Thread by @tomaspueyo

Most media outlets are like bioweapon labs that release viruses into the population.

News, like viruses, are parasites that add no value to their host (or even destroy it) but are great at spreading.

How can you vaccinate yourself from them?🧵

There are mechanisms for good entities to interact in a body. Viruses hijack those mechanisms to multiply and spread. For example, the coronavirus’ spike protein opens some cell up for invasion. Once in, the virus reproduces and then leaves to infect other cells.

The same thing happens with news. They hijack mental biases to spread.

For example, the chronicle of events, full of homicides, is mostly worthless. They are just remote anecdotes. A much better data point would be tracking the curve of homicides in your community.

But we don’t do that. When we see a homicide, we pay attention.

Because as we evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, living in small communities of up to 150ppl, paying attention to homicides was extremely important.

Now that we live with millions, it isn’t, but our brain is the same, so we can’t avoid but pay attention.

Media outlets know perfectly well it’s worthless. But they don’t care. They still manufacture these memes, these news, to hijack this bias and spread.

So they’re like bio weapon labs: both design things that spread for their own benefit, regardless of the cost to the hosts.

What can you do about it?

Only one thing: realize what’s happening. Ask yourself: is this meme valuable, or just hijacking my brain? That’s how you can vaccinate yourself against wasting your time.