There is something I see often nowadays. People using big words like
socio-economic,
romanticizing,
sexualized, etc... Out of context or to appear smarter than they really are. I have a strange feeling about this. No one talks like that in real life, and these words always seem forced. Robotic in a way.
People are becoming very sterile or how to call it. Their thinking is binary, something must be either 100% bad or 100% good, you have to pick a side, if you aren't outraged and offended 24/7, you are evil...
Another problem I see is that people take everything word for word. There was a "study" about how brain matures around the time you are 25. It was a rough estimate, of course everyone is different. But some folks seem to think that once you are 25 years and 1 second old, you are done developing and you are a mature, fully functional adult. Scary how people think the human body is a machine.
I'm also kinda suspicious of the whole
true crime trend. These tragic cases are being used for clout, not to mention they do "spice it up" to make it even sound worse. I remember one case about the murder of a man by a "mafia". All the commenters were outraged at this "mafia", and saying it was this cartoonishly evul organization. When in reality, the man was murdered by his neighbor. There was no syndicate involved.
Reminds me of a case in my country. A journalist was murdered, and the media started to blame the ruling political party of assassinating him, even though it was never proved to be true. The prime minister had to resign, due to mass protests. Then everyone voted for a political party that ruined the entire country. So it's safe to say when someone talks about "mafia" involvement, without mentioning a specific clan, it's safe to say that part of the story is bullshit.
There are fake accounts on FB pushing pro-government propaganda, most of them have StyleGAN images. I'm not sure if these are bots or just paid shills to be honest.
All of this is lowkey evidence for the Potemkin Village model.
Bots screw up your perception of numbers. A post or a tweet has 1000 magic point: "it must be so true!" Even though in reality that means nothing. These bots attack any sceptics or anyone who is not histrionic.
Likes on youtube comments are a big mystery for me. Few years ago, the top comments had triple digit numbers next to them. Nowadays comments get nearly the same amount of likes as the video and they all follow a common pattern, using the same memes, buzz words and dogwhistles.
I'm on a private conspiracy forum, where dead internet, actor based reality and dead cities (yes, it's a thing,
real Potemkin Villages) are the main topic. The users there are dedicated to exposing the shills and bots on social media. They uncovered that most FB group mods have a background in marketing and
creating online communities. Other interesting finds include:
-most viral tweets have the exact same users responding and liking them
-few twitter e-celebs control the narrative
-feds are on the site and use deepfake technologies to create fake identities (BAP was right)
-4chan threads that get posted often are propaganda materials
-not all propaganda appears political
-some bots are benign and just post pretty pictures (the ***dior accounts on twitter)
-feds from the same groups create sockpuppet accounts and use the same lingo
->reddit
and facebook mods are involved in some dark shit, but when they are called out, they are told to gaslight people
-bots and shills push propaganda against foreign entities and anyone going against status quo, if they are called out on their hypocrisy, the will most likely bring out some logical fallacy like
whataboutism
-posts are targeted at individuals and everyone probably sees a different version of the internet
My favourite theory from that forum is probably the
different versions of internet theory. Like each time you log on, a different Potemkin village or server is presented to you. This is pretty believable to me. Example: I was talking to a friend and she brought up the stupid "zamn" meme. I had no idea this existed. It wasn't on the
server I was on. But then I started to see it everywhere. Stuff like this happens quite often. I didn't know there was an equivalent of the word
jab in my language, but after seeing one post with it, I see it everywhere. Or I get into a niché, and then I start seeing it everywhere.