I can't put my finger on it precisely, but it feels like there are outside influences radicalizing people via social media with an ultimate goal of destabilizing the United States.
No need to look for external causes, although blaming external actors also aligns with American historical actions.
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No foreign influence required.
The best kind of misinformation is misinformation that is true but not representative of the real situation. Have you checked our heart disease deaths? It is *factually* an issue many orders of magnitude more important to the average American. And yet…zero discussion seems to happen about it online?
And why wouldn’t there be foreign influence? It’s quite an easy checklist:
* do Russia and China have the technical capability to make social media accounts and post in English?: Yes, obviously.
* do Russia and China have any motive to drive fearful divisive narratives in the US?: Yes - we are their primary geopolitical opponent
With both of these true, to assume they’re not doing it for some reason out of kindness requires a lot of mental gymnastics.
Not foreign influence, but simply that fear and outrage sells.
I.e. they are 100%, without a doubt, doing just that
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/crim...
Thats my entire point. You’re talking about something that simply does not exist. But when nearly all of the online discourse acts as if we are less safe now, it’s easy to believe that is true. Even being aware of the statistics sometimes I feel that way.
Sensationalist media has always been a thing. Yet, at the exact same time geopolitical opponents were given a direct input to the media consumed by the average American, sentiment becomes much more negative.
Let's be serious. Yellow Journalism was thriving in its modern birthplace of USA long before PRC or RF even existed.
Demand from consumers who interact with the internet.
Consumers who, on the internet, ONLY see upvoted comments about masa shootings and see anything talking about the more deadly issue of heart disease/obesity downvoted and mocked.
Outside of where?
But it's also plausible that like OP says outside influences take advantage of the condition being present.