When friends may be the enemy - DisInformation in the new age.

And here's what's funny: Once you've learned to detect it, that smell of conspiracy is often there even when there is no conspiracy, even when there are no black helicopters, and the space moose army isn't about to invade us. It's everywhere, in common beliefs that surround us, beliefs that aren't wacky or evil, but use a similar conspiracy-like approach all the same. Just like non-lethal viruses use the same tricks as lethal viruses to spread themselves, the tricks real conspiracy theories use aren't exclusive to them. They're too effective for other bad ideas not to adopt.

Before the internet, these tricks were less of a threat to us, because the same gatekeeping that have made traditional media so stale also made the tricks conspiracy-like theories use less effective. Good riddance to gatekeepers, but now we need to be more active in protecting ourselves against these ideas. We need to apply the conspiracy smell test to everything we're being told. And if that brand new idea you read in some blog fails part of the test, you might want to be careful.