5 ms·

I don't seem to remember there ever being a resistance to vaccinations growing up, beyond me being six and hating the doctors office. It makes me wonder how thi

I don't seem to remember there ever being a resistance to vaccinations growing up, beyond me being six and hating the doctors office. It makes me wonder how this started. I've yet to actually meet someone who is against vaccines. (Or thinks the earth is flat, for that matter.) But judging by the posts on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, et al, it makes it seem like every other person on the street is believing this stuff. People naturally want to combat bad ideas with facts and such, and outrage culture loves having a scarecrow to pillory. Anti-vax and Flat Earthers are natural targets, but I can't help but wonder if all the soapboxing is just spreading their message far and wide--when without attention, it simply would have died out.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
khuey 8y ago
Anti-vaxers have been around almost as long as vaccines. The most recent flareup got started with Andrew Wakefield's (fraudulent and now retracted) paper on MMR and autism that was published in Lancet in the late 90s.
C14L 8y ago
And yet there always has been: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_hesitancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_hesitancy Only that today, with Social Media, that small group can spread their deadly message much easier.
- shereadsthenews 8y ago
  I can't decide whether to blame social media or traditional media. Sure, social media is currently a cesspool of antivaxxers, but the latest wave got started in the late 90s through newspapers, magazines, TV news, and especially daytime TV talk shows. These outlets are now glad that we don't remember their role in the problem.
- bjt2n3904 8y ago
  My point is, they don't have to spread their message. We'll spread it for them. It looks something like this. "Hi, I've never actually met a flat earther, but here's a comically bad argument they might make. Now, listen to me mouthbreathe into my microphone for the next 4 hours while I do a point by point exhaustive takedown video on why the world is indeed, a sphere. Join me next week for my next 4 hour installment where I continue to debate arguments they might make if I actually knew someone who was a flat earther." The video will convince 1 person the world is round. For another 10 people, however, they will see resistance to their weakly held idea as evidence that they're believing the correct thing. Counter intuitively, this makes them grasp it tighter, like a Chinese Finger Trap. The harder you fight them, the more solid their viewpoint gets.
vkou 8y ago
It wasn't attention that made brought these cultures together. It was the fact that modern social media platforms are tailor-made for people to find other people with similar interests. When you were the only flat-earther you knew, you kept mum about your lunacy. When Facebook recommends that you join the Pittsburgh Flat-Earth Society, all of a sudden, you have dozens of people who will validate your beliefs. Social media - especially, bubble filter social media - is a new, incredibly virulent vector for ideas.
Diederich 8y ago
> It makes me wonder how this started. The seeds to the answer to your question lay in the rest of your post. > I've yet to actually meet someone who is against vaccines. (Or thinks the earth is flat, for that matter.) I have known anti-vaxxers, but your point stands: they're a relatively small but growing group, and a few years ago, they were a tiny group. So we have a small but rapidly growing group of people, widely distributed, who believe in some insane things. > But judging by the posts on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, et al, it makes it seem like every other person on the street is believing this stuff. Social media sites, by definition, want people to spend as much time on the site as possible. One way to get people to come to a site and stay is to have quality content. But... > ... outrage culture loves having a scarecrow to pillory ... This is slightly out of the context you posted it in, but this is the second to last step. Nothing holds people's attention more effectively than more primitive emotions, stuff that comes from our limbic system, a part of our brain that hosts fear, pleasure and anger. In the not so distant past, the number of people an average person could communicate with was strictly limited. We were all highly partitioned, and information that went to the masses was highly curated. This brings us to the final point: the social media sites actively seek to bring like-minded people together, and also directly and indirectly bring people together in a way that will create fights. All of these serve to maximize site engagement, and thus profitability. I'm skipping a lot of steps here, but I hope this will shed some light on the topic.
metalgearsolid 8y ago
We learned Facebook can be used by foreign adversaries to influence elections. I think we might be learning that it can also be used to commit what you might call biological warfare.
- bjt2n3904 8y ago
  Do you remember in "The Dark Knight", how the Joker just happens to run into Batman on a building overlooking a river, while two boats just happen to be escaping calamity. One boat happens to have prisoners, the other boat happens to have regular people. Both are wired with explosives, and each boat has the other's detonator. That moment really broke the movie for me. The Joker is effectively in charge of the butterfly effect. He flaps his wings, and gets what he wants in a "deus ex machina" style way. The odds of timing that so perfectly are astronomical. You're telling me that a foreign adversary happened to pull this off? "Russia" is becoming a catch all bogey man for everything that we don't understand. There are far simpler answers to how this started to spread.
  - metalgearsolid 8y ago
    Well I said "might be" on purpose because hanlon's razor applies very well here.
    - AckSyn 8y ago
      It's so far outside the realm of reality as to be laughable.
save_ferris 8y ago
One of the more common explanations I see online about the adoption of antivax ideas is that its a way for people who can't afford healthcare to justify why they don't need it. As healthcare becomes more and more of a financial liability for Americans, people look for alternatives, and antivax has a large, established community that has already conjured up answers to most of the basic objections to the idea.
- Xylakant 8y ago
  Pro-Plague is strong in Germany, too. We’ve seen measles outbreaks in Berlin in the last few years. Vaccinations are free here. So that can’t be the reason.
- b_tterc_p 8y ago
  Most antivaxers are relatively wealthy, and believe that the “improbable” likelihood of measles can be dealt with via their wealth while the idea of getting autism is incurable. Many vaccines are available for free even without insurance. If there is a wave of poor people now tagging along it’s because they’re falling to fear campaigns led by the original movement.
linuxftw 8y ago
From [0]: > Most recently, scientists at the United Kingdom’s (UK) Health Protection Agency (HPA) have found evidence of an association between Pandemrix and narcolepsy in children in England. The findings are consistent with studies from Finland and other countries. It's easy to forget the level of mouth-foaming fear the media ginned up in response to 'H1N1'. And in subsequent years, they kept pushing the 'HxNx' fear based propaganda. There are real risks associated with vaccines. The US federal government has displayed a pattern of lies and corruption. Why would the medical portion of said government be immune to that corruption? It's not. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-flu.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps...
mcantelon 8y ago
Mass migration is another factor possibly contributing to increasing cases of communicable diseases.
Xylakant 8y ago
> I've yet to actually meet someone who is against vaccines. I have. They also believe in all sorts of other weird things. But you don’t have to go very far to see similar things: Homeopathy for example. What’s called “Traditional Chinese Medicine” in germany (it’s nothing like that). There’s a lot of people that are well educated and should know better, but I’ve even been recommended homeopathic treatments by the nurse that gave the prep courses when my wife was pregnant.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

khuey 8y ago

Anti-vaxers have been around almost as long as vaccines. The most recent flareup got started with Andrew Wakefield's (fraudulent and now retracted) paper on MMR and autism that was published in Lancet in the late 90s.

C14L 8y ago

And yet there always has been: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_hesitancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_hesitancy Only that today, with Social Media, that small group can spread their deadly message much easier.

shereadsthenews 8y ago
I can't decide whether to blame social media or traditional media. Sure, social media is currently a cesspool of antivaxxers, but the latest wave got started in the late 90s through newspapers, magazines, TV news, and especially daytime TV talk shows. These outlets are now glad that we don't remember their role in the problem.
bjt2n3904 8y ago
My point is, they don't have to spread their message. We'll spread it for them. It looks something like this. "Hi, I've never actually met a flat earther, but here's a comically bad argument they might make. Now, listen to me mouthbreathe into my microphone for the next 4 hours while I do a point by point exhaustive takedown video on why the world is indeed, a sphere. Join me next week for my next 4 hour installment where I continue to debate arguments they might make if I actually knew someone who was a flat earther." The video will convince 1 person the world is round. For another 10 people, however, they will see resistance to their weakly held idea as evidence that they're believing the correct thing. Counter intuitively, this makes them grasp it tighter, like a Chinese Finger Trap. The harder you fight them, the more solid their viewpoint gets.

vkou 8y ago

It wasn't attention that made brought these cultures together. It was the fact that modern social media platforms are tailor-made for people to find other people with similar interests. When you were the only flat-earther you knew, you kept mum about your lunacy. When Facebook recommends that you join the Pittsburgh Flat-Earth Society, all of a sudden, you have dozens of people who will validate your beliefs. Social media - especially, bubble filter social media - is a new, incredibly virulent vector for ideas.

Diederich 8y ago

> It makes me wonder how this started. The seeds to the answer to your question lay in the rest of your post. > I've yet to actually meet someone who is against vaccines. (Or thinks the earth is flat, for that matter.) I have known anti-vaxxers, but your point stands: they're a relatively small but growing group, and a few years ago, they were a tiny group. So we have a small but rapidly growing group of people, widely distributed, who believe in some insane things. > But judging by the posts on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, et al, it makes it seem like every other person on the street is believing this stuff. Social media sites, by definition, want people to spend as much time on the site as possible. One way to get people to come to a site and stay is to have quality content. But... > ... outrage culture loves having a scarecrow to pillory ... This is slightly out of the context you posted it in, but this is the second to last step. Nothing holds people's attention more effectively than more primitive emotions, stuff that comes from our limbic system, a part of our brain that hosts fear, pleasure and anger. In the not so distant past, the number of people an average person could communicate with was strictly limited. We were all highly partitioned, and information that went to the masses was highly curated. This brings us to the final point: the social media sites actively seek to bring like-minded people together, and also directly and indirectly bring people together in a way that will create fights. All of these serve to maximize site engagement, and thus profitability. I'm skipping a lot of steps here, but I hope this will shed some light on the topic.

metalgearsolid 8y ago

We learned Facebook can be used by foreign adversaries to influence elections. I think we might be learning that it can also be used to commit what you might call biological warfare.

bjt2n3904 8y ago
Do you remember in "The Dark Knight", how the Joker just happens to run into Batman on a building overlooking a river, while two boats just happen to be escaping calamity. One boat happens to have prisoners, the other boat happens to have regular people. Both are wired with explosives, and each boat has the other's detonator. That moment really broke the movie for me. The Joker is effectively in charge of the butterfly effect. He flaps his wings, and gets what he wants in a "deus ex machina" style way. The odds of timing that so perfectly are astronomical. You're telling me that a foreign adversary happened to pull this off? "Russia" is becoming a catch all bogey man for everything that we don't understand. There are far simpler answers to how this started to spread.
- metalgearsolid 8y ago
  Well I said "might be" on purpose because hanlon's razor applies very well here.
  - AckSyn 8y ago
    It's so far outside the realm of reality as to be laughable.

save_ferris 8y ago

One of the more common explanations I see online about the adoption of antivax ideas is that its a way for people who can't afford healthcare to justify why they don't need it. As healthcare becomes more and more of a financial liability for Americans, people look for alternatives, and antivax has a large, established community that has already conjured up answers to most of the basic objections to the idea.

Xylakant 8y ago
Pro-Plague is strong in Germany, too. We’ve seen measles outbreaks in Berlin in the last few years. Vaccinations are free here. So that can’t be the reason.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
Most antivaxers are relatively wealthy, and believe that the “improbable” likelihood of measles can be dealt with via their wealth while the idea of getting autism is incurable. Many vaccines are available for free even without insurance. If there is a wave of poor people now tagging along it’s because they’re falling to fear campaigns led by the original movement.

linuxftw 8y ago

From [0]: > Most recently, scientists at the United Kingdom’s (UK) Health Protection Agency (HPA) have found evidence of an association between Pandemrix and narcolepsy in children in England. The findings are consistent with studies from Finland and other countries. It's easy to forget the level of mouth-foaming fear the media ginned up in response to 'H1N1'. And in subsequent years, they kept pushing the 'HxNx' fear based propaganda. There are real risks associated with vaccines. The US federal government has displayed a pattern of lies and corruption. Why would the medical portion of said government be immune to that corruption? It's not. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-flu.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps...

mcantelon 8y ago

Mass migration is another factor possibly contributing to increasing cases of communicable diseases.

Xylakant 8y ago

> I've yet to actually meet someone who is against vaccines. I have. They also believe in all sorts of other weird things. But you don’t have to go very far to see similar things: Homeopathy for example. What’s called “Traditional Chinese Medicine” in germany (it’s nothing like that). There’s a lot of people that are well educated and should know better, but I’ve even been recommended homeopathic treatments by the nurse that gave the prep courses when my wife was pregnant.