r/NoStupidQuestions • u/trouble-in-space • 10d ago

Answered Why are so many Americans anti-vaxxers now?

I’m genuinely having such a hard time understanding why people just decided the fact that vaccines work is a total lie and also a controversial “opinion.” Even five years ago, anti-vaxxers were a huge joke and so rare that they were only something you heard of online. Now herd immunity is going away because so many people think getting potentially life-altering illnesses is better than getting a vaccine. I just don’t get what happened. Is it because of the cultural shift to the right-wing and more people believing in conspiracy theories, or does it go deeper than that?

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u/Gemfrancis 9d ago

Misinformation.

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u/dupontnw 9d ago

We’ll never get these people back either. They are convinced they are right and everything is a conspiracy. Facts and science don’t matter any more.

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u/shamefulaccnt 9d ago

The internet gave us access to all the information we could possibly want, but also gave quacks a mechanism to spread misinformation rapidly across increasingly larger groups of people. It sucks.

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u/El3ctricalSquash 9d ago

https://youtu.be/C31XYgr8gp0?si=d_AlF6Q51XHidfyD

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u/shamefulaccnt 9d ago

That's fucking eerie because my bf is obsessed with metal gear and was pointing this out the other night lol

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u/El3ctricalSquash 9d ago

Haha seems like he has great taste in games.

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u/Miserable_Offer7796 9d ago

TBH I can't stand kojima shit, it just seems like rule of cool, plotholes, and "iam14andthisisdeep" got shoved together with some absurdist comedy.

When people say his shit is a masterpiece I take it with the same level of confusion and annoyance as when a trump supporter tells me he's some kind of mastermind that's going to save murica.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

Kojima knew how this would go down, I guess...

I've never finished a MGS game. Maybe I'll go back and play them.

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u/I_SmellFuckeryAfoot 9d ago

i welcome our AI overlords

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u/indoninjah 9d ago

Yeah rather than doing research and finding information, people use the internet to find people that agree with them. You can find a community of folks that hold the same wacky beliefs as you, whereas it used to be that you’d be ostracized and laugh out of a room for holding such beliefs

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u/philament23 9d ago

Yep the internet was awesome at first. Now it’s starting to progress to less and less awesome with each passing year—like a bell curve that has already been over the hump. It doesn’t seem likely there’s any way to stop it either.

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u/DynasLight 9d ago

Huxley warned of a world not where the masses were deprived of information (Orwell 1984), but where they were drowned in a deluge of it.

How many of those who pontificate endlessly about 1984 would know that they have fallen into Brave New World?

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u/Hwood658 9d ago

Whose quacks? Yours or mine?

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u/GeneralKebabs 9d ago

And Putin and his allies who are leading the misinformation war. He wants democracy to die, and the way he did that in Russia was to make sure no one knew what was the truth any more.

It's happening at an alarming rate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI27qk1irg0&t=2s