SPEAK UP: Are you kind of a conspiracy theorist?

We ask, after the Kate Middleton hunt and the TikTok ban, how online are you?

With the Kate Middleton affair sparking new conspiracy theories before our eyes and the House of Representatives bringing the force of industrial policy against TikTok, we’re thinking about the way social media shapes how we live and think. Especially as things threaten to get even weirder in the coming years as more and more of the stories we consume may be made by machines.

In particular, we’re wondering if — as writer Charlie Warzel suggested here yesterday — we really are all just conspiracy theorists now, making sense of what we see online by tying together strands of information pulled from an infinite web of disparate, disconnected stories. 

How do you choose what stories are important to you? How do you tell truth from fiction? How do you make meaning?

Since we’re all part of an online community that’s come together through questioning and discussion, we’re very curious what you think, and we hope to hear your voice.

To get you thinking, we’ve collected some thoughts from some of the smartest folks we know. As always, this is a safe and generative space for our subscribers, and we expect you all, as always, to treat each other with openness, kindness, and curiosity.