Social media providing a means for conspiracy theorists to link up and spread false info

By Lethbridge Herald on March 12, 2022.

Brian Hancock – Lethbridge Herald publisher

Andrew Coyne, a Canadian columnist with The Globe and Mail posted this on Twitter and it’s really helped me understand how the world is the way it is right now:

 “Fear of facts. Rage against reality. That a thing is reported often, and widely, by many disparate sources, is taken not as evidence of its likelihood, but proof of a conspiracy, solely because it conflicts with what he wants to believe, or wants his followers to believe.”

 The world we live in has become so twisted that “proof of something” is being sold to us as “proof” that it didn’t, or isn’t, really happening. How? Social media, that’s how.

It used to be that the conspiracy thinkers were loners, they had no circle of “like thinkers” to empower themselves and their opinions alienated them from the vast majority of society so they quietly went about their way, suspicious of everything but unable to prove anything (or get any support) so they didn’t voice their theories for fear of being ostracized. Then came social media.

If enough people had the same wrong opinion before they were just wrong, now they connect to other people with the same misled conspiracy theories and feel there must be some truth to their ideas.

 Social media has allowed lonely conspiracy theorists to link to other lonely conspiracy theorists. It’s empowered them to think their opinions are facts, and that’s where it’s become dangerous. 

Go to your local pub and have a beer: if 10 people see you having a beer social media makes it look like you had 10 beers. You’ve only had one but it’s multiplied by the shares. That’s the same thing that’s happening with the questioning of truth – one person asking an absurd question or making an absurd accusation is shared by thousands of people. If thousands of people see it then it must be true, right? The leap from fact to multiple shares of false information becoming fact is rampant; it’s reached a point where I’m not sure if people can tell the difference anymore. 

Even fact checks are questioned as not being factual. I’m not sure anyone cares about the truth any more. It may interfere with what they want to believe so they just choose to label it as a way of validating their opinions. “You’re a lefty,” ”you’re a righty,” “fake news,” “mainstream media,” as long as they can label the source then they feel they can dismiss the facts they can’t explain.

 Beware of where you’re getting your information, check sources and you’ll find many fake “experts” who are offering opinions and disguising them as facts. King Abdulmameh from Congo doesn’t really have $10 million to deposit in your bank account either. Sorry if you’re waiting for the money, the fact is it’s not coming.