I've always found it weird the way in which a lot of reporting on US political issues normalizes completely unhinged political beliefs that aren't even remotely grounded in reality by just verbatim quoting shit some lunatic said without making any attempt to address how insane it is or why it's wrong.
It really skews retroactive research too. Recently I was trying to find public news reporting on an old issue to disprove a unfounded conspiracy theory my friend had fallen for. I knew for a fact that this conspiracy theory wasn't true because I had inside knowledge of the issue, but I'd forgotten most of the details so had to google it. Looking at old news articles it really gave the impression that there were two competing narratives and no real agreement on which was the truth. Major media publication would cite some official or expert, then throw in a quote from some 4chan troll claiming to be a deep state insider, giving the impression that both claims had equal weight. It was so bad that it made me question if I was remembering what happened correctly.
@ekg @malwaretech Mostly, but gaslighting implies "with intention."
It comes from an old movie where a husband is trying to make his wife think she is losing her mind, so he keeps messing with the gaslights (what we had before electric lights) - tells her she is imagining things.