Remember when conspiracy debates were about actual hidden history?

I was digging through some old forums from like 2012 and people were discussing stuff like Operation Northwoods or the Tulsa Race Massacre being covered up. Now it feels like every thread is about flat earth or lizard people running the Pentagon. Did the internet just get too flooded with trolls or did people actually stop caring about the more grounded stuff?

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johnson.lee4mo ago

Man, do you think the trolls just took over or people lost their critical thinking skills?

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margaret_nelson4mo ago

I was just reading this article the other day about how social media algorithms literally reward outrage, so it's like we're all being trained to react without thinking. It said something like the average person sees hundreds of headlines a day and just skims, so of course critical thinking goes out the window when you're flooded with that much crap. Plus trolls figured out they can just jam up any conversation with fake outrage and nobody knows what's real anymore.

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