Collin G Brooke

Conspiracy theories are particularly well suited to the creation of tribal biotopes on the internet because they allow for delimitation and exclusion, the mechanisms that constitute tribalism and its identity politics.

There are three major psychological weapons that combatants often transfer into culture war: scapegoating, deception, and violent threats.

What we did not understand was that misinformation and disinformation was their business and that they had no intention of using us or anyone else to curb it. A low reliability score next to an article posted on one of the platforms from that website would be an impediment to exactly the sharing and enhanced engagement that the platforms wanted.

There is a sort of magic that we are losing. If you introduce viewers to your private life, you lose the magic of distance that is core to charisma, this stardust you can never touch. There is a difference between being a godlike character and the illusion of a guy you can have a beer with. The sheer amount of access makes it less exciting.

Charm requires proximity.

That growing alienation is a key point. This is not just about “bad” people. It is about how the death of truth, and, therefore trust, has caused so many “normal” people to be derailed into acting badly by predators or by people who have themselves been deluded. And it’s about the new tools that technology has given them to spread distrust.

“Any point in a process looks like the process was leading up to it if that’s as far as you’ve gotten.”

we need both “effective public disapproval” and “the influence of a preponderant professional condemnation.” I offer this book as a springboard to both.

irony: the trope that derives its effect of appositiveness to the description of things by playing upon the relation of opposition.