Why Does Social Media Attract So Many Crackpots?

We ask UFO researcher William Pullin how our society got to the point where crack pottery is the language of the day. Have we lost the ability to discern what’s realistic and what is not? Do we still encourage critical thinking online or not?

“Social media has basically leveled out every expert with every person who looks like an expert, and I think that’s really harmful, and I think the only possible solution to that is if your average person develops the literacy to  distinguish between them. And that’s a huge ask.”
~William Pullin

Radio Wasteland: It’s one or two crackpots. Out there, just kind of rallying the crazy. And but now we’ve seem to have come to this place where everybody’s their own brand of crackpot. And I might be, too, and I’m not. I don’t know. I might be my own brand of crackpot as well.

[00:00:22] You know, it’s like how do we get to the point where we’re all crackpots? Did. Did social media just allow us to put too much of ourselves out there or have we really changed to become crackpots? I mean, I realize this is an open-ended, nonanswerable philosophical question. Yeah, but I mean, what do you think? Well, let’s ask you. What do you think? How did we get here?

William Pullin: [00:00:44] I think there’s a couple of things because there has always been a paranoid anti factual strain of politics in this country. That is not remotely new. That goes back to the founding of our country. And there probably should be, you know, look at the. A lot of sort of bring silver standard or reactionary types in the 19th century or the John Birch Society in the 20th century, there have always been the crazies. I think social media has turned it into much more of a contest of like.

Social media has basically leveled out every expert with every person who looks like an expert, and I think that’s really harmful, and I think the only possible solution to that is if your average person develops the literacy to distinguish between them. And that’s a huge ask, I think for that to happen, we needed total revamping of our education system. Basically, I think that’s the only thing that would do it because a lot of people grow up to hate learning because our education system is so bad. So I think that is kind of part of it is a lot of people are like, well, you know if you express yourself in a way that sounds like a textbook, I will dismiss you out of hand, which is too bad because that’s the guy who is most likely to be telling the truth.

Radio Wasteland: Well, the Kara are we somewhat to blame? We used to work for the same marketing company, and we knew that in order for people to believe us, that we were able to sell our services, that we had to sell ourselves as what we referred to as a lab coat, meaning that we had to sell ourselves as being experts in our fields.

All right, William, you know, how do you think that we got here? How do you think that we got to the point where we’re crackpottery is the language of the day?

William Pullin: Simply, it allows us to have a door still. I think we’ve just got flopping. Yeah, it’s so easy, it’s so easy to find information. When I was well, the kid a long time ago used to go to the library. You pick up the newspaper, you go to a library, do some research on books. Imagine that. Nowadays you just pick up your computer or your laptop or whatever or your phone and just type in a few words on Google and you find information. Trouble is, they may not be valid information. It’s not so easy to find out about things.

We’ve lost the ability to discern what’s developed and what’s not. Yeah, we’ve lost the ability to have some critical thinking to analyze what’s being claim as opposed to four years ago. We have a more critical mind. It seemed to me we do. So that’s got a little more become more rare nowadays. So the Internet’s helped in some ways, but it’s really hurt in other ways. And I think this situation is just if we’ve gotten here by our own hands.