Which Idiocy Is Worse? Help Me Decide.

Photo by Norbu GYACHUNG on Unsplash

What’s worse: that for every idiotic idea there’s a platform to promote it, or that there’s a ready-made audience ready to listen?

The Question I’m Focused On

I’ve been trying to determine which is the worse of two scenarios.

1. That untrue and idiotic ideas are readily platformed, or
2. That there are people ready, willing to believe and repeat these ideas, no matter how absurd.

Seems we took a hard right at the moon landing being a hoax.

Context:

Load up your Twitter app — any time, any day, and you’ll observe claims so preposterous, they don’t warrant fact checking. Ideas so stupid, so ridiculous and patently false that it’s hard to understand why the posters aren’t shunned into oblivion.

But, here we are, ad infinitum.

I wanted to try and discover which of these behaviours is worse? Those that provide a platform for this propaganda, or those who are lined up, ready to believe and to playback those soundbites.

The Most Craven Of Defences

One of the more craven defences of this cycle of deceit is that nobody could really believe this, so we can’t be held accountable [1],[2],[3]. As a business model however, it’s proven lucrative…