Re:The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber – It’s Making Us More...
by canadian_voter on Sunday April 23, 2017 @12:55PM
(#14178962)
Give people a long leash, but when they're way off to the end of the bell-curve of normality throw them a life-line.
Hello User. We've noticed you've been spending more time on StackOverflow than 99% of our other users. May we suggest you spend some time looking at cat videos to balance things out? -- Your friends at Google
Give people a long leash, but when they're way off to the end of the bell-curve of normality throw them a life-line.
> It's easy to make up pure-nonsense examples that nobody believes...
That's actually an example of things people do believe. If you engage with some of those wild outliers you can learn a lot, quickly. Some of them are trolling, but many of them have extremely firm convictions. Maybe it's Sandy Hook. Maybe it's chemtrails. It's usually a bunch of stuff, all tangled together.