Tue Aug 18, 2020 10:36 AM
Tue Aug 18, 2020 09:16 AM
The Frauchiger-Renner thought experiment has shaken up the world of quantum foundations.
Tue Aug 18, 2020 10:36 AM
““It’s a huge misconception that disinformation and conspiracy theorizing happens only in fringe spaces, or dark corners of the internet,” Becca Lewis, a Stanford doctoral student specializing in online political subcultures, told me. “We say you ‘fall down a rabbit hole.’ But it’s not how the ecosystem actually works. So much of this content is being disseminated by super popular accounts with absolutely mainstream aesthetics.”
Previously, Lewis had studied white-supremacist internet personalities who use similar tactics. She found that they would make Instagram accounts completely free of extremist rhetoric, and dedicated instead to dreamy engagement photos and romantic vacations. Then they’d draw followers over to YouTube, where they would tell personal stories—particularly difficult to fact-check, always prefaced with a polite “Do your own research”—about how they’d come to believe in various white-nationalist, far-right causes, and conspiracy theories. She thinks what’s happening on Instagram looks similar.
“If you’re able to make this covetable, beautiful aesthetic and then attach these conspiracy theories to it, that normalizes the conspiracy theories in a very specific way that Instagram is particularly good for,” Lewis said. Of course, she added, it’s hard to say what’s orchestrated and what’s genuine on Instagram. But the effect is the same, whether or not it’s deliberate.”
How the domestic aesthetics of Instagram repackage QAnon for the masses
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