The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet. The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel. Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene were “weather weapons” unleashed on the East Coast by the U.S. government, and “truth seeker” accounts on X that posted photos of condensation trails in the sky to baselessly allege that the government was “spraying Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton” in order to ensure maximum rainfall, “just like they did over Asheville!”
As Milton made landfall, causing a series of tornados, a verified account on X reposted a TikTok video of a massive funnel cloud with the caption “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO FLORIDA?!” The clip, which was eventually removed but had been viewed 662,000 times as of yesterday evening, turned out to be from a video of a CGI tornado that was originally published months ago. Scrolling through these platforms, watching them fill with false information, harebrained theories, and doctored images—all while panicked residents boarded up their houses, struggled to evacuate, and prayed that their worldly possessions wouldn’t be obliterated overnight—offered a portrait of American discourse almost too bleak to reckon with head-on.
Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts. But this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts: first, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants…
… “The primary use of ‘misinformation’ is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary”…
… As one dispirited meteorologist wrote on X this week, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes.” She followed with: “I can’t believe I just had to type that”…
This is where truth is crazier then fiction, but perhaps we can begin to get to grips with it.
How to avoid a techno-apocalypse brought on by the internet. Talks of several books where this is a core part of the plot.
THE nuclear blast that takes out Moab, Utah, in Neal Stephenson’s 2019 novel Fall; or, Dodge in Hell is “epistemic ground zero”. That is because it doesn’t actually happen. It is an online-only 9-11, a viral conspiracy theory that becomes the fault line along which the US fractures in two.
On one side, the people who believe that Moab is a no-go zone, and that the event has been covered up by swamp-dwelling politicians. On the other, the people who can freely travel to Moab to see the town is untouched.
The know-nothing side of the US devolves into Mad Max anarchy, becoming a no-go zone in its own right, which Stephenson brands Ameristan. The rest continue unimpeded into the technological future.
The book is one of many recent ones that tackle one of the questions of our time. As comedian Ronny Chieng put it in his Netflix special: “Who knew all of human knowledge could make people dumber?”
Doppelganger by Naomi Klein.
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
These books really helped me to see how and why some of these people go this way.
Thanks, I’ll add them and look forward to it.
My distilled understanding is that we are not psychological well built by evolution for this much information in the forms we now have technological. When you take our cognitive biases–which makes us persuadable–and couple that with a degenerating lack of taught fundamental critical thinking skills, it leads to irrational choices and mindsets which are not accounted for in our governing systems, let alone cultures, and economic. Indeed the latter point is that the capitalist system has a fiduciary responsibly to take advantage of any niche and exploit it, which has been let loose due to deregulation in various forms. Executive have little moral incentive to not be evil and instead to manipulate people in whatever manner best suits their shareholders. All of this creates echo chambers and self-reinforcing irrational behavior.
Obviously there is much more to it, but this is the elevator pitch version… Which I look forward to comparing against the books you indicated, plus any correction you might add.
To a degree, I can’t blame people for reacting this way. It’s either disassociate (which is bad), or face the reality that we have severely damaged the biosphere (which is much worse). The latter might also include accepting that you made the wrong political choices, which, by itself, is virtually impossible for a lot of people.
that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants…
Ah yes, the willing participants who tweak the algorithms to show them the most enraging hyper personalized garbage there is.
Wait those might be different people.
For the Internet as a whole, perhaps. For Meta platforms and equivalent - this is factually false. They do not simply show you what you like. Far from it. You should read up on it if you haven’t.
To elaborate on what others have replied already, the algorithms will show you what will keep you on the platform, not what you like. Optimising for this means keeping you angry, not happy. Angry and divided people stick around so they can tell the other side how wrong they are (or watch their favourite pundit do that for them)
You seem to be implying everyone is you and knows what you know or are as “rational”
Like you reduce other people to animals and also assume they are not being tricked or pushed into more radical beliefs because… Ehh?
Your nuanced take is not a take at all. It’s just you touting superiority.
I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet.
Another problem is, this (what you are personally being presented with, view counts) is also just something your screen is presenting to you to be taken at face value as reality. Might be better to give up on social media entirely as a reliable source of information.
This isn’t so different from how it always was. Before social media existed in its modern form, Alex Jones used to broadcast from a 100kW shortwave station. The chem trail nonsense goes back almost thirty years. I suspect the spiritual origin is traceable back to 60s counterculture. Snake Oil type scams and witch doctors go back to prehistory.
The biggest difference is that people can now engage directly with these things immediately and worldwide, they don’t have to be part of an alternative magazine mailing list.
You seem to be unintentionally equivocating the existence of what used to be fringe but has now become mainstream. You’re diminishing the very core of the issue by saying “it’s nothing new.”
Crackpots used to be isolated and thought of as fools because they lacked a cohort. Their hare-brained ideas were dismissed as nonsense without repercussions or worries that it might be disenfranchising someone’s right to believe falsehoods. Now, they can find support in bolstered numbers, each falling in line behind their respective mouthpiece of absurdity.
And here we are: the rest of the world standing around mouths agape because we cannot do shit about it.
I still consider them fringe, they’re just now much more visible than they were before. I’m not trying to say that it’s not an in issue either.
These crackpots have always had an audience when they see returns.
The antidote is going outside, engaging with things and people you disagree with, and being a skeptic of your own beliefs. I was actually an Alex Jones listener way way back when Bush was president. There was this guy who superficially cared about civil rights and was railing against a government that operated in secret, and a lot of the appeals made sense - until you realized that his prophecies failed one after the next, and he was really just on the air to sell dick pills.
The biggest difference is that …
But that’s an enormous difference, and it seems like it may push us to a place of crisis before it gets better. None of the tactics are new, they’re not even new to the modern era. But the reach is new, and it has enabled the creation of a large and broadly distributed group, that is thoroughly detached from and increasingly hostile toward mainstream society. With every indication that they are getting more entrenched, not less.
Aside from how spread out they can be, a group like that’s not new either, and basic intuition and history both point to this being a dangerous situation brewing. We really gotta figure out how to reach one another again.