I will resurrect Koby for half the price. Trump will vouch for me.

Yeah pretty delusional

I think the average person sees these news stories and instantly identifies them as lurid outliers, not worth reading. The fact that someone has said something ridiculous is not real news.

If Gaisie actually brings back Kobe Bryant I’ll take notice.

We just get to hear about them more due to 24/7 news being fed directly into our consciousness via FB, Twitter etc. Nutters have always been around, the only difference is that now we hear of them from all around the world. They have followers who believe them because of the internet, whereas we only used to know of the local crackpots who nobody took any notice of.

There always have been a lot of them about, but we do hear more about them because of social media.

The real question is perhaps. As social media grows in power and influence, will it tend to spread mainstream culture outwards to make a homogeneous culture, with hopefully a reasonable centralist view as almost universally accepted ? (Some sad lose of diversity perhaps, but a better life for many who were in minorities.) Or will it drive people to increasingly retreat into their own corners and echo chambers, where the insane will get less help and more reinforcement of their insanity ?

Probably.