>But in the last ten years, something seems to have arrested this direction of travel and reinstated local bubbles of thought, insulated from outside challenge.

>But in the last ten years, something seems to have arrested this direction of travel and reinstated local bubbles of thought, insulated from outside challenge. I've noticed this specifically with covid denial/conspiracy nuts. Sure, there have always been conspiracy nuts (and some conspiracy theories are later proven not theories at all), but covid-related conspiracies are a different beast altogether in terms of how widespread they got. There seems to be a personality type that is prone to believing in conspiracy theories of any kind, and the bar or threshold for that kind of personality seems to have lowered all of a sudden -- otherwise normal people that were not particularly conspiracy theory-leaning are way into the craziest covid stuff. The level of angst involved is also on a whole other level: while in other conspiracy theories the "Enemy" is usually a small evil cabal and the general "blue pill" public is just "misinformed sheep", now suddenly everyone _not a conspiracy nut_ is immediately evil.