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What nobody foresaw was that the internet allowed these benign isolated idiots to connect and form a super-cell, and begin coordinated recruitment.
Back when I lived in Austin, Texas, Alex Jones was just our funny cable access lunatic. He was like a funny wrestling match interview during a UFO convention. Then we built the modern internet. Sorry.
Leave it up to humans to bastardize the greatest tool for liberation ever invented.
Remember that one time Twitter facilitated the Arab Spring?
Maybe it's not done yet. The Arab Spring demonstrated that Twitter was a threat. The powers that be have effectively destroyed Twitter as an organizing tool. Now we have Mastodon.
It might take more than a few decades for humans to fully adapt to the internet hazards we were warned about in the 1990s and forgot by the 2020s.
The internet allows every village idiot to say to the other idiots "No you're not the idiot."
The ones I ever met, none were malicious or stupid.
It's after the popularisation of the internet that it's become a dangerous tool for misinformation.
The nerds are alright. The normos are not. The nerds like tights and Star Trek. The normos like extravagant vehicles and Trump.
Once it became profitable the assholes took over for the mostly harmless loons.