Because everything anti-establishment is a conspiracy, remember folks, trust the main stream media - they definitely aren't working hand in hand with intelligence agencies and corporations.
All 5g gay frogs aside, this a power problem and not really a people problem. How many establishment institutions are left that citizens would wish to enthusiastically uphold? We have come to almost expect corruption and these days.
This isn't a justification for irrational conspiracy theory (which are generally harmless, yet occasionally highly catastrophic). It's that the establishment whack-em-all approach is not working, and is probably exacerbating their problem.
IMHO - distrust in the establishment is not the cause, but a side effect of the real cause.
I used to be a journalist before my career in tech. In my opinion, the real culprit is that news outlets now have the wrong incentives.
When people still used to buy printed newspapers, you had to pay for your news so you better get well researched articles for your hard earned money. [1]
With the rise of internet news, that incentive is no longer in place. Yes there are paid news outlets on the Internet but the majority of people don't pay for a subscription. What gets you most views does rarely align with high journalistic standards. [2] In a way, everything is a tabloid now.
[1] If you are at least as old as me, you might remember that reading a certain newspaper rather than another was almost seen as a status symbol. I remember journalists saying things like "I love working at [newspaper X] because of our fine readership, they challenge me to write high quality articles".
[2] With a few obvious exceptions like Panama Papers etc.
It’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. You watch one conspiracy video, the algorithm learns and recommends more of it.
Humans absorb what we see around us and our identity is now also formed by what we consume. So essentially you get a type of flywheel where you become more and more sucked in by virtue of watching more.
I think there’s been this sudden realization that the media can’t be trusted (for good reason) but people have been so long trusting the news that now they can’t accept the true reality which is NOT KNOWING THINGS and so they go to the internet to fulfill the addiction to a false feeling of knowing what’s going on and think “this must be true instead” but really we all need to accept that we just can’t know things to the extent that the media claimed they had the answers for, and that’s a healthy and good thing to embrace.
So basically rage-bait sells? It's not really surprising in the finance and wellness space that it also works. People often feel vulnerable and that "the system" is rigged against them. This kind of content appeals as it makes them feel that they are not alone, like someone understands them.
It would be interesting to extend the study to other categories where this trust gap does not exist. Would anti-establishment content also get more engagement in say the woodworking niche?
18 comments
[ 0.84 ms ] story [ 35.9 ms ] threadNew fresh relevant conspiracies buried in my threads!
This isn't a justification for irrational conspiracy theory (which are generally harmless, yet occasionally highly catastrophic). It's that the establishment whack-em-all approach is not working, and is probably exacerbating their problem.
This actually sounds like something from a fascist state. It's a completely contradictory, manipulative statement.
Where did you source that "research"? Orwell's Ministry of Truth?
If Democracy is simply Oligarchy with voting as a decoration and sometime even that was gamed, then to the hell with this democracy.
I used to be a journalist before my career in tech. In my opinion, the real culprit is that news outlets now have the wrong incentives.
When people still used to buy printed newspapers, you had to pay for your news so you better get well researched articles for your hard earned money. [1]
With the rise of internet news, that incentive is no longer in place. Yes there are paid news outlets on the Internet but the majority of people don't pay for a subscription. What gets you most views does rarely align with high journalistic standards. [2] In a way, everything is a tabloid now.
[1] If you are at least as old as me, you might remember that reading a certain newspaper rather than another was almost seen as a status symbol. I remember journalists saying things like "I love working at [newspaper X] because of our fine readership, they challenge me to write high quality articles".
[2] With a few obvious exceptions like Panama Papers etc.
Humans absorb what we see around us and our identity is now also formed by what we consume. So essentially you get a type of flywheel where you become more and more sucked in by virtue of watching more.
It would be interesting to extend the study to other categories where this trust gap does not exist. Would anti-establishment content also get more engagement in say the woodworking niche?