alt Hacker NewsI wrote an essay for a private journal last year about how the X-Files mainstreamed anti-scientific and anti-government conspiracy thinking and thereby led to the downfall of American democracy in the 21st century. It valorized the fringe, presaged "do your own research" and consistently told us that the skeptic is always wrong, the believer is always vindicated.
It wasn't a bubble of the 90's, it was a prescient blueprint for the 2020s.
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LOL, we must've been typing in parallel: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47980081
The X-Files didn't presage it, the X-Files were inspired by it. Conspiratorial "do your own research" style thinking long predated the X-Files (both in existence and in popularity).
If anything, the 90s were the one era where that thinking had receded more than at any other time. Then 9/11 brought it roaring back.
I think it’s simpler than that, the internet makes it easier for conspiracy people to reinforce each others beliefs in a space where no one is going to challenge their fallacious reasoning.
I've heard this idea before but I think it's primarily hindsight. At the time The X Files was on, there were even more popular shows about strong institutions, like Law & Order or The West Wing. So if popular TV was influential, why didn't society evolve toward those portrayals? I think we can look back today and say "that looked like this," but it doesn't mean that caused this.
It took something far more powerful than a TV show that was mildly popular for a few years to create what we live today. It took the great flatness of the Internet. As Terry Pratchett predicted to Bill Gates back then.