Tag: social media

The Gravity Well of Social Media decline

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It’s amazing to watch how someone intelligent, well-qualified, erudite and seemingly sensible can be dragged from their lofty perch into the depths of conspiracy theories, wild accusations, dodgy political affiliations and suggestions, and general weirdness. And it’s interesting to see how this decline gathers pace and the theories get more bizarre as the downward spiral progresses.

Like coins whirling around a gravity well. (You’ll know it when you see it.)

Yes, like that. Starting quietly and smoothly, seemingly all under control, but gradually getting faster and faster and more and more frantic before plunging into the big black hole.

It could have started with a little thing: maybe annoyance at CNN for alleged misreporting of any given incident, or perhaps their city council for not fixing a thing that they were supposed to. Before you know it, the US election was stolen and the mayor is a corruption-ridden gangster. And once we’ve done Trump and local politics, there’s Covid lockdowns and mask mandates. And suddenly we’re deep into accusing Hilary Clinton of paedophilia and delving ever deeper into the anti-vaxxer rabbit hole.

In a way, I think I understand the causes. It’s easy to feel powerless and unheard in this modern world. Like you’re the only one telling the truth, but no-one is listening as you scream into the abyss. And then, you find someone who tells you that they agree with you and you discover kinship and you begin to support their ideas too. Then there’s a group and suddenly, there’s strength in numbers, even when all they’re shouting out is complete bullshit.

It’s interesting to note a couple of things about this decline into insanity, though. Firstly, the way the information is shared by these people can often be very subtle. A quiet retweet, the sharing of a post, the mention of a controversial theory: nothing direct, nothing explicit. Almost like they know that they would be ridiculed if they outwardly and openly expressed their feelings or beliefs on the subject. And secondly, the limit of just how far they will go: there’s almost always an invisible line they won’t cross at the far-out nonsense of chemtrails and a flat earth.

Professor Timothy Cookbook is a prime example of both these approaches. But then there is plenty that he’s said and done that is every bit as bad as telling us that 5G is a New World Order plan to depopulate the planet, so we really shouldn’t applaud him for tacitly agreeing that yes, we all live on a big ball.

It’s almost funny to see these individuals spouting statements each one more desperate, more nonsensical and more demonstrably incorrect than the last, but of course there’s a serious side to it as well. Because when less intelligent, well-qualified, erudite and sensible people see educated, popular individuals saying these things, they may well choose to believe them. Well, of course you would, because these people are intelligent, well-qualified, erudite and sensible, so they must know what they’re talking about, right?

“With great power comes great responsibility”, sure. But sadly, with great power also comes great power, and that does seem to be all they actually care about. Because you must also understand that when everything goes to shit with the able assistance of these “thoughtleaders”, they’re not the ones who will suffer. They all have their comfortable lives and their escape plans.

We’re living in an ever more divided world, with viewpoints and opinions instantaneously amplified by social media echo chambers that support our every utterance and immediately decry and attack any dissenting voice. There’s no hope of rational argument or anyone’s mind being changed. Everyone is entrenched and knows their “truth”.

The only difference being that some of it is backed up by facts, and the rest is just a single tweet away from agreeing that the Lizard People and the Rothschilds are running the (flat) planet.

Day 630 – Fighting misinformation

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Sigh.

2 years into this nonsense and over a year after we started vaccinating people, and we’re still seeing this sort of thing:

Maybe this person just doesn’t understand, or maybe they just don’t want to understand. Either way, while sharing this, it’s important to note that “the vaxes and boosters” don’t put any spike proteins into our bodies. Nor do they cause our bodies to make any full spike proteins. The small protein fragments made by our cells in response to the mRNA vaccines are enough for the immune system to work its magic and produce antibodies which can target the real thing, should it become necessary.

So, the spike proteins that “the vaxes and boosters are putting into our bodies” don’t get “expelled after a period of time” (and thanks for clarifying what a period of time might mean, though), nor do they collect anywhere, simply because they never existed.

Just imagine if they did, though. What would happen if we keep adding more? Well, proteins are very, very, small, so this would take a while, but I would imagine that we would likely all become just one giant spike protein (but with legs, obviously.) It would be much easier to see who had been vaccinated and who hadn’t – none of this QR code or “passport” silliness – only people who looked like giant spike proteins would be allowed into bars, cinemas and shops.

We’d have to avoid the rain, of course. Important solubility consideration. Safety first.

But maybe the scientific community shot itself in the collective foot with how we went about naming the spike protein, anyway. After all, “spike” sounds so aggressive, nasty and dangerous. If we’d thought about it beforehand (and that would include allowing for this sort of social media lunacy) then surely the “cuddle protein” or the “fluffy protein” would have been a better, more socially acceptable term. It’s very had to imagine anyone being even vaguely concerned with a build-up of cuddles in their ovaries.

Or wherever.

But more seriously, the fact remains that there will always be people out there who can’t understand, can’t accept, or simply won’t believe what we tell them, no matter how simply we put it. I can’t imagine living my life that way – distrusting every single thing that anyone says. But then I can imagine giant spike protein people going to the pub, so maybe the joke’s on me.

There are important concerns and questions for the future of science, of scientific communication and of trust and credibility in our experts here. I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any answers right now.

Day 620 – Myths

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Just wandering back through the anals of twitter (misspelling entirely deliberate), and came across this gem from 23 May this year:

I checked back to the 23 May on a handy graph supplied by google and found this:

Look what happened just afterwards. Tweet did not age well.

Officially, there were about 30,000 Covid deaths in South Africa in the “mythical” third wave, although the excess deaths figure, which many professionals believe to be far more accurate for this sort of thing, suggests nearer 3 times that number.

Surprisingly, the same account (which ticks all the usual boxes: pro-gun, pro-Trump, anti-vax, “the media have been bought off”, “there’s graphene in the jab”, “the earth is flat”, “Fauci is the devil”, “Nuremberg trial 2022”, “Ivermectin is the answer”) is now choosing not to believe that there is a fourth wave on the way. Talk about doubling down on a losing position.

That said, in one way – obviously – I actually wish that he was right.

But of course, sadly, he’s wrong again.
I do hope that his [checks notes] 84 followers will hold him accountable for his repeated mistakes.

Day 555 – A sudden realisation & How to spot the bad guys

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Oh My Deity.

Can you even begin to imagine the SA Moonbats if when we get to Day 666 of all this extraordinary mess?

For the record, we’re back down to Level 1 again in SA as of yesterday morning, with an amazing opportunity right in front of us to stop this thing right in its tracks.

Will we take it? Probably not.

I wrote about a week ago about people spreading misinformation about vaccinations, ivermectin and the like. Someone asked me how to know which bits are true; how can we separate those people from the “good guys”. Fortunately, even if you’re not able to see through the BS because you’re not a scientist and you don’t have the time to trawl through someone’s twitter or Facebook history for clues, then there are still super simple signs you can look out for.

The use of the word “tyranny”, for example.

This is Drama Llama-ism and privilege at it’s finest. You might not like our government much (and I’m with you on that), but honestly, get a grip. You’re not – despite your desperate protestations – living in Nazi Germany.

No, this isn’t “jUsT LiKe LiViNg iN nOrTh KoRea”.
You went to the pub last night and they asked you to sanitise your hands when you went in?
Oooh. How very Pyongyang!

“Tyranny” is a good marker because no-one publicly uses “tyranny” to describe how they are living their daily lives, simply because if they were living their daily lives under any sort of tyranny, they wouldn’t be allowed to say anything publicly.

What else? Well, quotes from George Orwell books are a dead giveaway. Especially the one he never wrote:

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”

not George Orwell.

Or any reference to 1984 (which he did write).

And then there are the links to science stories which have been interpreted by right-wing, conservative news sites (generally) from the US. These will inevitably and unswervingly follow the narrative of “Ivermectin good, vaccine bad” (and yes, that was a deliberately chosen root quote, just for fun), and will be from a website whose title will be something along the lines of RationalPatriot dot com, NationalObserver dot org or MaintainingLiberty dot net.

The scientific paper that they review will exist, but it won’t say the things they say it does. If there’s enough fuss about it, the paper’s author might get in touch on twitter and tell them that they didn’t get it right. This inconvenience will be ignored and the story will not be retracted.

Some mention of Bill and Melinda Gates.

Any link to disclose dot tv.

Use of the word “sheeple”.

And then the obvious stuff like: “the vaccines are killing more than the virus”, “covid isn’t real” and “ivermectin prevents/cures covid” (which isn’t real).

I hope this helps in working out what you can believe and what you can’t.

Day 544 – Misinfo, disinfo

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The pandemic has brought with it an equally* horrific wave of misinformation on social media. If there is one plus side to all this, it’s that it’s become more clear who is spreading the misinformation and why they are doing it. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, and so you can now identify these people more often and challenge, ignore, pity or ridicule them as you so desire.

The first sort are undoubtedly the most dangerous. They are intelligent enough to know what they are sharing is wrong, but they do it because it suits their agenda and it gives them a sense of power. More often then not, these will be wealthy, white, Christian women in America (or their SA wannabe counterparts) or they will be middle-aged men who have a podcast or radio show on some unknown mid-West radio station like KayEnOhBee or some such. Or maybe they’re a writer for a website with a name like “Freedom News” or “Rebel Dispatch” (they always are).
They are being nefarious in spreading their bullshit, because they know it’s not incorrect and morally wrong, but they do it anyway.

Then there are the ones that don’t analyse stuff, because it suits their chosen narrative. Ivermectin stats, Covid deaths, Vaccine side-effects. They see it being posted by their pseudo-celebrity heroes and they just hit SHARE. If they had the inclination to delve a little deeper and get past their biases, they might understand that it wasn’t actually true, but they don’t want to be bothered with that much effort when there’s a Retweet button to be clicked right there. Just lazy.

And then there are the lowly third group. So utterly thick that you could put them together and make one long plank. They are so deeply unintelligent, so completely down the rabbit hole and so far up the arses of the first lot that they don’t have a clue what’s real and what’s not anymore. They think that the sky is making them sick and that the earth is flat. Easily manipulated and radicalised, they are the foot soldiers of the movement, undyingly paranoid and loyal to causes like ‘5G killed my poodle’ or ‘Space may be the final frontier but it’s made in a Hollywood basement’.

And the stuff they are posting is so easily disprovable. Look at this, shared just two days ago:

Yeah. That looks pretty bad, until you take into account a couple of things. Like the death rate from Covid-19 in the Western Cape, which has been higher than that worldwide figure just about every day for the past couple of months.

Aaand, it’s disproven. That really wasn’t so hard, was it?

But how can that be? Is the figure above incorrect? No. The figure above is from (as you can see in the bottom corner) 8th March 2020. Before the pandemic really got started. You can’t apply that to now. Things change. That’s like making a calculation of how many people have died from planes crashing into buildings in New York, but choosing to look at it on September 10th 2001.

World War 2 wasn’t so bad: only 68 people were killed… (in the first two days).

Because Covid-19 comes in waves and hits various countries at various times, the daily death rate also varies, but the daily average since March 2020 is well in excess of that TB figure at the top of the chart.

[Can we agree to just ignore the outlier?]

And while I’d certainly rather that it didn’t, I can see how an extra 10,000 deaths each day might affect the world economy.

And the guy who shared the table about ‘crashing the world’s economy’?
I would have popped him in the middle lot I described above, but then to make what is basically a hundred-fold mistake on the widely publicised death statistics seems more than lazy, it seems criminally stupid or entirely deliberate.
So… you decide.

* not really