Every time you repeat the falsehood, even to refute it, you build its strength because the mind really only does sort of a word count of concepts that it's seen. So if you say Democrats say Republicans are the most violent but this proves it's not true. Your brain adds another ticker to the concep
(culture)Every time you repeat the falsehood, even to refute it, you build its strength because the mind really only does sort of a word count of concepts that it's seen.
So if you say "Democrats say Republicans are the most violent but this proves it's not true" Your brain adds another ticker to the concept.
So instead of doing a headline that says
"Democrats say Republicans are more violent but this proves it's not true".
Just do a headline that says
"Democrats are more violent and here's the proof".
You'll notice fake right wing media like Fox News uses this trick to repeat false allegations against normal people, conservatives, right wingers, or whatever you want to call them all the time. Even when they're refuting a story they repeat the allegation.
Every single time you repeat the allegation it actually strengthens the allegation no matter what the full text of the article says.
and it's not even because people don't read the text which they often don't. It's because the brain doesn't hold that much complexity. The brain makes long-term choices based on average exposures to concepts and it doesn't always remember the context of the concept exposure.
