Charlie Warzel on our post-truth reality

In the Atlantic, writer Charlie Warzel published a sobering piece on the overwhelming flood of conspiracy theories that have hampered the Hurricane Milton relief effort.

The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality," Warzel writes. "As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet.

In a natural disaster, this isn't just deceptive, but downright dangerous. FEMA workers have found their work hampered by people who have consumed this misinformation; emergency first responders are wasting valuable time combatting rumors online.

Warzel later quotes Michael Caulfield at the University of Washington who says that "The primary use of ‘misinformation’ is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary."

It's a depressing piece, but one of the better recent analyses of our current disfunctional information ecosystem.