Experience has taught me to never ignore that intuition or gut feeling even if it doesn't make sense. This gauntlet of gaslighting regarding covid also drove home I have no obligation to explain myself either. Trying to explain an intuition can sometimes just give the other person hooks to talk me into doing the wrong thing. Don't ever argue with crazy even if it makes me look like the crazy one.

I would not be surprised if it comes out later that they were using LLMs for the covid propaganda. That would explain how so many went all invasion of the body snatchers during the whole thing. Now I'm wanting to start putting Phillip K. Dick novels in the sociology section at the library.

Agreed the internet looks to be going into a slow death spiral. Perhaps an idea for short fiction could be about the last online merchant to stay in business selling 'what would the Amish do?' shirts and stickers.