[uniqueid]

The internet is full of vaguely conspiratorial takes involving 'elites' and I believe it has more to do with internet culture than the facts behind the 2008 financial crisis alone.

A theory recently occurred to me that I think is part of the explanation:

The rise of blogs and sites like Youtube gave independent journalists reach. Independents vastly outnumber people working in mainstream media. Yet mainstream media has more resources, more access to experts and higher production values.

So how can some rando with a webcam convince the public to watch them instead of watching 60 Minutes or reading the NYT? They can do it with the 'elites' narrative: 'Read my blog because the MSM is a tool of the elites and they only tell lies!'

And soon enough the only mainstream journalists the internet trusts are the ones who demagogue like Glen Greenwald or Tucker Carlson.

But as to the actual comment to which I am replying: it seems like the 'retail investors' who lost money on this WSB thing are suggestible marks. They enriched the kind of 'elite' they hate so much because they believed what they read on Reddit.

So it's probably good, in future, if someone treats them as children and protects them from themselves.

[ChicagoBoy11]

Tyler Cowen has a book that addresses this, but I believe it is even less complicated than you make it sound: Ultimately, to justify the incredible production value, major outlets need to appeal to a wide audience to make the economics work, whereas random dude on YouTube needs to appeal to a LOYAL audience. In an age when switching costs to consumers is something trivial, big behemoths will only survive if they can continue to modestly appeal to a large enough base, and tiny players can only exist if they can find a niche to firmly segment themselves in. What you end up with is small producers with incredibly fringe productions and big, established, heavy players who take on less and less risk so they can appeal to a very broad base.

[uniqueid]

I agree with all of that, but I think it augments my point. It's still the case that indies have more incentive to bash mainstream media than to praise it. An Alex Jones can't easily compete with a major news outlet to report, say, the Burmese coup, but he can shout 'The MSM is lying to you! Myanmar is a Globalist plot!' and amass a viewership of millions. Once you have enough indies riffing off one another, reinforcing the narrative, you wind up where we are today.