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It’s useful to know details such as these, but the bigger problem is that the audience that most “enjoys” and retweets this stuff honestly doesn’t care that it

by blunte 7y ago

It’s useful to know details such as these, but the bigger problem is that the audience that most “enjoys” and retweets this stuff honestly doesn’t care that it is false. I personally know people that, when provided clear evidence of entirely false and manipulative stories will justify them by saying, “well, this story may not be true, but there are a lot of stories like this that you haven’t seen which are true”. The point is, they believe what they want to believe, and no amount of proof to the contrary will change their mind. In fact, they often just double down on their arguments.

lopmotr 7y ago
Sure, that's normal human pleasure from having their beliefs reinforced. It's probably and even bigger problem for vague unfalsifiable ideas like "police are racist", "capitalism is evil" or "immigration is bad". If a news story appears to support such a belief, the person will have their belief reinforced, even if it's wrong and the (true) news story is an exception. One photo of an immigrant vandalizing a statue or one photo of a border guard making a child cry says "See? You were right! That whole political party is bad!".
badestrand 7y ago
> but the bigger problem is that the audience that most “enjoys” and retweets this stuff honestly doesn’t care that it is false. [...] The point is, they believe what they want to believe, and no amount of proof to the contrary will change their mind All people are like that, just everyone for different topics. I heard so many people say "There are not enough resources on earth so that everyone can have a mobile phone" or the like, which obviously is false. Don't get me started on all the beliefs of lefts and rights in the refugee crisis in Germany. Or take "the free market solves it all" from many liberals, "capitalism is evil" from young contrarians and whatever conservative thoughts from older folks. My point is, the problem of blind belief is not specific to the audience of those tweets, it seems human nature.

by blunte 7y ago

lopmotr 7y ago

Sure, that's normal human pleasure from having their beliefs reinforced. It's probably and even bigger problem for vague unfalsifiable ideas like "police are racist", "capitalism is evil" or "immigration is bad". If a news story appears to support such a belief, the person will have their belief reinforced, even if it's wrong and the (true) news story is an exception. One photo of an immigrant vandalizing a statue or one photo of a border guard making a child cry says "See? You were right! That whole political party is bad!".

badestrand 7y ago

> but the bigger problem is that the audience that most “enjoys” and retweets this stuff honestly doesn’t care that it is false. [...] The point is, they believe what they want to believe, and no amount of proof to the contrary will change their mind All people are like that, just everyone for different topics. I heard so many people say "There are not enough resources on earth so that everyone can have a mobile phone" or the like, which obviously is false. Don't get me started on all the beliefs of lefts and rights in the refugee crisis in Germany. Or take "the free market solves it all" from many liberals, "capitalism is evil" from young contrarians and whatever conservative thoughts from older folks. My point is, the problem of blind belief is not specific to the audience of those tweets, it seems human nature.