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by porridgeraisin·1y ago·view on hn ↗
> When I've tried to post correcting information (such as direct quotes from the link that contradict the headline) I'll get a lot of angry responses from people saying they don't actually care that it's wrong because the headline supports something they feel is true. They've already made up their mind about what reality is like and the headline merely exists as a prompt for letting them rage about it a little longer. They don't actually care if it's true or not, because they believe some bigger picture truth justifies the lie.

> because they believe some bigger picture truth justifies the lie.

I go around bleating about this issue quite often and that's the best, most empathetic [1] way I've seen it phrased.

[1] not a typo for emphatic

1 comments
Yeah, I see this a lot on HN as well. "$BigCorp is secretly doing $NefariousThing!" "How good is the evidence for this, though?" "Why are you shilling for $BigCorp, we all know it's nefarious!"

Like, I can easily believe that many big corporations are doing all sorts of shady stuff, but the lack of precision makes it impossible to put everything into perspective. (And it's not like "just break them all up, regardless of the details" is a viable solution: you'll just end up with a bunch of slightly-smaller shady corporations.)