9 Comments
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Mello.B33's avatar

Fact-checkers = Ministry of Truth

And this is what they are REALLY trying to say: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." - George Orwell

Pepperkin's avatar

I wonder what the Reuters fact checkers think happened in Salem. Or in the European witch craze of the fifteenth century.

Perhaps.....witches?

David Shane's avatar

Yep. I said on Twitter that it reminded me of that Republican candidate a few years ago saying "I'm not a witch". If you find yourself having to even make the denial, something has gone badly wrong for you. Something has now gone badly wrong for the "everything is fine, nothing to see here" crowd.

James Lyons-Weiler, PhD's avatar

It's a malapropism between “mass formation” and “mass psychosis” Mass formation is any large-group activity, and Mass psychogenic illness, aka mass hysteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness As they bicker about jargon and semantics, the world burns. But hey, because words.

Todd I Stark's avatar

I'm not seeing the big difference between conspiracy thinking and the "mass psychosis" theory.

It seems to me the common concern here psychologically is motivated reasoning and what it takes to compensate for it. People taking in new information from reliable institutional sources vs. digging into their prior thinking by do-it-myself selective research. People have all sorts of good reasons for not fully trusting any given institution or expert, but dismissing all institutional sources in a sweeping way doesn't actually address their epistemic trust concern, it just dismisses it by application of their own overconfidence.

Mark Changizi's avatar

Concerning the initiation of all this, conspiracy theorists are those believing this was all planned for many years, versus mass psychosis theorists who believe fear of a pandemic triggered an “avalanche”, ahem, a mass hysteria, which, in turn, led to all the stuff we’ve seen.

Todd I Stark's avatar

Understood, thank you.

MsDi's avatar

I've also read that the actual people under mass hysteria are now saying it's the unvaxed who are in a mass hysteria.