On Friday afternoon, news broke that popular actor Carl Weathers had passed away peacefully in his sleep at the age of 76. The cause of death has not been announced. Within hours, anti-vaxxers offered an unsolicited explanation for his death. They pointed to a tweet Weathers posted in 2022 in which he said he was “energized to have been vaccinated.” Weathers became the latest celebrity to have his death exploited in the #DiedSuddenly conspiracy theory. In this conspiracy theory, vaccine skeptics imply that people are dying after receiving the coronavirus vaccine. Same cycle after 4 days repeated itself after the death of country music artist Toby Keith. For these anti-vaxxers, celebrity deaths are never coincidental or meaningless. Each is evidence that is quickly edited to explain and maintain a particular dangerous worldview.
Conspiracy theorists and propagandists have always tried to manipulate current events. However, it has become surprisingly common to encounter brazen conspiracy theories on the internet. As my colleague Caitlin Tiffany wrote last year, #DiedSuddenly is gaining popularity on social media, especially on his X. These days, some headlines can sound like they’re describing events happening in a parallel timeline in America. A plane that suffers a major mechanical failure is like, “Yeah, DEI is going to knock more planes out of the sky.” The world’s most famous pop star becomes embroiled in a shadowy “deep state” conspiracy when she dates one of the NFL’s best players. “Right-wingers say the Super Bowl is rigged, so Taylor Swift could support Biden.” Online, no event can stand alone. It quickly dives into an overarching story.
Mike Caulfield, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies media literacy and misinformation, says this is why political discussion online feels so unchecked, and that we’re seeing a shift in the world’s Told me it only gets weirder as we push deeper into the abyss. upcoming presidential election. He writes that all the information online – news, research, historical documents, opinions – conditions people to treat everything the same. evidence It directly supports their ideological position on any subject. He calls it the era of “evidence maximism.” This is how we argue online now, and why building a shared reality is harder than ever.
Caulfield has three rules for evidentiary maximization. The first is that “Even the smallest thing can be evidence of yourself.” This looks like a classic conspiracy theory. Connect the dots that don’t exist. Caulfield pointed me to a recent post from the X account, which claims to publish “unfiltered, unbiased and verified breaking news 24/7.” The account, which has 1.2 million followers, shared a link to a TikTok video showing Costco recently restocking its emergency food kits. “What does Costco know?” read a post by X. (It has since been deleted.) The implication was that a pandemic-type disaster could happen again, and that those in power knew more than they were letting on.
The second rule of evidence maximism, he said, is, “No matter how big something is, it’s always evidence of my big thing.”Last month, when sports illustrated announced plans to lay off most of its employees, some right-wing influencers were quick to blame the magazine’s financial crisis on the magazine’s decision to feature transgender pop star Kim Petras in its swimsuit issue. he accused. As with the Boeing plane story, this “wake up and it’s broken” explanation has become a common trope on the right. Instead of trying to find the real nuanced reasons, media companies such as sports illustrated Failing that, it’s much easier to categorize the news into stories that fit into broader political issues.
Caulfield’s final rule may be the most important. “All of your evidence against me, if you look closely, is very strong evidence against me.” A prominent example of this is the January 6th riot, which some on the right reconstructed as evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. Videos of violence between MAGA rebels and insurgents reported as a deep state conspiracy. They claimed that the real rioters were federal agents.
Of course, this kind of confirmation bias is not new, but the internet has made it even stronger. Our attention is so fragmented online that big stories like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey’s romance become ideological battlegrounds, with different camps trying to capitalize on them. It’s hard to get someone interested in anything, including DEI programs. luck 500 companies, for a long period of time, but will provide an opening if the airplane door breaks during flight. From there, a motivated attacker can reverse engineer the evidence with a quick Google search. A Boeing plane suffered mechanical trouble. Visit companies’ websites, view press releases, and find DEI. report It says the company aims to “increase the representation of black people” and shows a cause-and-effect relationship.
Maximalists exist across the political spectrum, and the stakes of the next election will only further embolden them. However, there is a clear asymmetry. The far right has built a politics centered on maximizing evidence, and this is likely to continue in 2024. Donald Trump’s campaign, which has been building an entirely different world in which the 2020 election was stolen, may suddenly discover evidence. In the coming months, new fraud will emerge across the country claiming that Democrats are trying to steal a second election. All is fair game, which is why Swift’s relationship somehow became a liberal conspiracy to support Joe Biden in the Super Bowl. The far right is warning us of what happens when we ignore unpleasant information and make connections out of thin air. Adherents of the MAGA orthodoxy have built a world alienated from popular institutions and elements of American life, where they must boycott Target, Bud Light, and Disney.
It’s unclear if this problem can be easily fixed. But Caulfield argues that there are ways to overcome the information quagmire. When you see a news article or post online, it’s worth asking questions that make you think about whether the article is actually as important as its framework suggests. He provided some questions readers can ask themselves. In the case of a story about mail theft, did it You can be quick to pin the blame on dirty political tricksters, or you can ask yourself, C.Could this be evidence of something smaller and more local, like petty criminals trying to steal checks? “Sometimes the best evidence for the biggest problem is what’s right in front of you,” Caulfield told me. “But in most cases, that’s not the case.”
Such recognition is critical, especially in a tough election year. Because evidence maximalism doesn’t just poison the debate or make weird headlines. It exudes humanity from the way people see the world. All too often, evidence maximalists take other human beings’ misfortunes, successes, and stories and turn them into exhibits to present to an imaginary jury in order to win an unlikely case. Mass shootings become political bludgeons. Tragic deaths become a means of questioning science. The thousands of teenagers who use TikTok represent the “radical left.” At stake is an information ecosystem that is increasingly less focused on what is happening to people. Because the story itself is meaningless other than as a way to score political points. An environment dominated by the law of evidence maximalism is cold and nihilistic. When everything is evidence, nothing is evidence.
