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Study Blames YouTube for Rise in Number of Flat Earthers

posted by mrpg on Monday February 18 2019, @11:40PM   
from the I-blame-YOU dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Researchers believe they have identified the prime driver for a startling rise in the number of people who think the Earth is flat: Google’s video-sharing site, YouTube.

Their suspicion was raised when they attended the world’s largest gatherings of Flat Earthers at the movement’s annual conference in Rayleigh, North Carolina, in 2017, and then in Denver, Colorado, last year.

Interviews with 30 attendees revealed a pattern in the stories people told about how they came to be convinced that the Earth was not a large round rock spinning through space but a large flat disc doing much the same thing.

Of the 30, all but one said they had not considered the Earth to be flat two years ago but changed their minds after watching videos promoting conspiracy theories on YouTube. “The only person who didn’t say this was there with his daughter and his son-in-law and they had seen it on YouTube and told him about it,” said Asheley Landrum, who led the research at Texas Tech University.

[...] Some said they watched the videos only in order to debunk them but soon found themselves won over by the material.

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Original Submission

• Re:The internet doesn't make people stupiderRe:The internet doesn't make people stupider (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @12:25AM (3 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @12:25AM (#803264)

  google says they're both cranks

  Google gives you results that say what you want hear so you are more valuable to advertisers.

  Parent

• Re:The internet doesn't make people stupiderRe:The internet doesn't make people stupider (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday February 19 2019, @01:05AM (1 child)

  by Snotnose (1623) on Tuesday February 19 2019, @01:05AM (#803291)

  google says they're both cranks

  Google gives you results that say what you want hear so you are more valuable to advertisers.

  Google Bruce Lipton and/or Joe Dispenza and tell me what you think. Joe at least has half a leg to stand on, his claims can't be easily refuted although they're in the "give me an effin break" territory. Bruce? Yeah, total crank.

  I'm really glad my friend doesn't read Soylent (Jo? You there?) She still talks to me, and may actually still like me. But damn, I know she's smart but how the hell?

  --
  It was a once in a lifetime experience. Which means I'll never do it again.

  Parent

  • Re:The internet doesn't make people stupider(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @03:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @03:11AM (#803317)

    Okay, Bruce Lipton seems to be extending epigenetics a bit further than is reasonable, but Joe Dispenza is a chiropractor!!!!!

    Parent

• Re:The internet doesn't make people stupider(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @08:45PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @08:45PM (#803659)

  It is not neccesarily what you want to hear, but it's what makes you react the best from their perspective. They can play you like a machine. Emotions can be correlated to AND, NOT, OR etc. on a computer.

  It works best on people who forget to question previous input and new input with "Why?". It is easy for most to do the "How?", but people tend to forget the Why. Our brains are associative machines. It's like a storage room with boxes of stuff (input) in them. When we need to react to something; we search the boxes, store the input and react with the content of the box. Our minds are simple machines and we're so unbelieably fucking dumb that we think we're smart.

  enum input_type_t {
    WATER,
    FOOD,
    SHELTER,
    GOOD_SOCIAL_INTERACTION,
    INPUT_TYPE_MAX
  };
  uint8_t why(uint32_t input)
  {
    if(input < INPUT_TYPE_MAX) {
      if(input & (FOOD|WATER|SHELTER|GOOD_SOCIAL_INTERACTION)) {
        return IMPORTANT;
      } else {
        return NOT_IMPORTANT;
      }
    } else {
      return ERROR_CRAP_INPUT;
    }
  }

  Parent