Yes. 12345
Electric Bugaloo?
My uncle has unironically shared this one before:
Where is his light saber?
In Satan’s ass.
I’m just saying.
W00t, LoA
Well, I think from now on I will refer to our president as The Crablouse.
Late to the party here, but I very much believe this. I find that in my experiences, the boomers and gen-xers in my life are very susceptible to conspiracy, while Millennials aren’t as gullible in that regard, and the generation coming next is even less gullible
And it makes sense. The older generations we’re never trained on sorting through online data and individual data points within articles and studies. Millennials were trained in school to evaluate online sources and claims as part of the research process… Not to mention identifying BS on social media has become a natural skill for the younger generations.
I work with a gen-xers who I respect, but his political beliefs are all over the map. He often tells me that it is important to hear all sides, and he uses CNN and InfoWars as his example. I have to explain to him that he isn’t hearing all sides. One side is actual journalism (even as flawed as CNN is) and is based in fact. The other is conspiracy propaganda that has no basis in fact. I try and explain that it is more important to follow serious journalists from a variety of sources who have a real methodology - The Economist, WSJ, WaPo, NPR (which he won’t listen to because he says they hate Israel- he is a devout Jew), NYT, etc. He just thinks I am a super leftist so doesn’t listen to me, but whatever.
Anyway, your post reminded me of that. And don’t get me wrong, the younger generation have plenty of problems… But I happen to see this fake news, conspiracy bullshit as being more prevelant in older generations who were never raised with critical thinking skills for online sources.
I know lots of millennials. Although out and out conspiracy theories are less prevalent, in the spaces I am in they are actually more active than previous generations in propagating lies that serve their own cause through social networks and using peer pressure to radicalise online spaces.
The idea of fact checking some random claim before sharing it seems as alien to them as it is to prior generations.
I’m not going to give all millennials a pass, but they are absolutely taught how to fact check, and they are taught pretty well how to do that. Having said that, there is peer pressure and social pressures here so retweeting or sharing that cute kid’s post you have a crush on probably has more to do with the cute kid than any belief it’s true. We’re talking about the same generation that gets crushed, I mean serious emotional harm, if they don’t see an expected number of likes on any given post.
They need education, and this administration is working to change education and to foster even more religious-style education. That’s where all this fact checking starts, and if you’re told to believe the Bible over actual facts, that’s going to be a massive problem for future generations.
The answer here is to just exploit the shit out of religious idiots.
That’s what groups like the GOP and NRA do already. Fuck it, just do it better than they do. Just trick these idiots into giving you EVERYTHING they have. Just rob them blind, so that they are poor and useless, and effectively removed from society.
Just gotta get them to watch your TV ‘news’ show.
You wouldn’t think that schadenfreude could be the raison d’etre for a major political party. But here we are.
Not unprecedented. In the final weeks and months of WWII, the Germans kept up their genocidal activities and even accelerated the killings, with the idea that, yeah, they might lose the war and be utterly destroyed, but so would those damn Jews and other sub-humans! Even as it all came crashing down, they took comfort in their Final Solution.
It’s impossible to tell now.