Those of us who overindulge in our internet consumption occasionally run the risk of succumbing to the misapprehension that the phenomena that captivate online audiences are just as relevant in the world beyond screens. That’s not exactly the news, but it’s not something which we appear to be capable of correcting. The temptation to generalize our own experiences and project them onto everything and everyone around us may be psychologically irresistible.
Just take the last several weeks of online discourse, on social media and in legacy press venues alike. The sufficiently plugged-in have been bombarded with the claim that the Trump administration’s reluctant admission that there is no such thing as the “Epstein list” would shatter the MAGA coalition. In fairness to the Trump critics who retailed this narrative, MAGA influencers did their best to promote that very notion, both to inflate their own authority and to popularize the object of their obsession. The campaign, however, was largely a contrivance of Democrats and their media allies.
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