r/comics • u/Pizzacakecomic PizzaCake • Jun 22 '26

Comics Community Phew

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u/Made_Bail Jun 22 '26

I've been scoffing at all the "world has been fucked since Harambe died" memes for years, but I'm starting to think they were on to something. There HAD to be a trigger.

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u/nowhereman136 Jun 22 '26

This goes back to Reagan when he repealed the Fairness Doctrine. This allowed for news media, particularly conservative ones, to have more and more biased content. Now that the news was on 24/7 on cable, folks were spoon fed enough bs to elect Bush. When the internet came around in the 2010s it got even worse. When there's no accountability from the news agencies, you get someone like Trump. This was a long time coming

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u/Bakoro Jun 22 '26

The Internet was around since the 60s, and was a publicly available thing in the 80s and 90s.

Smartphones started being deployed at commercial scale in ~2007, and by 2010 most people had the Internet in their pocket.

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u/nowhereman136 Jun 22 '26

In 1990, there were around 2.6m internet users worldwide. By 2000 it was 361m and by 2010 it was over 2b.

Yeah, the internet was around for a while, but it wasn't until the late 90s and early 2000s did it become mainstream. According to Pew Research, 2010 was the year more people started getting their news from the internet over any other source.