There’s a tendency in this heated political climate to simply reject people who are saying false things and to write off conspiracy theorists writ large.
But as the US approaches the third straight election in which misinformation — and the fight against it — is expected to play a role, it’s important to understand what’s driving people who don’t believe in US elections.
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I talked to O’Sullivan about the documentary, in which he has some frank and disarming talks with people about what has shaken their belief in the US. But he paints an alarming picture about the rise of fringe movements in the country.
Our conversation, conducted by phone and edited for length, is below:
WOLF: What were you trying to accomplish with this project?
O’SULLIVAN: So much of mainstream American politics now is being infected and affected by what is happening on what was once considered the real fringes — fringe platforms, fringe personalities.
And I think really what we want to do in this show is illustrate how these personalities may be pushing falsehoods, but they’re no longer fringe. This is all happening right now. And it is having a big effect on our democracy.
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it sucks so bad that the internet initially looked like this thing that would enlighten the world and allow for us as a species to make incredible gains in sciences and culture and morality. instead it seemed to do the opposite.
Because the 1st wave of people on the internet were nerds and geeks. People driven by hope and optimist to make the world a better place and using the internet to do things they were already inclined to do… learn and share. You had to read, and write and things were generally long form interactions. Chat rooms required that you write sentences and paragraphs. It was also largely hosted by universities and other non-profit interests. The philosophy of Open Source and Freesoftware was rampant in the 2000s, and then declined as the big 5 took over the internet.
Now the internet is driven by corporate greed and the exploitation of the LCD’s lazy monkey-brain interactions. EVerything now is a blurb, a meme, a click, a reaction emoji. A 8 min youtube video is ‘too hard’ now for the average internet user.
Trash in, trash out
While true, the bigger problem is how many people would rather believe the trash because it gives them someone to be angry at instead of learning empathy for other people.
I was more referring to the unfortunately naive hope that came from the early Internet. I am reminded of this quote by Charles Babbage,
On two occasions I have been asked, — “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
I was also hopeful, but I now realize how silly that was.
It was easy to be hopeful because in the beginning it was fucking magical and then just got better and better until capitalism got involved and sunk their teeth into the veins of love and hope and sucked it dry until its dead decaying husk and then zombified by AI.
Exactly, and early on it was being led by people with radical ideas. Things like Wikipedia shouldn’t exist, but crazy people who believed in humanity and the free exchange of information made stuff like that.
Eventually the internet replaced the commons, but capital sees the commons merely as unclaimed land so they outcompeted it then enshittified it.
The solution is unfortunately we have to make normie friendly options. A home server is that just works and is cheap and easy seems like exactly the sort of shit that could help. Federation may very well be the solution
those people also believed in freedom.
not social control.
more and more and more the internet is become about social control. especially in totalitarian states, but also in the west more and more.
I was about to say the same thing applies to AI. But AI is fucked right out of the gate. There’s not even a brief window of hope for it being used to better society. Anyone with any awareness on the topic knows these AIs are already corrupted and compromised because they’ve been using the Internet to train all their LLMs.
Well if you go back to the use of algorithms they did have this massive potential but they all to quickly got involved with advertising and social media and yeah. it was yuck already at that point. But like computer vision and such gave it so much promise.
algorithms could help people. they could, for example, help you find relaly cool obscure stuff on netflix/spotify that you might like. They worked like this for awhile and ti was great!
But that doesn’t make money. the algorithm that shoves netflix’s latest trash content does, so that is why it shows up in every suggestion an takes up so my screen space. the vast majority of my spotify ‘feed’ is podcast trash i have never or never ever will listen to, and i can no longer use it to find some obscure band playing weird music like I did 8 years ago.
Some?
I’d argue it’s most. Granted, people’s level of delusion varies, but esp among the younger kids who are tik-tok addicts, there is a marked decline in their ability to realize there is a world outside of their experience and what they are being told on tik-tok.
What baffles me is the intolerance of disagreement. When I was in college the main thing I learned was the limits of what I know, how much I don’t know, and to tolerate others POV and to investigate the facts and see beyond biased narratives and recognize those biases…
Today it seems all people learn is ‘i am right, because i feel i am right, and nobody can tell me otherwise’. and people are more and more extreme in their views and more willing to dehumanize others for the smallest of disagreements. IRL and on the internet.
My views are liberal, but I’m open to conservative ideas. This was not controversial in the 2000s, and most of the early 2010s, but post Trump/tiktok, even my own former friends on the left have whole-heartedly adopted the ‘I am a victim and my feelings are all that matters’ mentality, and just live in these social media hug boxes where every little think they do is a HUGE achievement, and any mistake they make is never their fault. Meanwhile, they removed and removed about how unfair and unhappy their lives are if only rich white guys would just give them their money it would all be better. They have zero interest in building anything inclusive or meaningful in their communities, unless you define community as ‘only people who look, speak, and think exactly like I do’. Everything is a catchphrase, and no subtling is allowed. ‘ACAB’… well I have family who are cops… sorry if I’m not on board with the mentality that ACAB, but I 100% recognize the need for police reform… but that viewpoint is ‘toxic’ now. You can’t recognize cops as people.
It’s truly dark. I’ve also seen it firsthand with people i’ve know for several years now, watching them slowly become angry nutbags whose joy in life is enforcing social confomrity into whatever fiefdom they are a part of. And I am just sort of peacing out now, because I no longer want to be involved in communities and groups full of narcissistic twits and angry miserable people whose only joy in life is shitting on others who are different than them.
It’s ACAB not ACAP (all cops are pigs). ACAB doesn’t dehumanize police, it is a statement that says the institution itself is rotten and makes bastards out of well intending people. Some people do dehumanize police, and often when they do, they point to the inhumane acts of the police force at large.
right, calling people pigs and bastards isn’t dehumanizing… lol
What exactly do you think a bastard is?
Somebody that fits this description (excluding ACAB) won the Presidency. Self promoting and selfish desires. The “greed is good” era has continued pushing a selfish culture over community driven goals. This is especially true in the large media organizations and social media. Media makes decisions for profits and selfish goals over community engagement, education, and cohesiveness.
But, there are many counter examples in the actual community. The community driven people just make less noise online. I volunteer with college kids and the generosity and desire for community building is really impressive. I would not find this online but in real life it is very evident. But no one makes money selling things to people who care about others more than themselves. So advertising and social media cater to the selfish side of people so that is what we see more often.
Yeah. Sadly any community org that started out great I have been a part of always lets money get in the way… and then it all becomes about ‘image’ and social conformity and such.
I recently left a community garden group I helped build because they won some grant and decided they needed to get more grants and more money and the best way to do that was to become a group that ‘helps marginalized peoples’ and hence… if you are white you should leave because you aren’t helping our ‘brand’. They changed all the photos on the social media/website to women and minorities, despite the fact 70% of the people doing the actual work were white male folks… but since that doesn’t fit the ‘brand’ they need to get more money… it’s just a self-defeating process and what was a inclusive group is now exclusive. Despite the flat irony that the racial makeup of our group was spot on with the that of the city (70% white) it’s not decided that no, your skin color is what matters.
Greed ruins everything.
Helping marginalized peoples? Dear god, what horrors will they think of next?
England also thought they were ‘helping’ marginalized people when they colonized Africa/India.
You’re right, a garden group helping marginalized people is no different from Europeans colonizing Africa. Why didn’t I see it that way before?
Because you don’t pay attention to how social power and identity are used as weapons today, just as it was during colonialism.
People haven’t changed very much, we are no more ‘enlightened’ today than we were 400 years ago. We’re just have a lot more words to pretend we are superior.
Not a bad article, but I wish they wouldn’t use politically neutral language like fringe or polarisation or even just conspiracy theorist, as if the issues aren’t almost exclusively happening on one side of politics. Call a spade a spade already.
speak for yourself, i see so much of it in my former ‘leftist’ friends. especially the ‘woke’ ones who think anyone who doesn’t have enough BLM stickers is a facist.
least to say when i said BLM signs are slacktivism, they went ape-shit on me. lol
“Some”?
Yup, some. Interact with the public on a regular basis and you’ll see that most people aren’t crazy, but some certainly are.
I do interact with the public, it’s literally my job. That said it’s not just “some”. How many Trump cultists are there again? Last I checked they are enough to tie Biden in the polls almost. Not really “some”.
right? i live in a the most left leaning state in the country practically, and I still see Trump stuff every single day when I leave the house. They are everywhere. 33% of state residents voted for him. That isn’t some. that’s 1/3 people.
