Old conspiracy forums had better sourcing than half the podcasts now

Back in 2004 on a dial-up board, someone had to post scanned pages from a library book to back up a claim, now people just say 'trust me bro' with zero receipts. Anyone else remember when the bar for a wild theory was at least a grainy photo and a date?

2 comments

2 Comments

carr.elliot19d ago

And honestly it tracks with how everything else has gone downhill too, not just conspiracy stuff. Like people used to have to actually drive to a store to buy something and now they just scroll TikTok and believe whatever random person says is the best vacuum cleaner without checking a single review. There's this whole pattern where effort used to be the filter for what got attention, you know, you had to care enough to do the legwork, and now the algorithm does the legwork for you so nobody bothers. The bar for believability just sank across the board, not just for wild theories but for basic everyday claims about products, health, news, all of it. It's like we traded the grainy photo requirement for a screenshot of a tweet with zero context and somehow decided that was an upgrade.

mary_martin2218d ago

Wait, people are actually buying vacuum cleaners just because some TikTok person said so? That's genuinely terrifying.