Don’t Confuse Volume with Truth

The human species isn’t on a steady decline into stupidity—it just feels that way. Why? because now everyone has a microphone. A few decades ago, the loudest voices in the room were filtered by effort, editors, publishers, broadcasters, academics, or sometimes just the looming threat of social ostracization. If you wanted to shout your theories about how birds are government drones or how Elvis is alive and living in your basement, you’d need to put in some work: submit your nonsense to a newspaper, write a manifesto, shout at strangers in the park, or get your own cable access show. That took effort, money, and a certain level of charisma (or at least persistence). But now? Now, anyone can boot up a Twitter account, slap some hashtags on a poorly spelled opinion, and go viral before lunchtime.

The internet hasn’t made people dumber, but it has made the stupidity visible. The dark side of having a “great equalizer,” a democratization of the soapbox, is that everyone’s thoughts, no matter how brilliant or ridiculous, have a shot at becoming part of the cultural conversation. This might sound like progress, and in some ways it is, but it also means that the person shouting at pigeons in the alley now has the same broadcasting power as a Nobel laureate. Actually, scratch that—the pigeon guy is probably getting more traction because his opinions are unhinged in the most entertaining way possible. A good conspiracy about government-controlled pigeons will outpace a nuanced explanation of supply chain economics every single time.

The real problem is that people confuse volume with truth. Just because someone has 60,000 followers doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about. It just means they’re good at gaming the system—posting in the right format, at the right time, with the right bait for whatever tribe or algorithm they’re courting. This isn’t a new problem, by the way. Even before the internet, society rewarded confidence over competence. A smooth-talking charlatan has always been more persuasive than a stammering genius. The difference is that now the charlatans have unlimited reach, and the barriers between them and the rest of us have disintegrated. They’re in your feed, in your DMs, and on your recommended YouTube list. Their reach is infinite; their leverage is infinite; their qualifications are non-existent.

The internet amplifies the illusion of expertise. If someone tweets something with enough conviction— especially if it confirms what you already believe—you’re more likely to take it at face value. People share things that make them feel smart, righteous, or part of a team. Nobody fact-checks a meme that aligns with their worldview. And why would they? It’s easier to hit retweet than to dive into a Wikipedia rabbit hole. The consequence is an endless feedback loop of bad ideas that feel credible simply because they’re repeated often enough. The internet doesn’t make lies true—it just makes them louder. And humans, being the pattern-seeking, narrative-loving creatures that we are, tend to equate “louder” with “more real.”

This is the entire phenomenon of Influence. Someone racks up hundreds of thousands of followers by posting makeup tutorials, workout routines, or prank videos, and suddenly their audience starts treating them like they’re qualified to offer advice on, well, fucking everything. Diet trends? Relationship tips? Financial planning? Sure, why not? They’ve got a big platform, so they must know what they’re talking about, right? Wrong. Expertise doesn’t scale with follower count, but that’s not how it feels in the moment when you’re staring at someone’s highly curated life through the glow of your phone screen.

And then there are the pseudo-intellectuals, the self-proclaimed thought leaders who talk in circles and convince people they’re deep. You know the type: the kind of person who’ll post something like, “The moon doesn’t shine—it reflects. What if that’s what we’re all doing? Reflecting someone else’s light instead of shining our own?” Cue a thousand heart emojis and replies like, “Wow, so true, I never thought of it that way,” as though they’ve stumbled onto the meaning of life instead of regurgitating a fortune cookie with a sprinkling of cosmic woo-woo. They’ll call themselves “philosophers,” but their philosophy is little more than bumper sticker wisdom dressed up in a turtleneck and glasses. And yet they thrive because they know how to play the game—how to sound smart without saying anything of substance, how to weaponize ambiguity so their followers can project their own meanings onto the void.

The issue isn’t just the people with the microphones—it’s us, the audience. We’re the ones clicking, liking, sharing, and giving these voices power. Why? Because we’re lazy shits. We want quick answers, bite-sized wisdom, and simple narratives. Nuance is exhausting. If someone tells you, “The economy is collapsing because of X,” it’s a lot easier to nod along than to admit, “I have no idea how the economy works, and I probably never will.” Complexity makes us feel stupid, so we gravitate toward anyone who can package the chaos of the world into something digestible, even if that something is completely wrong. And the louder they are, the more we trust them, because volume drowns out doubt. It’s the digital equivalent of someone yelling “TRUST ME BRO” while slamming their fist on a table.

But just because someone is louder, more confident, or more popular doesn’t mean they’re right. In fact, 8 times out of 10, it means the opposite. The folks who actually know what they’re talking about are usually the ones who hesitate, who couch their statements with caveats like, “It’s complicated” or “There’s no clear answer.” That kind of intellectual honesty doesn’t play well on social media, where certainty reigns supreme and ambiguity gets left in the dust. Nobody’s going to share a tweet that says, “Well, it depends on a variety of factors, and we’ll need more data to draw any definitive conclusions etc etc etc.” It’s boring. It’s slow. It doesn’t fit in 280 characters.

So, instead, the internet becomes a breeding ground for oversimplification. Complex issues—climate change, global pandemics, geopolitical tensions—get boiled down into bite-sized takes that spread like wildfire because they’re easy to understand and emotionally charged. And who benefits from this? The loudest voices, not the smartest ones. The people who scream the simplest answers the fastest are the ones who gain followers, not the people who sit down and try to explain why the answers aren’t simple at all.

This is where things get dangerous. When we equate popularity with credibility, we stop asking the right questions. We stop looking for evidence and start looking for confirmation. And when someone speaks with enough authority—whether they’re an influencer hawking keto diets or a politician spinning half-truths—we’re more likely to believe them, especially if they’re saying what we want to hear. That’s how misinformation spreads. Not because people are inherently stupid, but because we’re wired to trust the confident voice in the room. The internet just made the room infinite.

That's not to say that the internet is all bad. You can pretty much insert the following as a caveat to any critique: Yes, the same technology that amplifies nonsense also gives a platform to voices that were historically silenced. Marginalized communities can organize, share their stories, and push for change in ways that were impossible before. Experts who might’ve been ignored by traditional media can now reach audiences directly. And so on. 

The problem is that the signal-to-noise ratio has been completely fucked out of balance. For every well-researched article or thoughtful commentary, there are a hundred hot takes, conspiracy theories, and straight-up lies drowning it out. It’s not that humanity is dumber than it was a century ago—it’s just that the town fool used to stay in the town square. Now the town square is the internet, and the town fool has Wi-Fi, a ring light, and a Patreon account.

So where does this leave us? Do we give up, resign ourselves to the chaos, and let the loudest voices win? Maybe. Or maybe we start getting smarter about how we consume information. Maybe we stop conflating follower counts with expertise. Maybe we learn to value quiet, thoughtful voices over loud, confident ones. Maybe we accept that the world is messy, complicated, and often incomprehensible, and that anyone offering simple answers to big questions is probably selling deer bones.

The internet has given everyone a microphone, and that’s not inherently a bad thing. But it also means we have to be more discerning about who we choose to listen to. Popularity isn’t the same as wisdom. Volume isn’t the same as truth. And just because someone has a platform doesn’t mean they deserve your attention. The world is noisy enough as it is—don’t let the static drown out the signal.