Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
There have always been some fraction of the population who believe in conspiracy theories. The internet has just exposed us to more of their kooky beliefs than we saw 20 or 30 years ago. Seems to be an innate personality thing rather than cultural.
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It's also an effect of the loudest voice being amplified on the internet. If you have 10,000 people in America obsessed with conspiracy theories devoting huge amounts of effort into promoting these theories, you're going to see the a lot more content from these people than from the 99.9% of Americans ignoring these people and hoping they'll just go away.
For example, I honestly don't believe that there's that many people who believe the Earth is flat. Yet, based on internet content, you'd expect the number of flat Earthers to be quite large. And every time someone calls out these people for being dumb, it only adds to their online presence by increasing google ranking on the subject.