3 ms·

It just struck me that this explains a lot of changes I've seen in people near me and myself. My mother started getting really into stuff like essential oils. M

It just struck me that this explains a lot of changes I've seen in people near me and myself. My mother started getting really into stuff like essential oils. My dad (non-american) spends a crazy amount of time watching videos and reading news about how crazy Trump is (yeah, he IS, but we don't even live in America!). My sister got really into nutrition and diets, with a bent towards complete suspicion of western medicine. My wife, while not a full on anti-vaxxer yet, is now suspicious of vaccinations and wants to wait to vaccinate our child, and skip some of them all together. This after having watched some "documentary" series on Youtube. Myself, I've also seem to have become more extreme in what I'm willing to try to improve my health, personal finance, mental abilities etc. I'm not sure if all of this is due to Youtube specifically, but definitely due to the internet in general. However, I do believe that for many topics, the center/average view is usually wrong. For example the average views on things like diet, exercise, personal finance, materialism is just bad. The average Joe eats like crap, rarely exercises and has less than a few thousand dollars in savings/investments. Therefore, I'm starting to wonder what else out there I might be doing wrong that I haven't even considered yet.

dnomad 8y ago
> My wife, while not a full on anti-vaxxer yet, is now suspicious of vaccinations and wants to wait to vaccinate our child, and skip some of them all together. This after having watched some "documentary" series on Youtube. Out of curiosity is your wife college educated? It's the radicalization of "average" people that is most interesting. I suspect what your wife discovered wasn't just a series of videos but a whole community of people deeply committed this nonsense. This is the secret of radicalization: it appears as just a (very rigid) community of like-minded souls. This shows up again and again in the literature and the news. The internet is doing its job of bringing people together. What's not clear is whether any of these communities are actually beneficial.

dnomad 8y ago

> My wife, while not a full on anti-vaxxer yet, is now suspicious of vaccinations and wants to wait to vaccinate our child, and skip some of them all together. This after having watched some "documentary" series on Youtube. Out of curiosity is your wife college educated? It's the radicalization of "average" people that is most interesting. I suspect what your wife discovered wasn't just a series of videos but a whole community of people deeply committed this nonsense. This is the secret of radicalization: it appears as just a (very rigid) community of like-minded souls. This shows up again and again in the literature and the news. The internet is doing its job of bringing people together. What's not clear is whether any of these communities are actually beneficial.