Not the best trend….
Opposition to vaccines and mainstream science has become politically charged, making dangerous misinformation harder to fight.
www.cbsnews.com
In loosely related news:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/social-media-age-cults-internet-101706910.html
Six people are missing out of Missouri after investigators believe they were sucked into what appears to be a “spiritual cult” on social media called the University of Cosmic Intelligence. The group is run by convicted child molester Rashad Jamal.
Jamal is currently in prison on child molestation and cruelty to children convictions. Authorities say he built up an online following of hundreds of thousands of followers on platforms including YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, and shares his theories about Black and Latino people being gods and goddesses, while people of other races and ethnicities are not from this planet. He also shares conspiracy theories in his videos about government controlling the weather and elites and politicians being “reptilian shapeshifters” who drink blood.
The missing people became increasingly isolated from family members, quit their jobs and were seen engaged in nude meditations outdoors, according to the Berkeley Police Department in Missouri.
The “pot of odd beliefs that’s bubbling outside of mainstream society” has always existed, said Stephen Kent, emeritus professor at the University of Alberta’s sociology department. But experts say with the internet and the dominance of social media, people have easier access to them, and targeted content can drag them further in.
What sets cults apart from other organized groups is they operate to benefit only a leader, and their authoritarian structures leave no room for critical thinking, according to Dr. Steven Hassan, a renowned cult expert with firsthand experience escaping the Unification Church. Hassan founded the
Freedom of Mind Resource Center to help other survivors heal.
“The word ‘cult' is used mostly pejoratively, but for me, the problem is authoritarian cults,” he told USA TODAY.
Cult leaders, Hassan said, construct authoritarian rulings that benefit only themselves either financially or by fueling their narcissistic beliefs. They become tyrannical, with no allowance for free will or anyone else's needs.
“If you can create uncertainty, doubt and fear, it makes people’s minds more susceptible to an authoritarian voice,” Hassan said.
“Probably 99% (of cult leaders) are con artists and they know exactly what they’re doing. Some of them may eventually become delusional because they get away with so much for so long,” Lalich said in the video. “I think most of them are sitting back and laughing at their followers.”
Before the internet, people interested in cults largely communicated and found groups through individual contacts, alternative bookstores, a radio broadcast or lecture, Kent said. Now, the same groups can connect with each other from their couches by lifting little more than a finger on their phones.
In one case, a joke about birds operating as a tool of government surveillance started as satire and festered into a conspiracy theory – one Jamal also proposed on social media.
“If you look at (Jamal's) YouTube, how did he get so many followers? Was it really organic, or were there bad actors amplifying it, or was it just algorithms of YouTube trying to make money?” Hassan said.
From Russia to Christian nationalists, “bad actors” encompass a wide breadth of entities with a variety of agendas that benefit from inducing chaos and promoting anti-government views in the U.S., Hassan said. One of them may have amplified Jamal’s online presence and boosted his platform by manipulating the algorithm.
The average American spends nearly
seven hours online per day, including about two and a half hours on social media, which Hassan suspects is partly driven by the addictive dopamine hit that companies bolster by pushing engaging content tailored to viewers.
wpde.com
