A brief note on the attention economy:
Remember the wild plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Witmer? Two investigative reporters, who have been covering the story since it happened, discovered over time that it was "more complicated" than it had first seemed. This, because "an informant and one FBI agent were charged with crimes, another was accused of perjury, and a third was found promoting a private security firm." Did the extremists arrested for the plot pose an actual threat, or were they egged on by undercover agents and at least a dozen confidential informants?
Tucker Carlson and others on the right saw "a setup by the government" and leapt from there to a grand deep state conspiracy. The reporters, who describe painstakingly developing sources over several years to learn what was going on, are more circumspect, more closely connected to actual evidence. Describing a possible setup in Michigan doesn't entail losing oneself down an ideological rabbit hole. Some of their sources and erstwhile fans on the right were baffled, as one of the reporters explains (using a concept, the attention economy, that explains much of the appeal of the web):
There were a couple of moments where people on the right had taken that story and twisted it to fit their narrative. They would say things that I didn’t agree with, and I would challenge them on it. They’re DMing me and one of them expressed a genuine bewilderment and surprise that I didn’t agree with her. She’s like, “You and Jessica have done such amazing work on this story. How could you not believe that the whole thing was a dry run for Jan. 6? How could you not understand that this was part of the deep-state conspiracy?” She wasn’t trolling me. She genuinely was flustered and couldn’t understand why I didn’t see that. To me, it was a little glimpse into the way that the attention economy perverts these stories. This woman massively built up her social media profile based on ranting about this case for two years. And the way she talked about it has evolved and evolved to the point that it became just crazy talk. [My italics.]
Although I don't recall hearing the phrase 'attention economy' before, the idea is familiar. Our attention is a limited resource. We can only spend a finite number of hours on the web. Social media sites that make money on advertising, or have something to sell you directly, have strong incentives to keep you online -- to view the ads, to make online purchases, to increase your commitment day by day. To keep you coming back for more. Sophisticated algorithms play on human nature to hook you.
Once you're caught and looking at the same constellation of websites every day, you lose sight of alternative sources of information and broader perspectives. FBI abuses in a criminal case become an all-pervasive deep state conspiracy. Eventually, what you say becomes "just crazy talk."
The same principles of the attention economy that apply to the web are also applicable to Fox News Network and its cable rivals. Spend enough time there (while excluding dissonant points of view) and you'll end up uttering crazy talk.