Participating on social media is only secondarily about sharing new information; it is primarily about maintaining and reinforcing common bonds.

Still, fake news is not primarily a propaganda tool. Most fake and hyperpartisan news is created for a different reason: to generate advertising revenue.

“The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”

He described bullshit as what people create when they try to impress you or persuade you, without any concern for whether what they are saying is true or false, correct or incorrect.

“The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than [that needed] to produce it.”

Disinformation flows through a network of trusted contacts instead of being injected from outside into a skeptical society.

Every generation thinks that its successor’s lazy habits of mind will bring on a cultural and intellectual decline.

So why is there bullshit everywhere? Part of the answer is that everyone, crustacean or raven or fellow human being, is trying to sell you something. Another part is that humans possess the cognitive tools to figure out what kinds of bullshit will be effective. A third part is that our complex language allows us to produce an infinite variety of

The “firehose strategy” is designed to leave the audience disoriented and despairing of ever being able to separate truth from falsehood.