heavyblinker -> RE: Life without the internet (5/23/2017 9:49:35 AM)
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The internet definitely levelled the playing field, which is why fascism has been growing more and more mainstream and how we got to Trump. Before the Internet, people would just dismiss those ideas as dangerous without actually delving too deeply into them... the news would offer moderate perspectives on the issues and people would follow along, forming relatively moderate perspectives. More things were buried, but at the same time, there also wasn't as much clutter. But now with the toxic combination of FOX news, Alex Jones, and various RWNJ wingnut sites that have been legitimized simply by popularity and their ability to capture people's attention, you have people like RM thinking that white males are the most persecuted people on the planet and numerous wackjob sites spoonfeeding him 'facts' to back it up. The moment they're debunked, he can just go back to the same sites and find more and more. This is what they mean when they say 'post-truth'. It's actually a very old state of affairs that goes back to the invention of the printing press and literacy. If you can say it, someone will repeat it... and it will circulate. Now this is happening on a global scale... and you have people like Putin exploiting it to manipulate elections and push the US towards collapse.
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