The Rise of Anti-Intellectualism on Social Media

[@General_Idea]

In this miasma of social media mis-information vying for your time and ears and eyes, there is always time to pay attention to Mike Brigandi. Thank you for your contribution to sanity, Mike. Always time for your insightful commentary and your online interactions with those who have never considered the need for a sceptical mindset and critical thinking.

[@guitarizard]

Most peope, If you ask them, "What method do you use to make a distinction between truth and fiction?", they don't have an answer. Quite a lot of them tell me they just go by what feels good.

[@EmpApe-wx3]

I love your content and through it and others I have realized you guys are the real fisher's of man. You reel in all the people who are not able to explain their god or theory of life. 🧬

[@supersaiyanzero386]

I talk about this to people and they stare at me drooling and change the subject. I wish that was an exaggeration. I myself find that I'll be scrolling through Facebook despite telling myself I hate the website and with what's left of my brain is brewing in these angry neuro-chemical reactions. The behavioral aspects of social media intoxication are something I see daily. I've had two friends who were converted to Christianity because of the terrible Tiktok arguments they see. 28+ year old people. I can admit I'm part of some echo chambers, I try to speak up and it never goes well. I've gotten to the point of never checking responses on that website. The facts checking is almost like an infinite regress thing who's going to fact check the fact checkers in fact check the fact checkers checking the fact checkers? Thankfully facts are facts, but I'm not as optimistic as some people. I agree that people need to know how to determine fact from fiction and especially that they need to better develop these skills with information they have little understanding of. I don't really share posts but I've often seen things that sound smart and appear to be scientifically sound and I don't often question it. On the topic of social media and children it would be cool to see you tackle the stuff that teachers are saying about graduating functional illiterates. On the last point, I consistently am pissing off conservatives and some leftists by being a critical thinker, with many flaws, but the one thing I think I've done correctly is to not promote ideas that I don't actually have understanding of. I am absolutely positive that people are getting way more information off of Facebook Instagram and Twitter posts and they're getting from books from the library or even audio books or scientific websites that have explanations because all these websites are becoming so integrated, these powerful monoliths where people are told what to think, not given the tools of how to think (to your last point). Thanks for bringing light to this issue that honestly I don't think it's being talked about nearly enough. I pretty much always excessively preface or end whatever block of text I'm putting out there by saying that I am pretty much just as susceptible to these flaws as other people. On a related note but as an aside I have taken a note of how I feel after mindlessly scrolling to find something enjoyable vs. thinking about something and starting from the root- the former makes me excessively depressed. I'm 30 years old so I wasn't there at the very very beginning. I was there pretty early on though back when the actual primary purpose was simply to connect with people that you knew from school or somewhere in the neighborhood or from work and the idea of just being able to communicate with them outside of those spaces was great. The first time I logged into Facebook and realized I don't have a journal section anymore was one that really hit me that things were starting to change and it might sound like a stupid turning point but it was a slap in the face. I swear not long after that all of these sites were populated with these extremely long chains of advertisements and random suggestions for other pages with stupid word memes and gotchas. I'm long winded today, but another thing I want to mention and I'm sure other people will identify with this: if someone is interested in science and they try to go to a page that promotes science on social media they will oftentimes find that a lot of the information there is not scientific. Not really. A lot of it is just a set of statements intended for people to share to seem like they are smarter than they really are. In addition to some of the proposed ideas in this video, promoting just the traditional act of reading a book is something I have been doing recently. As a teenager I was able to get people to read The God Delusion because I liked that book so much, and a few family members actually deconverted before it became too late. I have tried to talk to religious people recently and they will not have it, they don't want to go through it. I'm seeing a lot of people who used to be atheists who broke out of religion as teenagers going back into it as people going into their thirties it's fucking maddening. There's my 3 cents(because it's a long ramble), not much, but this topic is close to my heart and my occasional rage lol. The changes I see in my own behavior and those I know are pretty scary, as somebody can be radicalized or change a fundamental opinion so fast on something (vaccines, religion, politics, and more) and it's so hard to tell someone that they're wrong when the upbringing is to respect other people's ideas. I respect them, but their ideas? I could go on about this strange increase in people taking up for bad ideas that they disagree with just to protect other people, but you see that a lot based on those streams, which I do watch when I can. Glad you're back BTW. As stubborn as people can be you're probably changing minds. You've changed my mind on a couple veganism points and given me ideas on how to better approach people with religion induced hallucination of the existence of a God. I almost miss when THAT was the big debate of the time instead of the jumbled unsorted mess of basically every subject having an uninformed throng behind an uncritical view of almost any given subject. One of the most interesting types of people I see on the internet is the contrarian who seems to just disagree with everything everyone says at all times as if they just figured out what logic is. Nobody's reading all my ravings but thanks for the spark in my brain.

[@user-no7px7ed4m]

Just embrace it Mike, the brain rot is here to stay

[@xtrumo.em2d296]

You’re the real life dr stone. Great video

[@ZimaBlue-c2p]

Could’ve never been more right Mike. It’ll get better more restrictions will be set sooner or later, it never spirals into chaos especially not with tech. It’s just new takes a little getting used to. We swe’s need people like you to tell us what’s wrong and what restrictions we need to set.

[@ZimaBlue-c2p]

Governments can’t help if their leaders struggle to tell what’s real and what’s not therefore; it would be impossible to penalize anyone.

[@mikebrigandi_]

It’s up to us to make it better. It won’t automatically get better, and it could easily get much worse

[@jrome9825]

Wow this video couldn't be more real ❤

[@forestvanslyke]

Thank you for making this video

[@cemantical]

I'd love to see more videos like this from you