As Hurricane Milton approaches Florida, meteorologists are staying awake for days at a time trying to get vital, life-saving information out to the folks who will be affected. That’s their job. But this year, several of them tell Rolling Stone, they’re increasingly having to take time out to quell the nonstop flow of misinformation during a particularly traumatic hurricane season. And some of them are doing it while being personally threatened.
“People are just so far gone, it’s honestly making me lose all faith in humanity,” says Washington D.C.-based meteorologist Matthew Cappucci, in a phone interview conducted while he was traveling down to Florida for the storm. “There’s so much bad information floating around out there that the good information has become obscured.”
Cappucci says that he’s noticed an enormous change on social media in the last three months: “Seemingly overnight, ideas that once would have been ridiculed as very fringe, outlandish viewpoints are suddenly becoming mainstream and it’s making my job much more difficult.”
I was watching a stream on YouTube last night (Ryan Hall) of the storm coverage. I had to just close the chat entirely because the amount of ridiculous statements and questions people were posting was legitimately starting to upset me. Some notable ones i remember “I hear theyre sending this storm to africa after florida”. “this is the democrats taking out pockets of trump supporters”. “Calling this a ‘hurricane’ is a way for ‘them’ to funnel ‘dark money’ into the state. its not actually a hurricane so it doesn’t qualify for federal money”.
It was maddening to read and the only way I was able to not lose more faith in humanity is just telling myself they were all disinfo bots. Anyways, hopefully those of you who were affected by the storm are doing ok. Remember your neighbors, people. We’re all in this together.
