the population responds to criticism of Trump and his policies (lately, mostly surrounding Ukraine and denying them aid) and how often they bring up the Clintons.

I have been on HN for years now. I don't recall anything in particular that would fall into "The Clinton stuff". What are you talking about?

Oh not on HN sorry. I meant in the context of general conservative discourse. I have friends and family who bring up the Clintons a lot.

The right wing political machine made Hillary Clinton out to be the devil. They, correctly, anticipated her run for president after Obama, and spent years making her out to be the worst person in America before she even began campaigning.

The result is many conservative circles are still obsessed with her even though she is relatively unimportant.

That demonizing started way before the 2016 lead-up; until Obama came into the foreground she was also a clear front-runner for the 2008 election, so the machine was targeting her even then.

I've noted this before, but being in the public eye for too long tends to be really bad news for presidential hopefuls in the US (Biden being the exception that proves the rule in that he eked out a win against a wildly unpopular incumbent who was actively discouraging his own supporters from voting).

"Wildly unpopular"? Maybe in the corporate and media world, but even despite that, he nearly won re-election. You can credibly attribute plenty of negative characteristics to Trump, but "nobody likes him" isn't one of them.

How about, "by all the current means of testing, the least popular in history". There are issues with polling, for sure, but even the more charitable end of the error bars put him in a bad spot.

She's the woman an entire generation of men was raised to hate, starting with Bill Clinton's first presidential run and Rush Limbaugh.

I remember seeing her in a magazine cover in the early 90s with BSDM getup and Bill as the gimp. I was pretty young at the time - but even then I knew I was being told "this is the person to hate/fear".

I'm not a fan of HRC but the demonization was in full gear 30 years ago.

Russia put her on the sanctions list too.

Christopher Hitchens wrote a book about the Clintons that was pretty scathing. It has a lot of what I assume is the "Clinton Stuff"

https://www.amazon.com/One-Left-Lie-Triangulations-Jefferson...

Try reddit, it's much faster than hacker news on these things.

usually the pattern is in reverse on reddit

government doesn't want you to hear people -> subject matter expert sees -> informs that information is faulty -> minority fight against the tide

Although usually this follows the covid lab grown pattern where the fight against the tide crowd usually treats their info as 100% certain which muddies the water when informed opinions have varying confidence levels.

I don't know that I can recommend Reddit as a legitimate news source. You'd really have to make sure you're hitting the right subreddits. :/

> Zelensky is a nazi,

He's not a Nazi, of course, him being of Jewish ancestry, but it did raise some questions for me when a Russian bomb (that killed about 20 civilians) did its thing in Kyiv very close to a boulevard named after Bandera. Bandera is of course a war criminal and a Nazi collaborator. That thing with a Kyiv boulevard being named after a war criminal and a Nazi collaborator you don't see in the MSM. The bombing took place here [1], you can see the Bandera-named avenue just close by.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/50%C2%B029'19.1%22N+30%C2%...

> He's not a Nazi, of course, him being of Jewish ancestry,

That is strong evidence that he isn't, but short of proof. A counterexample from California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Unz

We have no proof you are not a Nazi either. Let's assume you are, just to be safe. And maybe we can write a few blogs about it and drum up a following?

I do not believe Zelensky is a Nazi. The evidence against it is much stronger than the evidence for it. Your ire against me is misdirected.

> Your ire against me is misdirected.

Insofar as it was ire against your implication that "there is no proof against it" would somehow validate the insinuation, it wasn't.

And, sorry, even if you claim that that wasn't what you meant to do, the mere mention of it does imply that. We don't (AFAIK) have absolute proof that the Moon isn't (mainly) made of green cheese, either (those moon rocks the astronauts brought back could just be part of a thin rock crust over the cheese[1]), but what does it imply if I throw out the claim "We don't have proof that the Moon isn't made of green cheese!" in a general discussion about cosmology?

___

[1]: Aha, so "Moon Pie" should be a cheese pie!

Does it actually matter though? If he was a nazi, and if he engaged in practices from WW2 nazis like putting people into concentration camps, then there would be a case.

But it doesn't warrant an unprovoked single-party invasion. We're better than that these days.

The invasion is unwarranted, I would never suggest otherwise.

>> He's not a Nazi, of course, him being of Jewish ancestry,

> That is strong evidence that he isn't, but short of proof.

It's about the strongest evidence possible. Also, I'd think a person who's such a raw contradiction of "Jewish Nazi" would show signs of obvious psychological illness (either as a cause or a symptom, e.g. suicide to help the final solution along).

Add to that the fact that the claim he's a Nazi have all the hallmarks of a lie concocted to fabricate a moral reason for the invasion, by people with a history and strategy for creating such lies, and it's proved false practical sense. It's proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Zelensky is not Nazi, in fact it's even proven beyond most unreasonable doubts.

> A counterexample from California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Unz

I don't think so. Ctrl-F "nazi" -- zero hits.

> It's about the strongest evidence possible.

It's not as strong as the synthesis of all the other evidence, particularly: his actions and statements throughout life, none of which point towards him being a Nazi. That is stronger evidence than his ethnic identity.

With respect to Ron Unz, you might want to read that wikipedia page more carefully than a quick C-f; that guy is a big fan of Hitler and hating jews. The same synthesis of actions and statements that vindicate Zelensky will plainly damn Unz.

Here in the US we have street names and even monuments dedicated to slave owners and people who advocated so strongly for slavery they went to war with their own people.

Does that mean the US, today, generally supports the institution of chattel slavery? No, that's absurd.

Lots of people want those monuments removed and streets renamed, but that's apparently cancel culture. The only country I know of that has actually faced it's rotten past is Germany

But @paganel apparently thinks it’s totally okay to bomb that street while civilians are walking on it. Talk about priorities.

> But @paganel apparently thinks it’s totally okay to bomb

I didn't say that, way to go. Come on, this is HN, not some sub-reddit shithole.

You did say exactly that.

> it did raise some questions for me when a Russian bomb (that killed about 20 civilians) did its thing in Kyiv very close to a boulevard named after Bandera. Bandera is of course a war criminal and a Nazi collaborator.

A bomb killed 20 civilians. Who the fuck cares if a street it fell onto was named after a war criminal? Makes it a legit target?

So, let's carpet bomb all those Strada Ion Antonescu it took me all 15 seconds to find across Romania. After all, you are saying it's illegal to name a street like that, so let's de-nazify them. Right?

Where in the world are you getting it from that the name of the street made it ok to bomb? He's saying that he learned of the street because the Russians bombing it was newsworthy given that it killed 20 people. Then what followed from him learning that the street exists with the name Bandera, was him thinking that maybe there could be some support for Nazis still remaining in Ukraine. Similar to how seeing a street named after a Confederate fighter would make someone think that maybe there's still some love for the Confederacy in the US (which is actually accurate!)

I'm going to spare a long explanation for you, but calling Ukrainians who refer to one another as "banderivets" and naming streets after Bandera "support for Nazis" is almost, if not entirely, equal to calling American Blacks who refer to one another as "nigga" "support for racism and slavery".

Americans don't like the name chattel slavery anymore, but the demand for labourers that don't have rights as people is just a prevalent.

The treatment of "illegal immigrants" is currently better than the chattel slaves of old, but policies like getting rid of birthright citizenship points in a direction of America wanting to being back chattel slaves

What questions did it raise for you?

How come in Romania (from where I'm from) it is illegal to have a street named after Antonescu (our Bandera counter-part from WW2) while in neighbouring Ukraine it is not? Why aren't they 100% for eliminating their Nazi past from, well, the present?

And yet you do have streets named after Antonescu in Romania:

1) Strada Ion Antonescu https://goo.gl/maps/WsVVsW13Eb9BjnRm9 2) Strada Ion Antonescu https://goo.gl/maps/Fe4Ggh3EPZyF7Z6r8 3) Strada Ion Antonescu https://goo.gl/maps/ANV22wPVDnaoFRVw5 4) Strada Ion Antonescu https://goo.gl/maps/hhN2jDvsiD9eXnVB6 5) Strada Ion Antonescu https://goo.gl/maps/a4gjwkDAzD5VrXj77

That law does indeed exist, but nonetheless you still have numerous streets in Romania named after Antonescu. They can be trivially found on Google Maps. For example, Strada Mareșal Ion Antonescu in Constanța [0] — and it was given that name in 2000!

Of course, nobody should judge all Romanians, nor even the political leaders who were not directly involved in the naming decision, for that. Countries are not a homogenous unit.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Strada+Mareșal+Ion+Antones...

It's a small street that no-one has heard about, this is a boulevard in the capital city. We had the same thing in Bucharest, when there was a church (built by Antonescu and his wife) that had a bust sculpture [1] of him in the church-yard sometime in the early 2000s. There was of course a huge scandal, with the foreign ambassadors chiming in, the law against naming things after bad people from our history got passed soon after so that we could entry into the EU, so of course that the bust sculpture had to go.

> Countries are not a homogenous unit.

I expect things that stand in your face (like a boulevard in a capital city, a bust sculpture of a genocide perpetrator in a downtown place in another capital city) to not be left to the local authorities. Even Bandera's wiki page mentions the EU and Israeli administrations not being at all happy with Ukraine naming things after Bandera back in ~2011, apparently that has all been forgotten now that Putin has attacked and everyone acts surprised how come Putin calls the Ukrainians as being nazis. And I didn't mention anything about the infamous "Freikorps" now battling the Russians close to Sumy, most definitely their name was not taken from a Heine poem or anything like that.

[1] https://foto.agerpres.ro/foto/detaliu/158701 (if you're Romanian you might recognise one of the characters in that photo)

> everyone acts surprised how come Putin calls the Ukrainians as being nazis

I mean, they should. Calling an entire country of 44 million people Nazis is ridiculous regardless of whether a boulevard in a capital city is named after Bandera.

Oh, you know, "where there's smoke there's fire" and "many people are saying" and "look into it, is all I'm saying" and "whether it's true or not, it just raises questions."

That's the way these things usually work. A slow erosion of public opinion through insinuation. People like Tucker Carlson aren't going to instantly go back to brown-nosing Putin, but they'll slip in occasional questions about Zelensky here and there, until certain insinuations are taken as ground truth.

Maybe you don’t know but here in Romania we have our fair share of streets named after anti-semites and-or iron guard collaborators.

But you’d probably protest if someone called you an anti-semite for this alone.

I'm Romanian and we don't have streets named after Antonescu, which is what Bandera was for the Ukranians in WW2. It is illegal to have streets named after Antonescu, because he killed hundreds of thousands of Jewish people in WW2, apparently in Ukraine is still legal to have a street named after Bandera, who collaborated in the killings of Jewish people in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.

> I'm Romanian and we don't have streets named after Antonescu

In your town?

> It is illegal to have streets named after Antonescu

Hm, really? Then again -- and sorry if this comes as a shock to you -- Romania isn't all that well-known (at least in the northern half of the EU) for living up to the law.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30700460 :

> So, let's carpet bomb all those Strada Ion Antonescu it took me all 15 seconds to find across Romania. After all, you are saying it's illegal to name a street like that, so let's de-nazify them. Right?

My own search for "Strada Ion Antonescu" on Google Maps popped up seven results across Romania, but that was zoomed out from Lviv to Thessaloniki to see the whole country. Don't know if there'd be more if I zoomed in.

> but it did raise some questions for me

What questions of any importance or relevance to this war would it possibly raise? Are you suggesting that if Ukraine really was wall-to-wall Nazis that maybe Russia is somehow justified here? Maybe WW2 wasn't quite finished after all? Good grief. Stop stirring the turd for no good reason other than to rile people up.

Stepan Bandera Avenue was called Moscow Avenue up until 2016, where it was renamed after anti-communist (and, granted, nazi sympathiser) Stepan Bandera. He was arrested by the Gestapo and put in a concentration camp after refusing to revoke an attempt to make Ukraine an independent state.

You're doing some interesting mental gymnastics here. Do you think "a Russian bomb doing its thing very close to a boulevard" is in any way evidence of the "mainstream media" hiding the Truth or whatever? Who do you work for? Do you actually believe the Russians are attacking Ukraine because of nazis? Do you believe their invasion and the murder of civilians is warranted?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera

So of course those civilians deserved to die, because they happened to be on a street named after someone or other?

I, too, live in a very conservative area.

> Zelensky is a nazi

Considering Trump voters have a history of being called Nazi for the affiliation, I don't see it as a stretch to call Zelensky one for the Ukrainian "Azov Battalion." Think of it as the sword cutting both ways.

> the Ukraine war is all CGI

This one I see constantly... folks expect 4K quality LiveLeak material to be streaming out of Ukraine. Truth be told I'm surprised at the relative dearth of material, but there's still enough floating around social media to make this one rather laughable.

> anything related to Hillary or Bill Clinton

Oddly, I haven't heard anything on this one. Though I have seen a meme going around referring to Biden, Romney, Pelosi, and Kerry having "children involved in the UA energy business." This, at least partially false, but with a rooting in the truth... Hunter Biden as well as advisors / associates of the others have all done business in the UA energy sector. I'm still not quite sure how and why Biden's handling of the former UA prosecutor that had an investigation going against Burisma which employed Hunter isn't a larger political scandal.

All in all there does seem an age gap (IME) with your typical Boomer / Fox types spreading the garbage content, folks towards the Millenial side don't.

"isn't a larger political scandal" - somehow I have the feeling, nowadays only wacky assertions are able to trigger big discussions (and big feelings). Lots of things having a grain of sense are left aside, maybe for being not ridiculous enough...

Whether intentional or not, the way you presented these (including the one about CGI) is how these sorts of conspiracies get wings and spread.

"Oh of course this is not true... except for maybe this little sliver here..."

That's the thing that gets latched onto and eventually the conspiracy nuts argue the whole thing must be true.

> That's the thing that gets latched onto and eventually the conspiracy nuts argue the whole thing must be true.

Exactly how things operate, "Project Northwoods was true, therefore the government is bad, therefore very real 'Government Program X' is bad" is the general algorithm.

With that said, I'm hacker. I seek the truth and will discuss it regardless of whether some wingnut seizes on it to make a false assumption.

I also have no problem attempting to correct the Boomer Doomers I run into at work and in life... they're just usually happy to go "Oh well, fair enough..." and then go back to watching whatever it is they're on about.

Cotdamn Gell-Mann Amnesia

> I'm still not quite sure how and why Biden's handling of the former UA prosecutor that had an investigation going against Burisma which employed Hunter isn't a larger political scandal.

I would speculate that some kinds of corruption are beyond the scandalous and into the range of bipartisan consensus. In the sense that if certain cans of worms were opened, and government bureaucrats educated to treat them as illegal, investigate and prosecute people for them, then it would affect too many key people in both parties and/or covert/intelligence operations abroad.

Having family members serve on boards of directors of things for improving access to politicians seems to be one of those. So is the issue of divesting from one's commercial holdings when assuming an office which creates conflicts of interests. Trump got a total pass by just saying "Oh, I let my sons manage it" - as if that removes the problem at all. But too many house representatives and senators have stocks or other such stakes which they would rather just keep.

After the Gulf of Tonkin [0] and Nayirah Testimony [1], is it really surprising that people don't believe the mainstream media on war anymore?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

What do either of these incidents have to do with trust in the media? Both incidents were fabrications of the government. In both cases the media was a tool used by government to spread the lies.

> One week after that, hear people openly talking about how that fake thing is true, but Google/MSM don't want you to hear about it.

There is an implication by the OP that people in very conservative parts of the state don't believe Google / MSM and point to deep fakes instead. In the past, they would've been more receptive to the MSM who could've debunked this. I posted these two incidents to show that the MSM did, in fact, lie in the past and this may be shaping why people don't believe them now but instead go online looking for "the truth."

Bingo. And I'm all for skepticism, and I understand a healthy skepticism. BUT

What is a problem, though, is that their sources are always things like americafreedompatriot, thetruereporter or other similar blog bullshit that claim to have 'the truth' (my personal favorite is welovetrump that's definitely unbiased).

My experience is they tend to look for sources that feel good and agree with what they believe, then use that as truth. No critical thinking.

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