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The damage done to this country by the right is incalculable and likely irreversible.
When the internet started empowering the dumbest idiots who don't understand the world to find and support each other, we lost.
The human brain is not naturally a problem-solving tool of logic and reasoning, it has to be trained to use logic and reason, and in a world of comfort and ease like in the USA broadly, people had no incentive to learn more and be smarter other than social pressure, and that also dissolved as people found each other online and removed the pressure to step up their intellect to be accepted in broader society.
This has made a deep, slippery well of pseudo-science and naturalism and healing oils and magic water and crystals, which because of placebo effects and social influence, feel like they do more for people in their daily lives than mysterious terms like "mRNA" that defy all understanding or capability for people of limited intelligence to discuss with their coworkers around the lunch table and relate their own personal experiences so they seem special and interesting.
I wish more people recognized this connection.
It's all the same bullshit magical thinking, and it's killing all of us. None of it is "harmless".
This is why I maintain that technology needs, at minimum, a small but annoying technical barrier of entry. If any and every motion hadn't been able to get online with an Apple product, the internet would be a much better place. A small amount of gatekeeping is actually a good thing.
It's a nice idea but I don't think it would've changed much. There are plenty of otherwise intelligent people who buy into conspiracy theories, like remember how the pandemic made us aware that antivax nurses exist? Not many for sure, but I didn't even think that was possible. And there are also people who are smart in their field who think that makes them smart in everything so they spout a bunch of bullshit. Add in the smart grifters and I really don't think very much would be different with a slightly more difficult internet.
Mobile phones and apps did it. They let boomers poke and swipe their way into platforms while taking a dump in a volume that Apple alone could never have managed.