#goddamn is that circuitous and long winded but i cant be dicked to edit this

[aspoopalypse]

theres a real problem imo in how we present a lot of academic subjects through pop science/sharticles/youtube essays/etc, and how that warps peoples judgements with regards to their own understanding of subjects, as well as a sort of latent anti intellectualism in how it reduces the complexity of the subjects at hand. its not unlike how every true crime nerd acts as some armchair psychologist armed with buzzwords and snappy synopses using layman definitions of terms with real significance and weight with full confidence they know everything there is to know. its like an insipid pseudoscience built off the impressions of actual science in that its presenting people with real facts in such a simplistic and dead end fashion that is presents them as bulletproof, and by extension the understanding the viewer is left with is equally invulnerable, creating a state where you know true facts in an entirely false fashion. then from this people start to think that not only is their knowledge of the matter sound but so is the science, yet their view of it is so simplified and sanitized for consumption that they practically know less than they did before by virtue of being so wrong in what they know. like you could make a 30 second infographic and reduce the average internet user’s knowledge of a given subject by a non insignificant factor. this kind of content feels like giving just enough knowledge to hang oneself with, and its all sort of by virtue of the nature of the content. like in trying to make a mass market approachable piece of media you have to oversimplify and pave over the actual information and impart an incomplete picture, one that ideally would be taken with a handful of salt - which hinges upon the viewer knowing how much is or at least may be being omitted, running counter to the intended audience of the video, and never presenting the information given as incomplete or flawed by the demands imposed to appeal to said audience, leaving them with an image painted as complete and issued from a position of relative authority on the subject and without the knowledge to question nor expand upon the information given. this then of course has insufferable knock on effects of people acting as authorities on things they know next to nothing about and spreading through word of mouth and similar the same half truths, granting them an intellectual inertia what must be overcome to have any fruitful discussion on the topic. in a similar vein this sort of dead end knowledge is anecdotally inclined, lending itself to being used to make a point in the abstract rather than the specific context within its meant to exist, often overstating what was a facsimile or thought experiment regarding the original topic and understating the scientific context from which it is meant to exist, and ascribing some sort of academic weight to what amounts to them talking out of their ass. it also just kinda suggests that all science can be boiled down to entirely non academic contexts in a way that can make sense on a level anyone can pick up which is patently false.