Andrew Bridgen MP thinks the US government created Covid in order to âcontrolâ everybody through forced vaccinations.
He also thought every person in the UK was automatically entitled to an Irish passport.
Who knows, perhaps the US and Chinese governments independently created the exact same artificial virus at the exact same time and released it at the exact same time, and the moon is made from cheese.
Coprophagic. Look it up.
Lozza Fox would rank close to the top of my list of people Iâd least like to sit beside on a long haul flight.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/anti-vaxx-mp-andrew-bridgen-29432474
With particular reference to the Covid pandemic, this is a decent attempt at describing how the temptation of a greatly expanded audience, notoriety, clicks and money leads people to destroy their integrity and embrace charlatanism.
Weâve all wondered why scientists or MDs âturnâ. How respected folk can find themselves deep in the anti-vax community.
Itâs a decidedly simple (but dangerous and malicious) process.
Below is a thread on how people become âred pilled.â 
Imagine youâre a YouTuber and you think you explain science well.Imagine youâve built a loyal following on mostly reliable stuff and get 50k-ish views per video.
Now imagine you dip your toe into contrarian waters: thereâs this new drug: ivermectin. /1
You read a meta-analysis which is favourable and you have on your show an enthusiastic guest with all the right qualifications.
This seems legit! Could this work? Is science missing out on something big? Have you stumbled onto the cure for COVID-19? /2
Suddenly⌠700k views! With those extra views comes a SIGNIFICANT bump in revenue. Youâre now earning fairly substantial amounts.
You go back to the fuddy, âmainstreamâ stuff, and interest in your videos tanks. Youâre back to 50k again (and minimal cash). /3
So you once again do something controversial. You start âwonderingâ about the vaccine.
Views skyrocket. People in the comments are telling you what an extraordinary truth-seeker you are. What a great mind. Someone not beholden to âBig Pharmaâ.
/4
Meanwhile, additional evidence has come to light that ivermectin is a bust. That early meta-analysis is flawed and it now seems like your enthusiasm was misplaced.
You can talk about this, but thereâs a hitch⌠/5
Subscribers & views continue to increase rapidly. But itâs clear what theyâre there for: C19 contrarianism & skepticism.
You know this from the comments. You know this from the attention you receive from other prominent skeptics & outlets.
Antivax conferences are callingâŚ/5
Suddenly, for the first time, youâre IMPORTANT. Lots of people out there care what you say (in the science world you were small-fry).
Youâre on tv. Youâre being interviewed. From obscurity, youâre now a name.
Youâre also making very good money. /6
But youâre not alone. Other folk are also making videos. To stand out, theyâre making wilder & wilder claims. So to keep up, you need to escalate.
No more soft-peddling or ambiguity. You go for it. You embrace the antivaccine message. You ignore all those who criticize you. /7
Now itâs too late to turn back.
The science community thinks youâre gone and wonât easily accept you back.
Your viewers expect escalation of your rhetoric. Turning back would bring their scorn and they would leave in droves. /8
Iâm addition to YouTube revenues, you are now being contacted by folk in the anti-vaxx community.
You are being offered hefty speaking fees. Additional incentives to host prominent antivaxxers. Advertising and sponsorship.
This could make you rich. /9
You are now trapped. Firmly in the bosom of the antivaxx community, you find yourself standing with conspiracy theorists, germ theory denialists, hardcore right-wingers⌠and you canât escape.
Thereâs nowhere to go. /10
You wonder how you got here. How a combination of YouTube algorithms, a motivated and wealthy anti-vaxx community, the allure of fame and wealth, the blacklisting by mainstream science, all led you to this point.
But here you are⌠/11
We see the above story play out over & over, with minor variations and changes.
Itâs how folk in the science and medical community get âred-pilledâ into an antivaxx box that they probably scoffed at a few years ago.
Itâs extremely dangerous. And itâs only going to continue./End
With respect, that reads like a 5 year old put it together.
We all know the formula for getting clicks - hardly anything new in it.
The question should be why so many people are looking for alternative views on current affairs, politics and science⌠Thereâs an easy enough answer to that too.
With no respect, everything youâve written on this forum for years genuinely does read like it was written by a 5 year old.
Youâd be one of the clickety click audience being talked about in that thread.
What has that to do with the teenage blog you posted above?
Tom is offended.
Lolz.
You retorted with an attempted insult, a playing of the man as they say, and Iâm the one offended. Good one.
Professional liars lying shock
Itâs noteworthy that any time I log onto Twitter now I see far right disinformation and propaganda outlets (which I donât follow) all over my timeline. Itâs almost like itâs a you know, conspiracy, or to phrase it a different way, a concerted drive by corrupt elite actors with massive power, (ie. the owner of Twitter and his backers, who are the MAGA sphere and Russia and the rest of the global far right) to drown Twitter in bullshit for his personal gain and the personal gain of his backers.
I mean none of this is secret, Steve Bannon has repeated for years what their strategy is: âFlood the zone with bullshit.â
Jesse Watters is the ultimate face youâd like to smack, repeatedly
A short list of extremist disinformation accounts that keep popping up on my Twitter timeline even though I do not follow any of them.
These Twitter equivalent of âsponsored contentâ, or websites that call themselves âtrusted sourceâ and then you get the âding ding ding warningâ if you click on them.
Zero Hedge. Pro-Russia âfinancial blogâ which is a thinly veiled instrument to spread chaos in the global economy. Every fucking time I look at Twitter, thereâs a Zero Hedge tweet near the top of my timeline.
Elon Musk. Yeah, fuck off you cretinous cunt with the worldâs most kickable face.
JK Rowling. Because Musk and his far right kleptocratic cabal are intent on flooding the internet with transphobic bullshit.
âWall Street Silverâ. @wallstreetsilv
Another armageddonist âfinancialâ account which is part of the pro-Russia drive to deliberately crash the world economy.
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv
All these sorts of âfinancial blogsâ and Twitter accounts push the same âtalking pointsâ - theyâre pro-Putin and Russia, paint âthe Fedâ as a sort of Rothschilds/Soros type world boheyman, want the US dollar to collapse, are obsessed with the gold standard and gold and silver and/or cryptocurrency, they keep retweeting with glee that the whole of France is apparently on fire and that soon the whole of the world will be (because thatâs what they want to happen), they have an irrational hatred for Trudeau, theyâre pro-China, they treat that headbanger Ron Paul as some sort of deity. Basically crack cocaine for the sort of QAnon conspiracy types who unironically believe they are intellectuals.
âSmaller Fish GAAâ - Iâm blocked from this account, Iâve muted it, it still keeps appearing on my timeline. Fuck off Colin.
Sarah Vine. Fuck off you slimey, propagandist piece of Tory shit.
Arnaud Bertrand. @RnuadBertrand
A China propagandist who, like the early days of Russia Today, pretends to be sympathetic to âsocial justiceâ. His main hobby horse is defending TikTok.
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand
David Sacks. @DavidSacks
Very close buddy of Elon Musk. Fanatically pro-Russia. Fanatically anti-government interference in anything, until he was screaming for a government bailout of Silicon Valley Bank. Another cretin who Musk wishes to push forward as a major worldwide âopinion formerâ.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ
The âacademicâ equivalent of views pulled straight out of the arse of Nigel Farage.
Eli David @DrEliDavid
Pro-Trump armageddonist, professional poster of pictures of France apparently being on fire, crytptocurrency âbroâ, post 80% through the medium of memes, any of his written posts come across as if theyâre written by a creepy groomer. I canât log into Twitter without seeing this supercunt and his punchbag face everywhere.
Jamie Bryson. Cretinous astro-turf Paisley with no mandate except a Twitter page. Twitter seems eager to make him a star.
I take your point but do you not have this set upâŚ
âFor youâ is the Twitter algorithm that puts all that shite in your timeline but you can shut it off by just going for âFollowingâ so you literally only see who you choose to follow.
Youâll see from my screenshot Iâm following Gav for his football insight & Tony for his 28-part tweets about the merits or otherwise of clause 8(a)(iii) schedule 6 part VI of the revised Windsor Framework.
Would the fact that you see these tweets and then click into them to see more of their shit, not cause the twitter algorithms to then think you are interested in this stuff and put more of the same in front of you?
I think there has been a clear change in the algorithm Twitter is using since Elon Musk took over towards amplifying extremist, disinformation and deliberately divisive content. The presence of that stuff has always been a problem on Twitter, but I donât think the previous ownership went out of their way to amplify mostly far right bullshit in the same way Musk actively does.
I use the term âdivisiveâ in the context of the sort of stuff Vladimir Putin would desire is inflicted upon western audiences, not the meaningless and Orwellian way way the term is bandied around by the likes of Labane.
Headline: Iâm a former CIA cyber-operations officer who studies bot traffic. Hereâs why itâs plausible that more than 80% of Twitterâs accounts are actually fakeâand Twitter is not alone.
Maybe we are all bots
You have reached your quota of bot interactions for this week.
Maybe sid is an early version of @ceist that went wrong but rocko doesnt know how to turn it off
Itâs important to differentiate between human users and bots on social media platforms. While there are certainly bots designed to mimic human behavior, itâs unlikely that all users are bots. Itâs also important to consider the impact of bots on the spread of disinformation and demagoguery, as they can be used to amplify certain messages or manipulate public opinion.
