← Outrage Overload: Rethinking politics, division, and media
Outrage Overload: Rethinking politics, division, and media
87. The Human Need to Make the World Make Sense
00:21:46
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- [00:06]
David Helfand
This podcast is part of the Democracy group.
- [00:15]
Sam
Welcome to Outrage Overload, a science podcast about outrage and lowering the temperature. This is episode 87.
- [00:27]
Sydney Pines
I got really involved and so then it I really knew larger forces. I'm like some something big happened. I think everybody in the world knows that corruption is everywhere. I didn't realize just how big it was and how long it's been going on for. And that's what made me start documenting. And never in a million years did I think it would get published. It was intended for my family, but that's what made me and then one thing literally leads you to another.
- [01:02]
Sam
On this show we spend a lot of time talking with researchers and academics, but today we're doing something a little different. We're going to show examples of how these high level concepts actually manifest in the real world. Today's guest is Sydney Pines. Sydney is an author who reached out to me because she shares a lot of the same values we talk about here. She's tired of the division. She values civil discourse and she believes in in the importance of being open to different views. In many ways, she represents exactly the kind of bridge building spirit we advocate for. However, as you'll hear in our conversation, Sydney's journey also provides a fascinating and at times startling look at how easily we can slip into alternative realities. As we talk, I'll be interjecting to point out specific moments where various human tendencies we talk about on the show show up in real life. We'll look at how we can find ourselves in unique kinds of information silos and how the very act of doing your own research can sometimes lead us further away from shared facts if we don't have the right toolkit. I want to be clear, my goal isn't to disrespect Sydney. In fact, I'm grateful for her honesty and her willingness to sit down with someone who doesn't share her worldview. But by looking closely at this conversation, I think we can better understand the architecture of the outrage industry and how it maps onto the way we process truth in our current media environment. One of the most common things I hear from people who have moved toward alternative media is a profound sense of dissatisfaction with the mainstream. They feel the news has become performative, sensational, or simply focused on the wrong things. Sydney describes such a moment that acted as a catalyst for her the news
- [02:36]
Sydney Pines
is only a half hour long. I kid you not. They spent because I timed it because I was so again, flabbergasted. They spent 12 minutes talking about all three of them at the desk, talking about how horrible it was that when he exited the plane, he didn't hold Melania's hand. And I, I felt like I was in a Saturday Night Live skit. And I'm like, this doesn't even make sense. They are literally criticizing the possible President of the United States for not holding someone's hand. So I started digging. I came, came across a lot of stuff. Yes, a lot of it is, oh, oh my Lord, I don't. There's no way this could be true. But then, years later, it did show up to be true.
- [03:22]
Sam
The reaction to that news segment isn't just a critique of shallow journalism. It's a symptom of a failed need for comprehension. Before we dive into the psychology, it's vital to acknowledge that this dissatisfaction often comes from a legitimate place. The mainstream news ecosystem is far from perfect. It is often driven by the need for clicks and spectacle, which can lead to sensationalism, horse race coverage, and a failure to provide genuine context. When the official information source prioritizes performance over substance, it creates a void of trust and comprehension, making the coherent, unified explanations offered by fringe media incredibly compelling. According to communications scholar Danagal G. Young, we are often drawn to information, even misinformation, because it meets three basic human the three Cs comprehension, control, and community.
- [04:13]
Sydney Pines
I was thinking about and looking at the literature on some of the reasons why people believe false information. You know, there, there are reasons that people describe as existential motives, epistemological motives, social motives, and at the end of the day, what they're referring to are motives related to our need to control our world and have agency in it, our need to feel like we comprehend our world or understand it, and our need to have community. And I thought, and I think it's helpful, right? What do we want? We want comprehension, we want control, and we want community.
- [04:56]
Sam
Comprehension is our innate drive to make the world make sense. We are pattern seeking animals. When the official narrative feels trivial or fails to address the gravity of how we feel about the world, it creates a cognitive vacuum. For Sydney, the mainstream media wasn't just biased, it was failing to explain the why behind global events. When the news cycle feels nonsensical, grand narratives like the Deep State or the cabal become incredibly attractive. They offer a unified theory of everything. Instead of a chaotic world where random things happen, these theories suggest a world where everything is intentional and connected. They satisfy the need for comprehension by replacing complex, messy realities with a singular, clear explanation. On the second C, control. Notice how Sydney emphasizes that she verifies it for herself, and maintains a massive document of her findings in the form of her book. This is a transition from being a passive, frustrated consumer of news to being an active, empowered participant. By digging and connecting the dots, an individual reclaims a sense of agency in a world that feels increasingly out of our hands. The act of researching provides a psychological shield. It transforms the feeling of being a victim of mainstream brainwashing into the feeling of being an investigator who is one step ahead of the crowd. That sense of control is a powerful incentive to stay within an alternative reality, even when the evidence starts to fray. That's when the third C comes in. Community. While the needs for comprehension and control drive us to look for new information, it's community that often anchors us there. For Sydney, the proof that her worldview is correct doesn't just come from her vast document. It comes from the feeling that she is part of a massive global movement of people who see exactly what she sees. This brings us to a key difference between investigative research and the search for social proof. Here's astrophysicist David Helfand.
- [06:58]
David Helfand
Yeah, well, the phrase that's most problematic these days is do your research. And what that means to a scientist, of course, is to follow a procedure where evidence is vetted at every step of the way against physical reality and sources are checked and double checked deep into their origins of the. Of the statement that you have. Whereas what it means to most people is go on the web to all these websites that all say the same thing and reinforce your confirmation bias that your view is the view of the world. That's correct, because here's all these other people that believe it as well. So it's a really problematic situation and enabled by the free access of everyone to the web. And that's a consequence of the evolution of our brains, which has been going on for 300,000 years, 299,980 of which did not have the Internet. And so our brains are wired to look for patterns, to both find food and avoid getting being and ending up being food. And so we look for patterns and we find patterns. We're really good at finding patterns. It's. There's even a word for apophenia, where you find correlations between things that really have no relationship to each other at all. There's a wonderful website, Tyler Vegan's website. I don't know if you know this, that he has hundreds and hundreds of extremely high correlations, like the number of associate degrees granted in music in the United States and the solar Power generation of electricity in Costa rica.
- [08:38]
Sam
Right.
- [08:38]
David Helfand
They're 99% correlated over a 10 or 12 year period. And of course they have nothing to do with each other because if you look at enough information, you can find things that correlate. But our brains are designed to do that. They really are wired to find correlations. And so people find these correlations and then they're off and running.
- [08:56]
Sam
True research in a scientific or journalistic sense is a systemic attempt to prove yourself wrong and you look for the evidence that breaks your theory. However, in many alternative information ecosystems, the goal of the search process often shifts to gathering confirmation from like minded peers, driven by the shared need to validate a collective perspective. Note how Sydney describes her verification process for her truth isn't found in a peer reviewed study, but in the shared stories of a community that stretches across the world.
- [09:26]
Sydney Pines
So we're in the Caribbean and we meet this other couple from Canada and he was a financial adviser, so his job is to go to several other countries and he follows, you know, the dinar and everyone else's money. And he went to Russia and he said to me, without me prompting him, he said, did you know in Russia they're learning about your stolen 2020 election in their schools? He goes, I seen it with my own eyes, I seen the books, so. And that was something I stumbled upon, so. And then the same trip, I had read that this is a global thing going on and the people in Germany were fed up and they were actually running tankers down the street, people demanding a better democracy. The same trip, we ran into a couple from Germany. And on this couple, I actually asked them, I said, is it true? And I, I told them what I heard. They said, oh, it's 100% true. He says, we see it. So I went back home and I was able to proudly say to my son, that's how I know who I'm following is not the fake news.
- [10:34]
Sam
To Sydney, these anecdotes are powerful data points. If a financial advisor in the Caribbean and a couple in Germany are both saying the same thing, it feels like a global majority is waking up. It feels like the truth is finally coming out. This feeling of a global consensus is incredibly compelling. However, the dynamics of modern digital platforms can often complicate how we perceive that global reach. In the digital age, having a global conversation doesn't necessarily mean you've stepped outside of an echo chamber. As platforms like Telegram allow millions of people from every corner of the earth to enter the same narrow ideological room. This powerful sense of agreement is Often analyzed by psychologists as the false consensus effect. When our brain processes the sheer scale and internal cohesion of a large online group, it naturally perceives this as a representative sample of the general public. This resulting sense of broad consensus is powerful because it validates the group's perspective and can lead members to perceive dissenting views as fringe or manipulated, even when those views are actually widespread. For Sydney, these interactions provide social proof. That proof feels more real and more human than any mainstream news report. She isn't just looking for facts, she's looking for the safety of a tribe that agrees with her. And as you know, if you've been following this show, once you find that tribe, leaving it or even questioning it becomes a very high stakes proposition. Next, we're going to look at the architecture of the space itself. Why does Telegram specifically feel so much more real to Sydney than a traditional news source?
- [12:13]
Sydney Pines
The only real way to see the truth of what's going on is people need to get on Telegram. So most of the people and I feel the most reliable news I get is on the app of Telegram and then on Telegram, then on that I follow like 62 people. And they do show both sides.
- [12:35]
Sam
When Sydney tells us we need to get on Telegram to see the truth, she is pointing to the desire for a non traditional source of information, an environment that feels free of the gatekeepers she has come to distrust. Unlike mainstream social media, where an algorithm might occasionally slide a dissenting view or a fact check into your feed, Telegram is built on channels that offer a different dynamic. Telegram channels are designed for broadcast. A channel lets admins push messages to large audiences directly, which makes it easy for a single source to dominate the frame of discussion. Groups add interaction, but they often deepen bubble effects rather than break them. Research on Telegram describes dense, internally cohesive communities and information silos where members repeatedly share the same links, claims and interpretation inside the same cluster. Because users are usually there by choice, the group often becomes a place for confirmation, reinforcement and social validation. And instead of an open debate, this architecture perfectly facilitates what we call an epistemic bubble. The private and hidden nature of Telegram can also intensify the effect by making the chats harder to observe, harder to challenge, and easier to self seal. Misinformation can circulate with fewer outside corrections and less reputational cost. Outsiders cannot easily enter or observe what is happening that makes the correction slower and belief more self confirming. But there's a second layer here that's even more critical. Sydney is drawing a direct link between uncensored and truth because Telegram doesn't moderate content the way mainstream platforms do. She interprets the lack of moderation as evidence of its honesty. In her view, if the deep state isn't stopping the information, it must be the information they don't want you to see. This dynamic creates a powerful sense of insider knowledge. The absence of traditional quality control becomes paradoxically the source of the platform's credibility. In her eyes, it feels like drops of truth that the hand holding media is trying to suppress. As a science communicator, this presents a significant challenge. The desire for unfiltered information, free from what Sydney views as mainstream bias, can unintentionally lead to information that is also unverified. By finding her information on Telegram, Sydney has successfully found a space that fulfills her need for an alternative perspective. But that freedom from filtration comes with a high risk of being insulated from external correction. And next we'll take a look at what happens when that vault is finally tapped with even a little bit of outside reality. We often imagine that people who develop strongly held beliefs are intentionally close minded, that they are simply refusing to look at the other side. But as we've heard through this conversation, Sydney considers herself a seeker of truth. She prides herself on being open. In this segment, we'll cover one of the most challenging aspects of modern knowledge. Resistance. This is what happens when our deep human desire to maintain a coherent, functioning worldview becomes so strong that we inadvertently become less receptive to information that challenges it.
- [15:42]
Sydney Pines
You know, it depends on who you follow too. If you have the mindset where I'm only going to follow this theory and you only follow people talking, talking about that theory, that's all you're going to see. If you have the mindset where I want to look at everything and you follow people from everything, then you're going to see from all views. And that's what I do. I follow from all views.
- [16:05]
Sam
So would you say you even have like pretty far right or pretty far left sources in that mix?
- [16:13]
Sydney Pines
I'm honest with you, I don't think there are far left on that app. I really don't. But I. There are some that will look at the left side. I would not say they're far left. Yeah. And it's not because I choose not to listen to them. They're just not on it.
- [16:29]
Sam
So when you say, you know, you're, you're going with a majority opinion, that's a majority within the circle that you follow, not necessarily a majority of sort of all people.
- [16:42]
Sydney Pines
Yeah, but again, my circle does consist of all, you know, of all sides. And so no, then after that, after I see something on that, then I also. That will lead me to go to other places or, you know, other search engines.
- [17:01]
Sam
There is a profound paradox in what Sydney is saying. She believes she is looking at all views, yet in the same breath, she admits that the other side isn't even present on her primary platform. It's not just that Sydney is missing information. It's that her cognitive map has been redrawn because she has retreated into that private digital sphere. The all views she sees are actually just a spectrum of opinions within her trusted community. To her, it feels like a complete world. When I offer light pushback, suggesting that her majority is just a majority of her circle, she doesn't get angry. Instead, she redefines her circle to include all sides to protect her identity as an objective researcher. If she admits her circle is limited, her sense of control and comprehension, those first two Cs would start to crumble. As we bring all this together, we can see that Sydney isn't an outlier. She is a person responding to very human needs. She felt abandoned by a sensationalist mainstream media. She found a grand narrative that made the world make sense. She reclaimed a sense of agency by doing her own research. And she found a global community that made her feel safe.
- [18:08]
Sydney Pines
The people that are a little challenging to me to have a conversation with are the ones who do feel we're living in a quote unquote normal world. That everything really is real. The 2020 election was not stolen. Covid was real. We should have wore a mask. We should have stayed six feet apart. What are you talking about? Those people? Yeah, those. I'm not gonna lie, those people are a little rough to have a conversation with because those are the ones when I refer to. I wish people would wake up.
- [18:50]
Sam
The strongly held view she has developed isn't built on a lack of intelligence. It's built on the architecture of our modern information landscape and the ancient machinery of the human brain. Understanding this doesn't mean we have to agree with the facts Sydney has collected. But it does mean we have to change how we talk to one another. If we want to bridge these divides, we have to recognize that we aren't just fighting over data points. We are navigating the deep seated human needs for belonging and certainty. I want to point out here that the psychological mechanisms we've discussed apply similarly across ideologies, even if the specific claims are not always equivalent in scale. Left leaning analogues exist, but they usually center on systemic corruption, institutional capture, or hidden elite power rather than denial of basic facts. I want to thank Sydney Pines again for her bravery in coming on the show and being so transparent about her world. My hope is that by seeing these phenomena in action, we can all become a little more literate about the invisible forces shaping our own realities. Let's give the last word to Sydney now.
- [19:56]
Sydney Pines
I do believe David. I really do. There's almost several probably different psyops going on. Who knows what I'm following? Could be a psyop as well. All I know is there's something else going on. They're behind the scenes and I still feel that way. And I feel like no matter what side you're on, we can all agree that the division is huge. And it was never like this. This there is such a division in our world. It's so sad. It really is. And whether you're far left, a little bit left, far right, a little bit right, I think everyone can agree with that.
- [20:36]
Sam
Listeners can find the full unedited interview with Sydney pines on our YouTube channel. For complete context, That is it for this episode of the Outrage Overload podcast. For links to everything we talked about on this episode, go to outrage overload.net outrage overload is a Connors Institute podcast. The Connors Institute for Non Partisan Research and Civic Engagement at Shippensburg University works to disseminate high quality, nonpartisan information to the American public around issues of societal well being, democracy promotion, and news literacy. If you found this episode valuable, please share it or leave a review. It really helps. Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time. Sam.