T & P
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I’ve just properly noticed this thread and frankly can’t be bothered to read all 12 pages first, so I apologise if the discussion has long moved to something else or if your question has already been answered or discussed at length. But in my highly opinionated view, one of the main (arguably the biggest) drawbacks of the advent of the internet is that people who are far too batshit or plain repugnant human beings to deserve a wide audience for their views have for the first time being afforded just that, as well as the opportunity to easily associate from all corners of the world. Which whereas it’s not much of an issue regarding harmless conspiraloons, it is extremely worrying regarding political, religious or racial extremists.
Out of a global population of billions it’s unavoidable to have hundreds of thousands if not millions of people at the least subscribing to all kinds of demented shit. The difference is that until twenty-odd years ago most people wouldn’t come across a single conspiraloon in their entire lives or be more than vaguely aware of their existence, whereas now they have actually entered the mainstream even if most people still regard them as the nutjobs they are.
I’d like to think mainstream exposure was the only negative effect, but I suspect that while they still constitute an extremely small percentage of the overall population, there are more people in the world today who believe the Earth is flat than there were thirty years ago. Which is an extraordinarily depressing thought.
If I were an alien scout from an advanced civilisation who’d been sent to infiltrate Earth and establish whether we were enlightened enough for First Contact with an alien species yet, my recommendation would be ‘give it another thousand years at least, if not consider nuking then from orbit right now before their technology develops much further, because they might be beyond enlightenment’, tbh.
