What Happened to Carol?

After a random encounter on a WSJ article, I posted this on her Facebook wall. I'm sure she'll block me at some point, but I wanted to write it out and share here:

My favorite part about Carol profile is that, for many years, she just posted photos of her family, pets, travel, and Christmas cards. Like a normal older person on social media would.

But in the past year or so, Carol went off the deep end and down the social media rabbit hole, posting garbage anti-vax memes, bogus articles from fringe websites, false election claims, conspiratorial junk about "global fascism," and other tinfoil hat fare.

What happened to Carol? She was motivated by fear of a changing world and demographic shifts in the USA, the thorough bilking of her cognitive faculties by an egregious political demagogue and his dramatic, sustained loss in the 2020 election. So she turned to a range of totally non-credible sources that created and affirmed a fantasy for her. Almost nobody ever interacts with Carol's content on her page. But she's doing it because it makes HER feel better. She's fallen into a cult of conspirituality, and these conspiracies give her a sense of meaning and purpose in an uncertain world.

These social media companies have a great deal of responsibility in weaponizing this junk information, but Carol eagerly and vociferously consumed it. That's how we got here. These social media companies gave Carol what she wanted, without considering whether it was harmful to her, her family, her community or our democracy.

And what happened to Carol is happening to millions of older Americans on social media right now. Will we ever be able to reach them? Or are they too far gone in these toxic information cesspools? Only time will tell.