Idk if this has grown worse in recent years or if I’m only paying attention more.
Every single video about physics (especially relativity or quantum theory) has a deluge of ostensibly misunderstood geniuses who either know why Einstein/Newton/the science community are wrong, or try to look smart by “explaining” the video to others but doing a terrible job of it.
It’s starting to feel like the comments from the flat-earther pages I used to lurk in for entertainment. Except instead of people endlessly denying a round earth, they’re denying a constant speed of light, black holes, or whatever the fuck.
On a related note, check this out
citations needed had a livestream about how these ancient aliens book writers like erich von daniken were outsiders in their fields trying to gain clout (through grifting people), a shortcut to some measure of fame and recognition, it also reminds me of the peter thiel employee eric weinstein with his ‘theory of everything’, he got very aggressive when challenged about it by some people, once the grift gets fully exposed they’ll usually switch to a ‘it was entertainment actually’ defense, or ‘it was speculative’ and re-brand/pivot to some other thing like a ‘lifestyle channel’, but yeah grifters pretending to be experts is a big problem in western social media, all of a sudden some youtubers became experts in microbiology, viruses, and vaccines a few years ago (even Max Blumenthal lol), I guess western corps generally stay hands off because 1. don’t want to spend on hiring more content moderators 2. as long it’s not illegal in the country, any sort of outrage still generates traffic, publicly they can say it’s because ‘we have to protect the sacred battleground of ideas’, our ‘town square’ and such