3 ms·

Is that right? The past centuries seemed to have "pamphlets" widely circulated with all sorts of bullshit, that were just as bat shit crazy and widely circulate

Is that right? The past centuries seemed to have "pamphlets" widely circulated with all sorts of bullshit, that were just as bat shit crazy and widely circulated. I suppose with FB the bar is even lower, but still. Not sure I would blame the printing press or FB for human attraction to conspiracies.

johnny22 2y ago
not only is the reach nowadays wider and the means of dissemination cheaper, but lots of regular folks have more time to "research" and spread them and even make some money in the process.
- kayo_20211030 2y ago
  It's odd how a statement like "I've done my own research, and..." has become an indication that that person is immediately going to make a claim backed by no one else's research.
tzs 2y ago
Pamphlets cost money to print and distribute, and distribution channels were not fast. Most crazy people didn't have the money for widespread distribution, and the slowness of distribution meant that if some insane thing did start getting traction others could get debunking material out before the crazy thing got too far. With social media the distribution cost is zero to the person posting, so there is no speed bump there. It is distributed in a very short time to a large number of people, so there is little opportunity to debunk it before it has taken hold. The only real speed bump with social media is the time to write the material. That's generally much lower for the insane stuff then for the correct stuff. Try debunking sometime if you want to see this yourself. It can take hours or days of work to write a good refutation for something that a crazy person spent a few minutes on. And then when you finish, you often find the crazy person has made a dozen more arguments and their audience dismisses your debunking saying everyone occasionally makes a mistake and pointing at the 10 new arguments that have not been debunked yet. With pamphlets the aforementioned limitations also meant that you generally didn't see the pamphlets from crazy people far away. You mostly just saw your local or regional sources. Overall the information you received was mostly sane stuff with an insane pamphlet now and then. With social media you get the insanity from worldwide. You might find that a large majority of your feed is the crazy stuff so even if someone writes a good refutation that would have convinced you it can easily be overlooked in the deluge of world wide craziness.
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  Well, sure, there are quantitative differences. But I'm not sure they add up to qualitative ones. Take the Great Fire of London in 1666. While the fire was still raging, huge mobs made up their minds as to who was guilty, and managed to have a go at Catholics, Jews, Dutch merchants too from memory. Some of this story is here : https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/great-fire-london-was-blamed-religious-terrorism-180960332/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/great-fire-london-was... this was all while the city was burning around them, and you'd think they had better things to do than mob justice. This seems like a direct analogy to conspiracy theories about the hurricane. Or the Ku Klux Klan. It wasn't a conspiracy theory as such, rather a proper conspiracy, but it relied (relies!) on people who believe this BS and are thoroughly convinced about racial supremacy etc. Again, all this came to be, and was hugely influential and widespread, well before the transistor, never mind a computer. Mib violence based on bullshit seems to have always existed, and if anything the violence was, on average, worse in the past.

johnny22 2y ago

not only is the reach nowadays wider and the means of dissemination cheaper, but lots of regular folks have more time to "research" and spread them and even make some money in the process.

kayo_20211030 2y ago
It's odd how a statement like "I've done my own research, and..." has become an indication that that person is immediately going to make a claim backed by no one else's research.

tzs 2y ago

Pamphlets cost money to print and distribute, and distribution channels were not fast. Most crazy people didn't have the money for widespread distribution, and the slowness of distribution meant that if some insane thing did start getting traction others could get debunking material out before the crazy thing got too far. With social media the distribution cost is zero to the person posting, so there is no speed bump there. It is distributed in a very short time to a large number of people, so there is little opportunity to debunk it before it has taken hold. The only real speed bump with social media is the time to write the material. That's generally much lower for the insane stuff then for the correct stuff. Try debunking sometime if you want to see this yourself. It can take hours or days of work to write a good refutation for something that a crazy person spent a few minutes on. And then when you finish, you often find the crazy person has made a dozen more arguments and their audience dismisses your debunking saying everyone occasionally makes a mistake and pointing at the 10 new arguments that have not been debunked yet. With pamphlets the aforementioned limitations also meant that you generally didn't see the pamphlets from crazy people far away. You mostly just saw your local or regional sources. Overall the information you received was mostly sane stuff with an insane pamphlet now and then. With social media you get the insanity from worldwide. You might find that a large majority of your feed is the crazy stuff so even if someone writes a good refutation that would have convinced you it can easily be overlooked in the deluge of world wide craziness.

rich_sasha 2y ago
Well, sure, there are quantitative differences. But I'm not sure they add up to qualitative ones. Take the Great Fire of London in 1666. While the fire was still raging, huge mobs made up their minds as to who was guilty, and managed to have a go at Catholics, Jews, Dutch merchants too from memory. Some of this story is here : https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/great-fire-london-was-blamed-religious-terrorism-180960332/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/great-fire-london-was... this was all while the city was burning around them, and you'd think they had better things to do than mob justice. This seems like a direct analogy to conspiracy theories about the hurricane. Or the Ku Klux Klan. It wasn't a conspiracy theory as such, rather a proper conspiracy, but it relied (relies!) on people who believe this BS and are thoroughly convinced about racial supremacy etc. Again, all this came to be, and was hugely influential and widespread, well before the transistor, never mind a computer. Mib violence based on bullshit seems to have always existed, and if anything the violence was, on average, worse in the past.