I’ve been fascinated by conspiracy theories, true and false, and over the years I’ve read quite a number of them. Unfortunately, in these strange times, many people have spent far too much of their time “going down rabbit holes” and sharing unreliable information.
There’s a great French word for the collection of Internet sites that spread this sort of misinformation: la complosphère, which I’ve translated as the Conspirosphere.
The Conspirosphere is the collection of Internet sites which copy lurid allegations that are unverified and mostly false. Truly “fake news”.
Sadly, some people believe that when something is “in print”, such as written in a salacious self-published memoir of a woman who claims to have been forced into sex slavery by nefarious forces in the US government, no less, that it must have really happened. One woman making such claims is Cathy O’Brien, and another wrote under the pen name Brice Taylor. Both of their names are listed in the oval at the right side of the giant “Q Web” which I’ve copied into this story for reference (designed by Dylan Louis Monroe). …
I didn’t quit Twitter. In fact, I’ve been more active there than anywhere else. I’m going to write more about my hobbyist Android and NetBSD/vax projects here soon. Stay tuned!
I finally figured out the exact qualities that I dislike about Twitter, and I want to describe how the decision to make my collection of 351,000 tweets private, uninstall the mobile app, and stop using the service on a daily basis, felt so worthwhile and consequential after I did.
I felt like my daily Twitter usage had become a bad habit that was slowly killing me, similar to an addiction to cigarettes or alcohol, except that unlike those drugs, the damage to my physical health was limited to a relative lack of physical exercise, while the real damage was caused to my mental and emotional well-being, my attention span, my outlook on the future, and my use of time. …
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