This isn't a new insight. It's been well-documented for years that repeating known falsehoods is about declaring tribal allegiance, it's not about the content of the claims themselves.
A quick web search on fake news and tribalism reveals these earlier articles:
It's a shame they detoured from social psychology into politics. The claim that false information has social value, and therefore symbolic value, is easy to substantiate without the partisan political analysis which amounts to, "and that's why our political enemies do it!". Very childish.
This stupid article is being pushed by multiple channels today. There's an easier explanation other than the self-serving "Our interpretation is that people who responded positively to these statements would feel they 'win' by endorsing misinformation – doing so can show 'the enemy' that it will not gain any ground over people’s views." Which incidentally, is a conclusion based on no science, it's just a WaPo editorial.
People believed a bunch of nonsense because people in authority were knowingly lying to them and intentionally confusing the facts at every turn. Normal people have no expertise, so they need to trust someone, and the people who were appointed to those positions of trust showed themselves willing to lie to help their own finances and careers, and to push transient political agendas.
They were left to trust other random people, like their religious leaders, or their family members - anybody who seemed like they had any moral grounding or conscience at all. They also trusted people who also pointed out that official institutional figures were lying - which is a mistake. It's easy for a scammer to point out another scammer, that doesn't mean you should trust him.
All the 5G conspiracy theories are just a reaction to how aggressively and undemocratically 5G was pushed. People intelligently and reasonably assume that if you are willing to run over everybody to do something from which there are enormous amounts of money to be made, you might not give two shits about any health consequences. This is also true, and they are right, but it doesn't mean that there are health consequences, which is the mistake.
But you know everything would have happened the same way if 5G were going to end up doubling the cancer rate or autism, or whatever other bad thing. We just wouldn't hear about it for 50 years, the people who got rich from it would have died of old age surrounded by their fat happy grandchildren, and their silver-spoon kids (your bosses) would be the ones in charge of the investigations and the remedies.
> When people think symbolically this way, the literal issue – here, fighting COVID-19 – is secondary to a psychological war over people’s minds. In the minds of those who think they’re engaged in them, psychological wars are waged over opinions and attitudes, and are won via control of belief and messaging.
> people who responded positively to these statements would feel they “win” by endorsing misinformation – doing so can show “the enemy” that it will not gain any ground over people’s views.
> vaccination, masking or other COVID-19 prevention efforts could be seen as a symbolic risk that could “weaken” one psychologically even if they provide literal physical benefits.
> The more outlandish or easily disproved something is, the more powerful one might seem when standing by it. Being an edgelord – a contrarian online provocateur – or outright lying can, in their own odd way, appear “authentic.”
> this mindset was also strongly associated with authoritarian attitudes, including beliefs that some groups should dominate others and support for autocratic government. These links help explain why strongman leaders often use misinformation symbolically to impress and control a population.
> they want those far-fetched claims acted on anyway. The deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, for example, can be the desired end goal, even if the offered justification is a transparent farce.
> debunkers merely demonstrate that they’re the ones reacting, and are therefore weak.
Another way to describe it, I think, is that some people use words as weapons, not as a means of transmitting knowledge.
So many people - even sophisticated leaders - opposed to disinformation don't understand that, and keep debunking and arguing, demonstrating with everything they say that they are losing a fight they don't even understand.
> For example, President Donald Trump incorrectly claimed in August 2025 that crime in Washington D.C. was at an all-time high, generating countless fact-checks of his premise and think pieces about his dissociation from reality.
This is a dubious example to give. Even NPR (which skews liberal) has given a much more nuanced[1] interpretation of the numbers. Obviously Trump's claim is hyperbolic and inflammatory (per his MO), but the sentiment does seem to resonate with at least some folks in DC, particularly ones that moved there in the early 2010s (when crime was at an all-time low).
I think most people would claim that they support the truth. Even a troll might publicly claim to speak the truth, let alone someone who has an ideological motivation to believe likely falsehoods. Flat Earthers don't typically say "I know the Earth isn't flat". The best lies come with a grain of truth. And all appealing claims build on the listener's beliefs of how the world truly is. The truth is a great hook.
> Our survey measured it on a scale of how much people agreed with sentences including “Following coronavirus prevention guidelines means you have backed down” and “Continuous coronavirus coverage in the media is a sign we are losing.” Our interpretation is that people who responded positively to these statements would feel they “win” by endorsing misinformation – doing so can show “the enemy” that it will not gain any ground over people’s views.
The actual study is paywalled and not present on Sci-Hub, but I wonder what were all the questions, whether they tried it the other way around (with true claims, perhaps on some other topic), how different the answers were with those. I would guess it is implied, to support such an interpretation, but it is not stated explicitly, and from what is written, it sounds like people who believed in conspiracy theories (or were otherwise skeptical of mainstream views) were in fact unhappy to go along with prevention measures and annoyed by the mainstream coverage, which is not surprising at all.
> These links help explain why strongman leaders often use misinformation symbolically to impress and control a population.
There's an entirely logical reason why authoritarians undermine truth and truth-generating social systems.
The #1 goal of an authoritarian leader is to acquire maximum concentrated power relative to other people. Everything else is secondary.
One of the main ways someone's power can be undermined is by many people combining their small individual powers into a single coherent group. But that requires coordination and agreement. Everyone has to row the boat in the same direction for it to work.
Reality has a natural coordinating effect since we all share the same material universe. Thus, the more people are grounded in reality, the easier it is for them to agree and coordinate. They have a larger set of facts which they already naturally agree on.
Therefore, to undermine that coordination, every authoritarian regime in history has sought to undermine institutions and people that aim to discover and disseminate facts about reality.
Being an edgelord who repeats known falsehoods plays into that. It's effectively throwing up flak into the information sphere to obscure facts that might otherwise disseminate.
Authoritarianism has a lot of obvious appeal for the authority, but what is in it for the bootlickers? The answer isn't clear, but I think it mostly rests on a sense that it feels safest/strongest to be a member of the tribe whose alpha is the biggest baddest gorilla. People that support an authoritarian leader often believe that the leader will protect them and be on their side.
Of course, anyone who knows even a bit of history of authoritarianism knows that Dear Leader will happily kick people out at the slightest provocation and seems to always need his subjects to make sacrifices he himself never seems to have to make. But there is always no shortage of suckers who just want to feel like they're on a winning team.
12 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 43.6 ms ] threadA quick web search on fake news and tribalism reveals these earlier articles:
2017: https://fortune.com/2017/01/13/fake-news-tribalism/
2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/upshot/the-real-story-abo...
2023: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-xge0001374.pd...
People believed a bunch of nonsense because people in authority were knowingly lying to them and intentionally confusing the facts at every turn. Normal people have no expertise, so they need to trust someone, and the people who were appointed to those positions of trust showed themselves willing to lie to help their own finances and careers, and to push transient political agendas.
They were left to trust other random people, like their religious leaders, or their family members - anybody who seemed like they had any moral grounding or conscience at all. They also trusted people who also pointed out that official institutional figures were lying - which is a mistake. It's easy for a scammer to point out another scammer, that doesn't mean you should trust him.
All the 5G conspiracy theories are just a reaction to how aggressively and undemocratically 5G was pushed. People intelligently and reasonably assume that if you are willing to run over everybody to do something from which there are enormous amounts of money to be made, you might not give two shits about any health consequences. This is also true, and they are right, but it doesn't mean that there are health consequences, which is the mistake.
But you know everything would have happened the same way if 5G were going to end up doubling the cancer rate or autism, or whatever other bad thing. We just wouldn't hear about it for 50 years, the people who got rich from it would have died of old age surrounded by their fat happy grandchildren, and their silver-spoon kids (your bosses) would be the ones in charge of the investigations and the remedies.
> When people think symbolically this way, the literal issue – here, fighting COVID-19 – is secondary to a psychological war over people’s minds. In the minds of those who think they’re engaged in them, psychological wars are waged over opinions and attitudes, and are won via control of belief and messaging.
> people who responded positively to these statements would feel they “win” by endorsing misinformation – doing so can show “the enemy” that it will not gain any ground over people’s views.
> vaccination, masking or other COVID-19 prevention efforts could be seen as a symbolic risk that could “weaken” one psychologically even if they provide literal physical benefits.
> The more outlandish or easily disproved something is, the more powerful one might seem when standing by it. Being an edgelord – a contrarian online provocateur – or outright lying can, in their own odd way, appear “authentic.”
> this mindset was also strongly associated with authoritarian attitudes, including beliefs that some groups should dominate others and support for autocratic government. These links help explain why strongman leaders often use misinformation symbolically to impress and control a population.
> they want those far-fetched claims acted on anyway. The deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, for example, can be the desired end goal, even if the offered justification is a transparent farce.
> debunkers merely demonstrate that they’re the ones reacting, and are therefore weak.
Another way to describe it, I think, is that some people use words as weapons, not as a means of transmitting knowledge.
So many people - even sophisticated leaders - opposed to disinformation don't understand that, and keep debunking and arguing, demonstrating with everything they say that they are losing a fight they don't even understand.
This is a dubious example to give. Even NPR (which skews liberal) has given a much more nuanced[1] interpretation of the numbers. Obviously Trump's claim is hyperbolic and inflammatory (per his MO), but the sentiment does seem to resonate with at least some folks in DC, particularly ones that moved there in the early 2010s (when crime was at an all-time low).
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/08/19/nx-s1-5506208/dc-crime-trump-...
The actual study is paywalled and not present on Sci-Hub, but I wonder what were all the questions, whether they tried it the other way around (with true claims, perhaps on some other topic), how different the answers were with those. I would guess it is implied, to support such an interpretation, but it is not stated explicitly, and from what is written, it sounds like people who believed in conspiracy theories (or were otherwise skeptical of mainstream views) were in fact unhappy to go along with prevention measures and annoyed by the mainstream coverage, which is not surprising at all.
There's an entirely logical reason why authoritarians undermine truth and truth-generating social systems.
The #1 goal of an authoritarian leader is to acquire maximum concentrated power relative to other people. Everything else is secondary.
One of the main ways someone's power can be undermined is by many people combining their small individual powers into a single coherent group. But that requires coordination and agreement. Everyone has to row the boat in the same direction for it to work.
Reality has a natural coordinating effect since we all share the same material universe. Thus, the more people are grounded in reality, the easier it is for them to agree and coordinate. They have a larger set of facts which they already naturally agree on.
Therefore, to undermine that coordination, every authoritarian regime in history has sought to undermine institutions and people that aim to discover and disseminate facts about reality.
Being an edgelord who repeats known falsehoods plays into that. It's effectively throwing up flak into the information sphere to obscure facts that might otherwise disseminate.
Authoritarianism has a lot of obvious appeal for the authority, but what is in it for the bootlickers? The answer isn't clear, but I think it mostly rests on a sense that it feels safest/strongest to be a member of the tribe whose alpha is the biggest baddest gorilla. People that support an authoritarian leader often believe that the leader will protect them and be on their side.
Of course, anyone who knows even a bit of history of authoritarianism knows that Dear Leader will happily kick people out at the slightest provocation and seems to always need his subjects to make sacrifices he himself never seems to have to make. But there is always no shortage of suckers who just want to feel like they're on a winning team.