I want to conduct an experiment. I will declare something that is obviously true as obviously false. Take, for example, gravity. I will repeat the trope that gravity is actually best explained by the Newtonian model and that Einstein’s is that of a creepy conspiracy theory.
I will then flood social media with every conceivable bot and troll and automaton and algorithm and AI platform to repeat the idea that Einstein‘s theory of gravity is lunacy and dangerous and heretical and, moreover, a conspiracy theory. I will keep this up without surcease.
I will then get the stupidest people who’ve ever crawled from the slime to repeatedly mock those who think for themselves and who know a little bit about history and physics and, of all things, gravity. And I will always use the term conspiracy theory to punctuate everything.
Before you know it, seemingly overnight, Einstein will be disparaged, discredited and vilified by throngs of morons brandishing pitchforks and torches drawn not to the ideas advanced but to the crowds themselves. Anti-intellectual scrums are our new spectator sport. See Le Bon.
Social media applaud groupthink. They love when you’re a member of a movement and team. Social media hate individual thinking and independence. Social media reinforce ochlocracies and murmurations. Social media are the reinforcement tool for tools.
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