People these days dont realise that confidently incorrect people pre-exist facebook.
It’s different though.
If you were a flat earther in 1982, you probably would have a weird self published “newspaper” by someone 4 times a year, and two or three books and no platform beyond literally shouting on the street at people who all considered you a moron.
Nowadays, if you’re a crackpot, you can instantly find 17.000 other crackpots who will happily not just confirm your idiocy, but make up fake stories to support your bullshit ideas. They will also drag you along by pure crank magnetism into other bullshit. You can spread your bullshit far and wide, and since people are automatically served with similar content, you’re even likely to find other idiots like you “in the wild”, which is actually an algorithmic bubble.
Before, nobody you met in real life would agree with you. Nowadays, everyone you “meet” online agrees with you.
So yes, confidently incorrect people have always been there, but not in these numbers, and rarely to this level of confidence. That’s why people react to vehemently, they rarely ever reach outside their bubble. Your ideas that the world is round aren’t the general concept to them, they hear from flat earthers every single hour of the day.
Nowadays, if you’re a crackpot, you can instantly find 17.000 other crackpots who will happily not just confirm your idiocy, but make up fake stories to support your bullshit ideas.
And because crackpots like this are very engaged in their crackpottery, it’s a great place to put ads. That means that the big Internet ad companies all want to be the ones to host those bullshit ideas.
Back in the day, the reason crackpot newspapers had to be self-published is that the big publishers didn’t want to have anything to do with the crackpots. But, in the modern world, Google / Meta can find someone who wants to run an add to your crackpottery, so you get the same treatment as a big media publisher. In fact, you might get better treatment because crackpottery may be stickier than say the Boston Globe, so Google / Meta might prefer to work with you because it allows them to show more ads.
It’s different though.
If you were a flat earther in 1982, you probably would have a weird self published “newspaper” by someone 4 times a year, and two or three books and no platform beyond literally shouting on the street at people who all considered you a moron.
Nowadays, if you’re a crackpot, you can instantly find 17.000 other crackpots who will happily not just confirm your idiocy, but make up fake stories to support your bullshit ideas. They will also drag you along by pure crank magnetism into other bullshit. You can spread your bullshit far and wide, and since people are automatically served with similar content, you’re even likely to find other idiots like you “in the wild”, which is actually an algorithmic bubble.
Before, nobody you met in real life would agree with you. Nowadays, everyone you “meet” online agrees with you.
So yes, confidently incorrect people have always been there, but not in these numbers, and rarely to this level of confidence. That’s why people react to vehemently, they rarely ever reach outside their bubble. Your ideas that the world is round aren’t the general concept to them, they hear from flat earthers every single hour of the day.
And because crackpots like this are very engaged in their crackpottery, it’s a great place to put ads. That means that the big Internet ad companies all want to be the ones to host those bullshit ideas.
Back in the day, the reason crackpot newspapers had to be self-published is that the big publishers didn’t want to have anything to do with the crackpots. But, in the modern world, Google / Meta can find someone who wants to run an add to your crackpottery, so you get the same treatment as a big media publisher. In fact, you might get better treatment because crackpottery may be stickier than say the Boston Globe, so Google / Meta might prefer to work with you because it allows them to show more ads.
However, this has worked wonders for my atheism!