*This* is What the Bot Told Me

Who do you trust?

There are a lot of people out there asking that. And the vox populi seems to side against traditional media. And I know traditional media makes its fair share of mistakes, pushes agendas and occasionallly outright lies.

But the "people" the people say they trust are even worse.

Read this a few days ago in Nathaniel Poppler's "The Trolls of Wall Street":

Dopierala vehemently denied the accusations that were flying around the internet. BUt once a suspicion is planted on social media, it is hard to pull it back. And by this time, the GME Owls were talking about several other strange patterns and portents floating around GameStop. One of the GME Owls began documenting every message he could fine encouraging people to sell GameStop. He noticed that many of them were from newly created accounts and that all the messages were using the same phrasing across different social media platforms. "I track a lot of social media challens and the volume is insane, all the same things," he wrote. . . 

Melvin, of course, denied that it had paid for any sort of social media campaign But the fears swirling around were the kind of thing that often happened as online social movements grew. Social media maede it hard to know who was real and who was some plant from the opposition. People had come to social media because they distrusted traditional sources, but this was one of the many areas where social media ended up exacerbating the distrust.

This has, of course, evolved a bit. There've always been people who'll look to social media (or traditional media) and believe what they read because it already jibes with their beliefs. But there's growing evidence that people can now look at the kinds of patterns outlined in the book excerpts and *still* insist that what's being said is true, even if it's an orchestrated attempt at disinformation and pushing agendas.

It reminds me of what Terry Pratchett wrote in "Making Money":

Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.

The Joker is about to kill all the people following the parade. And they don't care, because he's giving away free money. Hubba hubba hubba, who do you trust?