It's interesting to have a conversation with people over politics these days, sometimes it's like people don't live in the same reality anymore. It's probably not far from the truth.

To a first approximation, nothing is verified, people see a number on social media as a proxy for accuracy. Even if it's completely wrong, it doesn't matter because you're among friends.

Memes let insane ideas spread like a virus, the only criterion is whether they can survive against other memes. Grounding in reality is an idea's death sentence, because of the bullshit asymmetry principle.

And now the tools are there for anyone to generate bullshit at a scale commensurate to their wallet.

I shudder to think what this means for elections. At least I appreciate that the article attaches some numbers to it.

These sorts of things did happen before the internet though. Think of the Cultural Revolution in China started by revolutionary university students.

Mass printed pamphlets was the original meme. The more things change the more they stay the same.

For me, what really drove home how bad it is is that I know otherwise normal people in real life who think that many Haitian immigrants are eating people's pets. To even find that plausible there was a lot of racist misinformation they needed to have already internalized to the point that "don't live in the same reality" seems very accurate.

Though one bit of hope is that for me politics has never been that much different. My first foray into real political discussion was people in high school trying to convince me global warming wasn't real or that allowing gay marriage was a slippery slope to bestiality. Even back in 2008, before social media was what it is today, there was still tons of misinformation.

> And now the tools are there for anyone to generate bullshit at a scale commensurate to their wallet.

This was always true, right? With enough $, you can employ N writers. But the constant factor is smaller than it once was.

> And now the tools are there for anyone to generate bullshit at a scale commensurate to their wallet.

Democratizing propaganda. Not sure the previous state of affairs where propaganda was accessible to the ruling class and their media corporations was better, it might have just seemed that way because there appeared to be less conflict when it came to them telling you what was in "your own best interest".

I do have to say though, I certainly am enjoying watching the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the prior monopoly holders on propaganda though, lashing out desperately in the face of their waning influence. They want so desperately to censor the commoners (for our own good, naturally).