I forgot to add that before 2015-ish, I've not heard this kind of stuff from these relatives. And their main hangouts are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, the usual suspects.
I believe in their mind, they're getting "the truth" and know better. But the reality is it's... self-propagandization.
When 50 channels say you're wrong but you find one that tells "the truth"... I dunno, it's like the common sense circuits have been fried.
Just like people in Russia are brainwashed by the state media, so do these people brainwash themselves online, likely reinforced by the recommendation systems used on the major platforms.
Which I notice on Youtube, btw, and it always skews towards some dumb/funny or just idiotic content. View a couple of funny videos and that's all I get for the rest of the month. I mostly watch stuff like DIYPerks, various machine & history stuff, tutorials on a lot of things and listen to music, but I never get good, or any, recommendations on that. Although to be completely fair, I don't subscribe to anything, just mostly look it up after Google+Wikipedia.
I don't think that it was a coincidence that a significant fraction of the "alternative" online places I was hanging out on (like Zero Hedge) suddenly went pretty crazy at the same time as the Russo-Ukrainian war started in 2014 ?
(They're typically called "alt-right" now.)
Not that this is completely new - I got my "conspiracy theory education" in 2005-2010 when I watched a pretty convincing hour(s)-long YouTube video about how the World Trade Center had supposedly been subjected to controlled demolition... and then shortly after that an even more convincing, detailed, and longer video describing how that previous video was wrong.
I believe in their mind, they're getting "the truth" and know better. But the reality is it's... self-propagandization.
When 50 channels say you're wrong but you find one that tells "the truth"... I dunno, it's like the common sense circuits have been fried.
Just like people in Russia are brainwashed by the state media, so do these people brainwash themselves online, likely reinforced by the recommendation systems used on the major platforms.
Which I notice on Youtube, btw, and it always skews towards some dumb/funny or just idiotic content. View a couple of funny videos and that's all I get for the rest of the month. I mostly watch stuff like DIYPerks, various machine & history stuff, tutorials on a lot of things and listen to music, but I never get good, or any, recommendations on that. Although to be completely fair, I don't subscribe to anything, just mostly look it up after Google+Wikipedia.