When the "Information Age" began back when I was a pup---approximately 1970--- little did we

[Atticus]

know that the definition of "information" could expand in ways none of us imagined and that more of the new "alternative" information might be a curse.

Today, "information" served to us on our TVs or through social media could be true, but meaningless and deceptive. It may, for example, be true that some dingbat said that California forest fires were being started by "Jewish space lasers", but WHAT was said is false, i.e., there are no Jewish space lasers.

The only "information" (old definition) we received when we heard or read that nonsense was that a certain well-known loudmouth Trumpie is, indeed, a dingbat. The bit about the Jewish space lasers is an example of the new "Hell, I heard a member of Congress say it on TV so it MUST be true!" type of alternative information. The division of this nation is due in large part to the embarrassing fact that millions of our fellow Americans DON'T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE!

We hear the space laser bit, shake our heads and say something like "Who could be stupid enough to vote for such an idiot?"

THEY hear the same broadcast and go online to post "OMG! THOSE DAMN JEWS ARE TRYING TO BURN OUR REDWOODS!

Is critical thinking now an exclusively Democratic attribute?

[keep_left]

1. Yep, just like the "pedo cult run out of the basement of Comet Ping Pong Pizza"...

...which of course has no basement. The idiot redneck who shot up the place didn't even put in the effort with his "self-investigating" (his term) to find out there wasn't a basement! (Or tunnels, for that matter--which was another claim made by the Pizzagate morons).

It's quite clear that social media in general has brought equal amounts of negative and positive (at best). The worst part of all of this is probably having to listen to all the whiners who complain endlessly about "muh freeze peach" which simply does not apply to private business. It really takes balls to get something worth literally billion$ for free and then complain that there are rules and etiquette to participate!

[Jspur]

2. I'm 38 so I would say I did grow up during the start of the internet age

and will say I'm not really surprised by what's going on with disinformation. I saw this stuff happening as a young kid and teenager on the internet during the 90's granted it didn't have the power back then to be a mainstream problem like it is today, but it was there. There were a million different chatrooms you can go into during the AOL era that had conspiracy theorists and they would even promote their websites back then. It was a pretty interesting time it felt like the wild wild west back then and as a kid it was pretty exciting.

Another thing I have learned as a sports fan back then when I would go on the chatrooms and message boards was people were very biased towards their favorite teams and players. Even if their team lost fairly and it was obvious, they would still scream conspiracy that the refs were against their team and cheated or the league didn't want their team to win. This stuff in my eyes even worsened when YouTube came into formation during the mid '00s. With YouTube I would use clips to show these fans were wrong and they still would dismiss it. That's when I truly knew humans are emotional and biased even when the evidence is right in their face.

Just think of this way if you are republican, you would never believe in a stupid conspiracy theory that says a bunch of Aliens picked Trump to be president in 2016 and that's why he won. Now if someone says "A bunch of Aliens picked Biden over Trump in 2020 and made sure the voting machines over counted the vote for Biden and that's why he won. He was handpicked by Aliens to serve them and not the US people." A lot of republicans would be believing this conspiracy theory vs the previous one I mentioned.