I found this an important observation that helps understand this nihilist behavior:
“… Michael Caulfield, an information researcher at the University of Washington, has
argued, “
The primary use of ‘misinformation’ is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” This distinction is important, in part because it assigns agency to those who consume and share obviously fake information. …
What we’re witnessing online during and in the aftermath of these hurricanes is a group of people desperate to protect the dark, fictitious world they’ve built.
Rather than deal with the realities of a warming planet hurling once-in-a-generation storms at them every few weeks, they’d rather malign and threaten meteorologists, who, in their minds, are “nothing but a trained subversive liar programmed to spew stupid shit to support the global warming bullshit,” as
one X user put it. It is a strategy designed to silence voices of reason, because those voices threaten to expose the cracks in their current worldview. But their efforts are doomed, futile.
As one dispirited meteorologist
wrote on X this week, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes.” She followed with: “I can’t believe I just had to type that.” …”
