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Your refusal to believe that is apt. People are not nearly as dumb as this narrative puts them out to be. This mindset is at best elitism, and ignores human age
by runarberg 2y ago
Your refusal to believe that is apt. People are not nearly as dumb as this narrative puts them out to be. This mindset is at best elitism, and ignores human agency.
In reality every Trump voter has their own reason to behave this way. And their behavior is perfectly rational according to their own beliefs. My personal theory is that we have been grossly underestimating the potency of misinformation and disinformation propaganda on social media. Especially those which weaponizes peoples actual grievances with authority, and directs them in this way. Anybody can be a victim of misinformation (we see this in action with people that fall victims to scam), the misinformation you personally don’t fall victim to was probably not directed at you (see e.g. the Nigerian Prince filter for wire fraud scams).
I think that even though humans are smart, and we have our own agency, there are also number of ways which our intelligence can be exploited. This is the case for scams, but also for misinformation propaganda. I think the real lesson here is in the failures of our democratic institutions to protect us from this exploitation.
- lazyeye 2y agoYou start off by saying these people arent stupid, then go on to suggest they are easily manipulated by (what you think is) misinformation. Just not smart, like you I guess? Honestly, I think the kind of people you are sneering at are actually smarter than you as they would never make the kind of stupid, ignorant comment you've made here.
- runarberg 2y agoBeing susceptible to propaganda (or a scam for that matter) isn’t stupidity. We are all susceptible to it. It just varies which propaganda and to what degree. I never called Trump voters stupid. I think there may be a misunderstanding here because traditional discourse has people believe that only stupid people fall for misinformation propaganda (or a scam). I was explicitly rejecting that.
- lazyeye 2y agoIs it possible that you are the one that has been manipulated by misinformation? Is it possible that people can disagree with you without "misinformation" being involved?
- runarberg 2y agoOh, there is no doubt in my mind that I’m susceptible to propaganda, including misinformation campaigns. However misinformation campaigns are a fact of social media. There are several documented cases of misinformation spreading. It is possible that I have just been lied to about that the media et.all lied about the scale and severity of misinformation and I believed it (although, wouldn’t that be a misinformation campaign which proofs their existence?)