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Monday, August 19, 2024

What do you know?

Yesterday there was a story in The Oregonian about QAnon. (Original from Washington Post, book review of  The Quiet Damage by Jesselyn Cook) It was a little silly. Lady reads goofball stuff on the internet and takes it to heart. So what? There have always been people who believe weird, even unbelievable stuff. I'm thinking that maybe this is where all these campaigns against disinformation got started - if you could stop the sources of these fairy tales, people would stop believing them, everyone would start believe the correct things and the world would be full of flowers and unicorns. But that's not going to happen. You cut off the supply of nonsense, a new wellspring of fairy tales will erupt somewhere else. I don't understand why it happens, but talking to people convinces me that it does. Some people are gullible, some people are not smart enough to tell truth from fiction, and some people are just crazy. And wherever there are listeners, there are going to be people willing to fill their ears with gibberish.


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