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.
Every single time I suddenly realized I was hanging out with (what I would later learn was) the alt right in college it was after months of being recruited, pursued, flattered before they even considered showing their power level. If there is a purity test it must come much later.
In contrast every single time I've tried to join a group or organization that identified as leftist they are just openly hostile from the jump. I've given up on joining an organization at this point.
And I can almost guarantee at least one person will read this and blame me somehow. Which just proves my point.