One of the things which always gets me, and it's in Art's comments, is the fatal misunderstanding of a) the economic system in which we are all forced to slave under and b) the scientific method.
a) Science didn't say fat was bad. Marketers for a company (which makes money presumably off selling sugar, artificial sweetners, butter-subsitutes, etc) said fat was bad, a company paid "scientists" and influencers to say fat was bad. The problem is not "science", the problem is rich people wanting to be slightly richer at the expense of the health and wellbeing of poorer people and who are comfortable with disregarding facts and literally killing people to make this happen.
The problem is that because of this unequal distribution of wealth, it makes it desirable and necessary for some people who should know better, to become mouthpieces for rich people to spread their terrible ideas.
b) Science is a system of discovering and disseminating information, it doesn't tell anyone anything ever. Sometimes you can, through the scientific method, get to a point where you can make reasonable predictions about certain things. But many of the things we research scrape the surface a problem or topic. No scientist worth their atomic mass is going to write in a peer reviewed paper "Welp, that's the end of it: solved.". They always always acknowledge that more and ongoing research is needed to test the conclusions. We *should* act on what growing bodies of scientific evidence tell us to do. The world would be a better place if we did, butttttt... as per point a), the tentacles of the rich who want to be richer, push of marketing campaigns and media stories. Hence why every week there's a story about why alcohol is good for you, a new cure for cancer, ten top tips on whatever, and why people tend to trust scientists and people using evidence less and less.
In some peoples minds they cannot, or will not, split the transparent and open method of science from the perverted PR that capitalism demands. It is hard. Which is also why the "do your own research" line is so troubling. Through capitalism, you can easily game the search results, pay Influencers to say nice things about your cyanide-based lip balm, create so much noise that people don't know what is true and so therefore reach for what is easy and comforting.
TL;DR: SMASH CAPTIALISM, EAT INFLUENCERS
Shit. Influencers are a product of this digital hyper-capitalism. They're lackies of the rich elite braying for scraps at theitable and posting their perfectly whitened teeth glinting in their shit-stained grins.
I'm guessing that this kind of "science is a journey" kind of thinking leads to people microwaving library books in an attempt to disinfect them.
Thanks to the person who wrote about David Icke's "chewing gum theory", I wanted to have a bit of a read about it but instead found myself reading Jon Ronson articles and them one of his books "The psychopath test" which in one of it's chapters goes into the denial and mania around the 7/7 bombing attacks in London. One of the leading figures in the 7/7 conspiracy group David Shayler ends up claiming to become the new incarnation of the christian messiah.
These worm holes are fun, thank you David and friends.
Am so glad I've found your articles on QAnon. Have been keeping a cautious eye on the fear mongering & general hateful words in the form of "love, light & awakening" these dangerous, batshit crazy groups are spreading. Keep an eye out for their next steps of encouraging sovereign citizenship. I've spied a few spouting it in NZ already. Dangerous in every way shape & form.
Thanks for this David. I’m conflicted about looking into Qanon etc because even though I feel it’s important to be informed, I don’t want to waste my time and energy on totally unsubstantiated shite, and also I know it will just fill me with impotent rage. I finally feel like I’m getting a nuanced understanding of the unwieldy beast that is Internet Bullshit.
have you seen the videos from the NZ public party? they are getting a huge following. based on conspiracy theories about the UN and the new world order and others. big turn outs around the country to hear him speak. how easy it seems to be to make people scared! im scared of conspiracy voters....
I was coincidentally reading a book about the Middle Ages and the various waves of plagues that were happening back then when all this COVID stuff started and I remain appalled that we barely seem to be handling the pandemic better than they did, despite our modern understanding of germs.
The parallels were astounding; people believing prayer and folklore to be a legitimate way to fight the illness, kingdoms doing nothing to stop it until it directly affected them, etc. You can excuse the people back then, but we have no excuse to still be acting this way. I guess human nature changes slower than I would’ve thought.
have you ever seen Forbidden Planet? On the one hand it’s a heaped helping of typical 1950’s sci fi cheese, but on the other, there’s a rather prescient metaphor lurking amidst the schlock.
The plot concerns the discovery of an alien race called the Krell, who vanished mysteriously thousands of years prior, leaving behind empty cities and fabulously advanced technologies.
It transpires that one of those technologies enabled the manifestation of the unconscious. Having fatally overlooked the consequences of unchaining their collective Id, the poor old Krell rapidly fell victim to their worst, most primitive impulses.
Reflecting on the impact of the internet on civic discourse and public education, the parallels with Forbidden Planet are inescapable. Of course, it was based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and there was a guy who knew a thing or two about The best and worst of human nature.
Oh. Based on your last piece I was really hopeful that there was actually some hope for pulling people out of this anti-science pit of misinformation that so many seem to fall into. It's really disheartening to see them walking their own apology back almost immediately. There has to be a way to bring people back from these really toxic beliefs
Sad that this is the reality of today’s media environment - also Jesse re: response to the plague: there were Papal decrees and such trying to dissuade people from blaming the Jews!!
Complaints about lies and misinformation being a political tool actually date back to the Ancient Greeks, but yeah many seem to think it’s a “war” of freely competing opinions, and dangerous lies or conspiracies are part of the “menu” of freely available opinions. In reality politics is very, very big business (look at the years fiscal budget for even our own tiny country, nearly 78B)...Russian disinformation units have pushed nonsense about tech companies, healthcare since way back - they have a vested interest in spreading confusion n paranoia about phone companies and vaccination targets; without having an option for direct confrontation their state hires teams of people to amplify division and confusion.
...but a lotta people just echo and reshare such nonsense because they question the social order and figure complete bullshit must be a viable alternative? Suggesting FB is privately owned and they have the right to switch off someone’s acct if they’re an influencer/author goin’ on about the “Covid hoax” isn’t likely to convince conspiracy theorists because the repression of their fake ideas is apparently evidence of their strength etc etc etc
I don't know Art and Matilda's "work" personally, but I can say that wellness culture in general is extraordinarily bullshitty and dangerous. They are the subset of influencers I loathe the most. I know much more about these people than I do about QAnon, but I think they're likely to attract people of a similar ilk.
Wellness culture can turn any conventionally beautiful person into an expert, while the products and lifestyle choices that they tout are purely pseudoscience. Their recommendations are a waste of money at best and deadly at worst.
It's so easy to fall into, though, because what they tell you just sounds so *nice* — who wouldn't want to rid their skin of harmful toxins and weird sounding chemicals? Never mind that the concept of "detox" means nothing and that even the "all-natural" stuff is made up of chemicals, too (some of them harmful)?
I know your main beef isn't with the wellness crew, but since you mentioned that part of Art & Matilda's branding includes health and wellness and, as I said, the folks obsessed with this stuff aren't so different from the QAnon believers. Both require a high level of that "bullshit receptivity."
The free speech argument always gets my blood boiling. Just want to reply with this and then live in a cave for the rest of my life https://xkcd.com/1357/
Wow I find Greens comment back to a follower about how science is a journey and that science used to tell us smoking, fat and margarine was good very ignorant because that science was payed for by large corporations who had a vested interest! That is nothing like what is happening now. Also that all happened in a very different time in terms of public information. Covid and disease control research can no way be compared to nutrition science, there is no company behind it hoping to make money. Bizzare! These people have a large audience and need to be held accountable and have responsibility but somehow influencers don’t have to go through the same media training/ professional PR management as other celebrities who have found fame through traditional avenues or journalists who follow a code of conduct because they too have an audience and write opinion pieces, share information etc etc . I don’t know how you change that but every other public facing person such as an actor, presenter and journalist have some sort of conduct/ professional training but an influencer can just pick up a phone.... and then accuse those professionals that they are liars!
Science is a journey..... my PhD head almost exploded! Yes science is a journey for the trained scientists and researchers who spend decades learning and growing and building on all the knowledge that came before, not crackpots our to make a quick buck based on stoking people’s fear. I wonder if we invested in more robust science communication and education at the base level if it could compete with all this pseudoscientific BS. Thanks for the article David - very illuminating!!
I don't know if you know who Joe Rogan but he started out here in The States as a standup comic and actor who then pivoted to hosting MMA fights. He got into podcasting early and he is now the highest paid podcaster. He is famous for being one of those "I'll talk to anyone about anything" guys and he has given a platform to a lot of dangerous people like Alex Jones, Jordan Peterson and Candace Owens. He believes in order to make informed decisions, you need to actually listen to these crackpots. The problem is that he has a HUGE platform where his mostly white, mostly male audience is more than willing to soak up this nonsense and believe it. I think you can draw a straight line from Rogan's podcast to a lot of Right wing conspiracies and the idiots who believe them. He also sells a ton of shady supplements. The Free Market of Ideas only works if the poorly thought out ideas are quickly shut down and dismissed, giving them a platform where they can be "debated" is not working because too many folks think that shutting down a dumb conspiracy theory is the same thing as suppressing free speech.
hmm, kind of related but my dad said that if i was ever gonna tell a lie I needed to make it impressive, to add lots of extra info.. bullshit baffles brains he would say :-)
One of the things which always gets me, and it's in Art's comments, is the fatal misunderstanding of a) the economic system in which we are all forced to slave under and b) the scientific method.
a) Science didn't say fat was bad. Marketers for a company (which makes money presumably off selling sugar, artificial sweetners, butter-subsitutes, etc) said fat was bad, a company paid "scientists" and influencers to say fat was bad. The problem is not "science", the problem is rich people wanting to be slightly richer at the expense of the health and wellbeing of poorer people and who are comfortable with disregarding facts and literally killing people to make this happen.
The problem is that because of this unequal distribution of wealth, it makes it desirable and necessary for some people who should know better, to become mouthpieces for rich people to spread their terrible ideas.
b) Science is a system of discovering and disseminating information, it doesn't tell anyone anything ever. Sometimes you can, through the scientific method, get to a point where you can make reasonable predictions about certain things. But many of the things we research scrape the surface a problem or topic. No scientist worth their atomic mass is going to write in a peer reviewed paper "Welp, that's the end of it: solved.". They always always acknowledge that more and ongoing research is needed to test the conclusions. We *should* act on what growing bodies of scientific evidence tell us to do. The world would be a better place if we did, butttttt... as per point a), the tentacles of the rich who want to be richer, push of marketing campaigns and media stories. Hence why every week there's a story about why alcohol is good for you, a new cure for cancer, ten top tips on whatever, and why people tend to trust scientists and people using evidence less and less.
In some peoples minds they cannot, or will not, split the transparent and open method of science from the perverted PR that capitalism demands. It is hard. Which is also why the "do your own research" line is so troubling. Through capitalism, you can easily game the search results, pay Influencers to say nice things about your cyanide-based lip balm, create so much noise that people don't know what is true and so therefore reach for what is easy and comforting.
TL;DR: SMASH CAPTIALISM, EAT INFLUENCERS
Shit. Influencers are a product of this digital hyper-capitalism. They're lackies of the rich elite braying for scraps at theitable and posting their perfectly whitened teeth glinting in their shit-stained grins.
I'm guessing that this kind of "science is a journey" kind of thinking leads to people microwaving library books in an attempt to disinfect them.
Thanks to the person who wrote about David Icke's "chewing gum theory", I wanted to have a bit of a read about it but instead found myself reading Jon Ronson articles and them one of his books "The psychopath test" which in one of it's chapters goes into the denial and mania around the 7/7 bombing attacks in London. One of the leading figures in the 7/7 conspiracy group David Shayler ends up claiming to become the new incarnation of the christian messiah.
These worm holes are fun, thank you David and friends.
Am so glad I've found your articles on QAnon. Have been keeping a cautious eye on the fear mongering & general hateful words in the form of "love, light & awakening" these dangerous, batshit crazy groups are spreading. Keep an eye out for their next steps of encouraging sovereign citizenship. I've spied a few spouting it in NZ already. Dangerous in every way shape & form.
Thanks for this David. I’m conflicted about looking into Qanon etc because even though I feel it’s important to be informed, I don’t want to waste my time and energy on totally unsubstantiated shite, and also I know it will just fill me with impotent rage. I finally feel like I’m getting a nuanced understanding of the unwieldy beast that is Internet Bullshit.
have you seen the videos from the NZ public party? they are getting a huge following. based on conspiracy theories about the UN and the new world order and others. big turn outs around the country to hear him speak. how easy it seems to be to make people scared! im scared of conspiracy voters....
I was coincidentally reading a book about the Middle Ages and the various waves of plagues that were happening back then when all this COVID stuff started and I remain appalled that we barely seem to be handling the pandemic better than they did, despite our modern understanding of germs.
The parallels were astounding; people believing prayer and folklore to be a legitimate way to fight the illness, kingdoms doing nothing to stop it until it directly affected them, etc. You can excuse the people back then, but we have no excuse to still be acting this way. I guess human nature changes slower than I would’ve thought.
Hello David,
have you ever seen Forbidden Planet? On the one hand it’s a heaped helping of typical 1950’s sci fi cheese, but on the other, there’s a rather prescient metaphor lurking amidst the schlock.
The plot concerns the discovery of an alien race called the Krell, who vanished mysteriously thousands of years prior, leaving behind empty cities and fabulously advanced technologies.
It transpires that one of those technologies enabled the manifestation of the unconscious. Having fatally overlooked the consequences of unchaining their collective Id, the poor old Krell rapidly fell victim to their worst, most primitive impulses.
Reflecting on the impact of the internet on civic discourse and public education, the parallels with Forbidden Planet are inescapable. Of course, it was based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and there was a guy who knew a thing or two about The best and worst of human nature.
All best,
Costa Botes
Oh man, this reminds me of the excellent QAnon Anonymous episode on the New Age Influencer To QAnon pipeline episode from last month. So terrifying.
Oh. Based on your last piece I was really hopeful that there was actually some hope for pulling people out of this anti-science pit of misinformation that so many seem to fall into. It's really disheartening to see them walking their own apology back almost immediately. There has to be a way to bring people back from these really toxic beliefs
Sad that this is the reality of today’s media environment - also Jesse re: response to the plague: there were Papal decrees and such trying to dissuade people from blaming the Jews!!
Complaints about lies and misinformation being a political tool actually date back to the Ancient Greeks, but yeah many seem to think it’s a “war” of freely competing opinions, and dangerous lies or conspiracies are part of the “menu” of freely available opinions. In reality politics is very, very big business (look at the years fiscal budget for even our own tiny country, nearly 78B)...Russian disinformation units have pushed nonsense about tech companies, healthcare since way back - they have a vested interest in spreading confusion n paranoia about phone companies and vaccination targets; without having an option for direct confrontation their state hires teams of people to amplify division and confusion.
...but a lotta people just echo and reshare such nonsense because they question the social order and figure complete bullshit must be a viable alternative? Suggesting FB is privately owned and they have the right to switch off someone’s acct if they’re an influencer/author goin’ on about the “Covid hoax” isn’t likely to convince conspiracy theorists because the repression of their fake ideas is apparently evidence of their strength etc etc etc
I don't know Art and Matilda's "work" personally, but I can say that wellness culture in general is extraordinarily bullshitty and dangerous. They are the subset of influencers I loathe the most. I know much more about these people than I do about QAnon, but I think they're likely to attract people of a similar ilk.
Wellness culture can turn any conventionally beautiful person into an expert, while the products and lifestyle choices that they tout are purely pseudoscience. Their recommendations are a waste of money at best and deadly at worst.
It's so easy to fall into, though, because what they tell you just sounds so *nice* — who wouldn't want to rid their skin of harmful toxins and weird sounding chemicals? Never mind that the concept of "detox" means nothing and that even the "all-natural" stuff is made up of chemicals, too (some of them harmful)?
I know your main beef isn't with the wellness crew, but since you mentioned that part of Art & Matilda's branding includes health and wellness and, as I said, the folks obsessed with this stuff aren't so different from the QAnon believers. Both require a high level of that "bullshit receptivity."
The free speech argument always gets my blood boiling. Just want to reply with this and then live in a cave for the rest of my life https://xkcd.com/1357/
Wow I find Greens comment back to a follower about how science is a journey and that science used to tell us smoking, fat and margarine was good very ignorant because that science was payed for by large corporations who had a vested interest! That is nothing like what is happening now. Also that all happened in a very different time in terms of public information. Covid and disease control research can no way be compared to nutrition science, there is no company behind it hoping to make money. Bizzare! These people have a large audience and need to be held accountable and have responsibility but somehow influencers don’t have to go through the same media training/ professional PR management as other celebrities who have found fame through traditional avenues or journalists who follow a code of conduct because they too have an audience and write opinion pieces, share information etc etc . I don’t know how you change that but every other public facing person such as an actor, presenter and journalist have some sort of conduct/ professional training but an influencer can just pick up a phone.... and then accuse those professionals that they are liars!
Science is a journey..... my PhD head almost exploded! Yes science is a journey for the trained scientists and researchers who spend decades learning and growing and building on all the knowledge that came before, not crackpots our to make a quick buck based on stoking people’s fear. I wonder if we invested in more robust science communication and education at the base level if it could compete with all this pseudoscientific BS. Thanks for the article David - very illuminating!!
I don't know if you know who Joe Rogan but he started out here in The States as a standup comic and actor who then pivoted to hosting MMA fights. He got into podcasting early and he is now the highest paid podcaster. He is famous for being one of those "I'll talk to anyone about anything" guys and he has given a platform to a lot of dangerous people like Alex Jones, Jordan Peterson and Candace Owens. He believes in order to make informed decisions, you need to actually listen to these crackpots. The problem is that he has a HUGE platform where his mostly white, mostly male audience is more than willing to soak up this nonsense and believe it. I think you can draw a straight line from Rogan's podcast to a lot of Right wing conspiracies and the idiots who believe them. He also sells a ton of shady supplements. The Free Market of Ideas only works if the poorly thought out ideas are quickly shut down and dismissed, giving them a platform where they can be "debated" is not working because too many folks think that shutting down a dumb conspiracy theory is the same thing as suppressing free speech.
hmm, kind of related but my dad said that if i was ever gonna tell a lie I needed to make it impressive, to add lots of extra info.. bullshit baffles brains he would say :-)