Manchurian Candidate?

By TLS

I just saw a member’s post claiming that Barack Obama was a genuine manchurian candidate.

I’m not arguing for or against Obama here, however the level of lunacy in today’s world has got to be off the charts. It doesn’t seem to matter how far down the deepest darkest narrowest rabbit hole someone may go, once at the bottom they will surely find many other like-minded crackpots.

In this dungeon of solitude they reconfirm the most insane ideas and beliefs and then projectile vomit it back out into the world for the less conspiracy-minded to gobble up, consider, and fuel more conspiracy.

Please help me push back against this growing trend. These posts get credit and confirmation by clicks and engagement. This of course is also how almost all social media works, posting emotionally charged content regardless of how wrong or stupid, will skyrocket a post’s ratings. In order to fight against this people need to learn to identify clickbait as well as pass on giving a post any credibility by viewing it or clicking on it. I understand this may be difficult for many people, however in order to attempt to reduce the number of flat earth claims and other equally ridiculous manchurian candidate positions, this is necessary.

I’m sure throughout history there has never been a shortage of conspiracy-minded people with less than ideal critical thinking skills. The problem today however is that these people are able to group together more easily and often tend to be the loudest and most vocal in their conspiracy theory beliefs. This causes a biased perspective which makes it seem as though more believe this than actually do.

Moving forward try to read between the lines the headlines. The ones that seem like they may be trying to piss you off, instead of opening it up, give it a good left swipe delete. If enough of us do this perhaps we can knock those ratings down a bit and maybe even give them another censorship conspiracy theory to rant about.

If you want fewer conspiracies flooding your feed, stop feeding them. Don’t click, don’t argue, don’t amplify. Instead, swipe, delete, and move on. The less oxygen we give the madness, the faster it burns out.