LT42 I have a former friend who went full Q anon, anti-vax, trumpeteer. We spent months trying to talk sense into him, but it’s the exact same playbook. Take a seed of truth, confound it with mountains of misinformation, talk in circles, ignore facts and evidence, then, when all else fails, play the victim. They are completely unable to engage in genuine, honest debate.
To me, it’s a problem that is overly exaggerated by the internet and social media. We used to be able to keep these people in check with social interactions. You’d be at a table, someone would say something stupid, and immediately get put in their place. Now, they are able to gather in (mis)information silos that amplify bad ideas, which then leak into the real world with real consequences.
This is the problem I don’t know how to begin to solve. We need to scrap facebook, twitter, and for-profit news, but that will never happen. This all originated when news departments went from loss-leaders that provided a public service by giving people information they needed to hear, to for-profit 24 hour news cycles that give people what they want to hear. It creates a uniformed public where people live in separate, conflicting realities, which in turn leads to the perfect environment for the rise of autocrats. I don’t see how this ends well for western ideals.
