Yeah, I always wonder: is the tail wagging the dog or vice versa? Like maaaybe society is going through some organic disruption at the moment, but it’s so easy to foment a sense of crisis through mass media that it seems more likely it’s just being done to serve an agenda (start a war, consolidate power, disrupt opposition, extract wealth upwards, etc…).

My measuring stick is how “on message” the people reporting it tend to be. A real disaster or crisis is chaotic, and authentic reporting about it tends to be too (think about mixed messaging during the early days of COVID). If something happens and there’s a very clear narrative from the start about who the good guys and bad guys are, especially if it is trying to make me scared or mad, I just assume I’m being manipulated.