this is a :a-guy: post
So my grandma couldn't live alone anymore and she moved into my parents house about a year ago. Her new bedroom doesn't have cable. Her media diet used to be like 90% TV and 10% internet. Now it's reversed.
She's 90 years old and just a conventional methodist.
What probably happened is she searched youtube for gospel music to do crosswords by. 100,000 iterations of the algorithm later she believes in ancient aliens, crises actors, millenarianism, all of it.
Same thing probably happened in rural communities who got the full internet all at once. They didn't get it by degrees, dial-up alta vista, to learn years of bullshit filtering heuristics.
reactionaries can do this because none of their worldview has to be coherent or make sense. It just has to distract and confuse but feel like something real. It's like a squid shooting ink everywhere to escape predators.
I'm reminded of that one Qanon Anonymous podcast where they read an FBI transcript of a January 6th rioter guy talking to the feds. The guy could only barely describe why he was at the riot and often seemed to get lost when describing his own worldview, uncontested. He couldn't remember Vincent Fusca's name or why he was supposed to be JFK Jr. And this guy was at the front of the line wearing a Q shirt. Not to say everyone has to be able to describe what they believe in intricate detail, but should at least know why they're doing something.