Library of unread books? - There's a name for that.

[UTUSN]

5. You said it. Even before that, if I mentioned "the internet" I would run into people who would

react automatically dismissively, saying that "the internet" was totally full of brainwashing crap, and I would have to be defensive about how I am a critical thinker, not believing anything and everything. Same as how wingnuts who themselves are brainwashed by Faux and the MAGA cult claim that everybody who disagrees is brainwashed the other way and are hades-bent on banning books, passing laws dictating school curricula, and dare I say as how very much here at DU there is a strain of thought that our minds can be polluted if we read or view some things.

That said, your post is breathtakingly insightful and accurate. Along with my defense about being a critical thinker, able to tell the difference of things in the internet, I, only in recent months, caught on to some of the YouTubes I had sampled heavily (some exposes of Hollywood double lives) that they were sensationalized and clickbaited, "pathetically obvious" as you say. So those are also easy to drop, including some podcasts that are ostensibly on "our side". And most of my other stuff (and YouTube has replaced *EVERYTHING* for me, almost all network and cable fare). And, I still fall into some AI stuff here and there, but, besides priding myself about being to tell the difference, I usually eventually catch on, but more than that, I'm generally skeptical/critical/unbelieving, about to the point of nihilism.