Collin G Brooke

then how have irony, irreverence, and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today's avant-garde tries to write about? One clue's to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after thirty long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It's not a mode that wears especially well. As Hyde puts it,

people who use social media frequently perceive significantly more political disagreement in their daily lives than those who do not.

charisma required distance from the audience.

The growth in extremism and terrorism is the flip side of ICT (information and communications technology) development. This is the other price that humankind pays for successful Silicon Valley startups.

And stories make place.24 This means the metaphoric, allegorical, symbolic, and other devices that shape stories also move us and make place.

language can do so much to squash independent thinking, obscure truths, encourage confirmation bias, and emotionally charge experiences such that no other way of life seems possible.

The sharing contest is what produces social gravitation in the web.

To exorcise a human problem, you must use a touch of naming magic.

In this context, conspiracy theories, as micro-narratives, are a remedy. They are taken up as resources that provide identity and meaning.