3 ms·

I remember national TV talking about UFOs, proofs of WMD in Irak, Homosexuality being a disease, conspiracy magazines in every gas station shop, and no easy way

I remember national TV talking about UFOs, proofs of WMD in Irak, Homosexuality being a disease, conspiracy magazines in every gas station shop, and no easy way to verify anything. I have the impression that the general quality of available information has only gone up.

mxfh 8y ago
Promoting those things back than had significant opportunity costs for getting things published and reaching an audience. And bad actors even got denied free or even paid communication channels after a number of bad faith offenses, so gatekeepers to mass communication were a good thing in that respect. Of course they also work the other way around, if a bad idea manages to creep in, but it took a significant amount of coordinated resources in analog times. I think it's no accident, that the rise of fascism and totalitarian Stalinism is coincident with the rise of radio and the maturing fields of advertising and mass psychology. This is the first wave it got a magnitude cheaper, to reach big audiences. We're witnessing the second one. (Third one if you count the printing press, but the adoption happened over generations, so societies had time to adopt) Nowadays intentionally bad ideas work like spam, they have only an very small individual chance to get hold of a person, but with an near infinite number of permutations for free, it's way more likely to hit each individuals psychological weak spot eventually. So it was never easier to spread ideas for individuals, but so it for all sorts of corporate and even nation actors posing as individuals.
- webmaven 8y ago
  > (Third one if you count the printing press, but the adoption happened over generations, so societies had time to adopt) Even though the printing press kicked off societal changes that took a few centuries to mature and settle down, it was only slow by our current standards. The societies and institutions that were being disrupted evolved in an environment that changed on millenial timescales, so they were, in some senses, shell shocked for most of those 'few centuries' due to a failure to adapt despite having ample (by our standards) time, and the new institutions that arose were regarded as disruptive upstarts for generations (eg. the Lutheran church). Anyway. An order-of-magnitude change is going to be just as disruptive, even if the change is from "snail's pace" to "tortoise-like".

mxfh 8y ago

Promoting those things back than had significant opportunity costs for getting things published and reaching an audience. And bad actors even got denied free or even paid communication channels after a number of bad faith offenses, so gatekeepers to mass communication were a good thing in that respect. Of course they also work the other way around, if a bad idea manages to creep in, but it took a significant amount of coordinated resources in analog times. I think it's no accident, that the rise of fascism and totalitarian Stalinism is coincident with the rise of radio and the maturing fields of advertising and mass psychology. This is the first wave it got a magnitude cheaper, to reach big audiences. We're witnessing the second one. (Third one if you count the printing press, but the adoption happened over generations, so societies had time to adopt) Nowadays intentionally bad ideas work like spam, they have only an very small individual chance to get hold of a person, but with an near infinite number of permutations for free, it's way more likely to hit each individuals psychological weak spot eventually. So it was never easier to spread ideas for individuals, but so it for all sorts of corporate and even nation actors posing as individuals.

webmaven 8y ago
> (Third one if you count the printing press, but the adoption happened over generations, so societies had time to adopt) Even though the printing press kicked off societal changes that took a few centuries to mature and settle down, it was only slow by our current standards. The societies and institutions that were being disrupted evolved in an environment that changed on millenial timescales, so they were, in some senses, shell shocked for most of those 'few centuries' due to a failure to adapt despite having ample (by our standards) time, and the new institutions that arose were regarded as disruptive upstarts for generations (eg. the Lutheran church). Anyway. An order-of-magnitude change is going to be just as disruptive, even if the change is from "snail's pace" to "tortoise-like".