I keep thinking about people going down YouTube rabbitholes because of quarantine, and how notorious disinformation peddlers have been waiting for this moment for their whole lives, and how these two things together might create a potentially unprecedented mental health problem.
I have a story coming today about probably the most vicious real-world effects of this phenomenon, but I think we're at the very beginning of a sad and supercharged case of mainstreamed anti-science and anti-government extremists, fueled largely by Satanic Panic.
When reality is too dark, and there are no easy answers or even rewarding mythology to assuage fears, people historically resort to dark mythology. Blaming witches, Satan, new technology.
It's nothing new — but algorithm-driven rabbit holes that make extremism lucrative are.
It's nothing new — but algorithm-driven rabbit holes that make extremism lucrative are.
What happens when we emerge from this and a nontrivial portion of the population believe Donald Trump has secretly taken out all of the child-eating cannibals, and others are shielding their kids from 5G towers while rallying to imprison Bill Gates?
You can't really undo this.
You can't really undo this.
