My buddy and I were watching a news show and it had a number to call in and "leave your opinion" - super common back in the 90's. Well, we called and it was a voicemail box. You guess what happened next, but we correctly guessed the admin code and could listen to all the voicemails left.
Now this is a news show with millions of nightly viewers. Pretty plain Jane, just the news-type-show, and this is before the Fox News vs. MSNBC stuff we have now, so I assume a pretty decent cross section of America watches it.
Unsurprisingly, the mailbox contained hundreds of voicemails and would be deleted daily to make room. But what was interesting listening to these "comments from just regular-Joe Americas" was that the vast majority were insane ramblings from clearly mentally ill people. They would call multiple times, talk about aliens or how someone was Jesus Christ. We're talking manic episodes, schizophrenia, drug-induced psychosis, whatever. And these messages were left every day, every week, for years and years.
And not to say there weren't regular folks - there were. Someone who thinks "we should get involved in another war" and "family is important". You know, normal things. But they were maybe 10-15%? Maybe. I assume most regular folks just watched the news and thought "why would I call a number? I got shit to do and it's not like they actually care."
It wasn't until a couple decades later that I realize they called because someone listened. It was an outlet. And for those with serious mental illness, likely their only outlet.
It was then I started to draw comparison to the internet. How much of what we read online is just the rambling of the same people who left 'detached from reality' messages on that voicemail service decades ago?
I'm starting to think it's a pretty good percent. And I don't mean "insane" in the way this article describes it, but "insane" in the sense of serious mental illness.
So while we like to talk about Russian disinformation and bots, my current theory is that the biggest "threat" on the internet is people believing what they read represents the actual views of average citizens. It's not.
Your average American doesn't even know what Reddit or HN is. And if they go online they probably read and upvote something and leave. The bulk of what we read online are the insane ramblings of 1% of the population who likely have diagnosable mental illness of some sort.
That's my hypothesis anyways. And hey, maybe I'm one of those mentally ill folks... right?