[sinecure]

Content, info, arguments, etc. are all propagated online based on their deliciousness. Is it dramatic? Easy to digest? Shocking? Emotionally powerful? Bright and alluring? Sexy or disgusting? These are the elements that push information to the top. Reality, truth and logic can't compete.

Advertisers figured this out in the middle of the 20th century. Prior to Edward Bernays' (Sigmund Freud's relative) revolution of advertising, products were marketed based on their functional qualities: how effective they were, how efficient, etc. Bernays realized from war propaganda and Freud's ideas of the unconscious, that selling with emotional coercion and sex was far more effective. In fact, you could make people buy things they didn't really want or need, by making them unhappy without them. He was able to convince women to smoke cigarettes by having trendy, independent women smoke openly at a parade, followed by a branding campaign calling them "torches of freedom". This concept of emotional manipulation trumping factual data is how our entire society now operates.

If we want a skeptical and thoughtful populace, our entire education system must be restructured and information dieting will have to become an innate part of the online experience.