What It’s Like to Watch An Internet-Based Ideology Break Containment
I first realized the extent of the internet’s takeover of U.S. politics while standing in the lobby of a drab hotel convention center, listening to an elderly gentleman rattle off a list of fringe conspiracy forums he frequented.
“Prison Planet,” he told me, and “Infowars.”
“Wow,” I said. In the conference room behind us, a man distributed papers watermarked with a custom edit of Pepe, a cartoon frog that achieved infamy as an unofficial mascot of the too-online, 4chan-dwelling alt-right of the 2010s.
I wasn’t at an alt-right conference. Nor was I at a meetup of tech-savvy trolls. I was at the 2018 Flat Earth International Conference in Aurora, Colorado. The hundreds of globe denialists who’d gathered included friendly retirees, mother-daughter duos,...
