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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sacrosanct" data-source="post: 8480389" data-attributes="member: 15700">Yep.  You literally described an echo chamber Jer, and I'm reminded of a study done by  Stanford (IIRC) where they did analysis, and directly linked the rise of extremism and acceptance of conspiracies to echo chambers in social media.In summary: Before the internet, your crazy neighbor largely was alone and it was very hard for them to find like minded individuals.  Their crazy conspiracies were never acknowledged as legitimate by 99% of the people they saw and interacted with on a daily basis.  Their fringe beliefs remained fringe among those they interacted with most of the time.But with the internet, suddenly most of their interaction was with like minded folks.  That fringe belief was reaffirmed and thus no longer became fringe, but accepted.  Which in turn fed people to start thinking of even more extreme beliefs, even in those circles.  So those people in turn began to find others like them, rinse and repeat.  Next thing you know, people think the Clintons ran a pedo ring out of a pizza parlor and QANon became mainstream.</blockquote>