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Great piece. I think about this a LOT >> We can lay a lot of blame for this change on the internet. Evergreen

The information ago.

Beth Macy's Paper Girl. She tells the story of how so many Americans became disaffected, bitter, and hateful - through the lens of her own family, friends, and hometown. Those people were eager for someone to come along and give them someone to blame.

1. There was a radio-specific police in the 1930s. It was replaced by the Mayflower Doctrine in 1941. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflow...

It was put into place to deal with a “unique” defect with that medium, namely the scarcity of available radiowaves frequencies. And as both the FCC stated and SCOTUS held, if that defect did not exist (as it doesn’t for any other medium) …

There is zero news reporting on major networks. It's all opinion journalism. Not facts, but opinions. Most US networks lean one way or another by design. The truth of facts doesn't care about your opinion.

They demand outrage and experts are usually too calm to generate the clicks they hunger for.

But it's almost universal in human history. Weird.

I wonder if they asked, "do your acquaintances think you are above average intelligence?" if the results would have been different. I also wonder the Venn Diagram. People who think they are above average but are actually below average pose the most risk, while those that underestimate pose little.

I wonder how many of them could point to over half their advanced classes in high school where they were the smartest. In college, how does the highest scoring student in college algebra compare to the lowest scoring student in Calc 3? I'm not surprised, and it says a lot about Americans.

I would like to redirect this from "the internet" to "social media" plus the way that most news outlets try to finance themselves nowadays (being glued to advertising success = click-hunting).

🇺🇸Americans are losing their ability to evaluate & verify info. Howard Bloom's warning: “If as a nation, we stop thinking well, someday we will yet cease to be a democracy. It really matters, reading the best that has been written, the best that has been thought ever.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=33oF...

I'd add the internet, but really social media, made growing cherry trees for people to pick conspiracies from globally frictionless with a free bag of Miracle Gro. People have always cherry picked. Just the internet drive production and distribution costs for text/image/video to zero.

I’d take it a step further in a Myers Briggs kinda way, to “we act on what we feel.” Whose doing any thinking out there?

Bingo. “Truthiness.” Stephen Colbert had it years ago.

Yep And we have Rffkjr as the head mushbrain in charge of our health.

I‘d add to that and say “acting on what we think and FEEL” since subjectivity is highly influenced by emotions.

Unbuild the Internet!

If I may ask, why did you delete the one to which I originally linked? On the other hand, I'm glad to repost it if only because I miswrote "McCluhan" rather than "McLuhan"... see: bsky.app/profile/ejgo...

And frequently conflate the two.

This is excellent (and on point)

"subjectivity" Ancient word that describes a person who prioritizes their own personal/private agenda over public agenda: "idiot" If one wants to sabotage a democracy, one could get people to adopt "idiot" behavior, ie, the subjectivity of "my deeply/sincerely-held beliefs & convictions" garbage

Or worse…how we feel.

The corresponding emergence of “I feel like” as a synonym for “I think” in American English is worth noting.

I would say acting on what we "feel." Trump captured the grievance following the GFC and siphoned it into anti-woke, anti-minority, "own the libs." Obama, by giving away the store to the big banks, went from the change candidate to the establishment oppressor in one step. Both bases are anti-elite.

"The internet universalized subjectivity instead of objectivity. … We have reverted from acting on what we *know* to acting on what we *think*." To me it seems more that we act on what we FEEL, not think.

David Hume famously recognized the primacy of what we think over what we know when it comes to our actions.

Mea culpa!

Not sure about that. Belief is way more abstract than thought and way more prone to just not caring about the underlying facts.