All that should matter is what is true. But let's ask ourselves, is most everything we hold true primarily because it's a product of echoes of repetition?
The Illusory Truth Effect (also sometimes called the reiteration effect) is a psychological dynamic which is the tendency to think information is accurate after repeated exposure. It's a cognitive bias in which people are more likely to feel information to be true after hearing it over and over, even for some critical thinkers, even when the source of the information is known to be suspect, even if they start out knowing the information is literally false.
It's closely related to fallacies "proof by assertion" and "argumentum ad nauseam" in which arguments are repeatedly re-stated. Well there is a malevolent reason for that repetition. Repetition, communicated with confidence, increases the perception that something is accurate. This happens because familiarity makes statements feel more credible, regardless of their accuracy.
Out of various concepts that we aim to highlight in our work, one being the previously said all that should matter is what is true, another of top tier importance is the willingness to look at, with eyes to see, the darkness of the world. It's easy to escape into fluff. It's harder to face our collective shadows. Because we learn through darkness and the marketing branch of darkness is disinformation and is a key reason why diss and miss information spreads and why media influence can be so powerful. Things such as advertising & marketing (which the comedian Bill Hicks once said if you're in you should kill yourself), and that's a joke as we've worked on commercials, the 50% of conspiracy which is garbage, and zero journalistic integrity propaganda dumpster fire oligarchic owned boggle head media and also oligarchic owned discursive time wasting garbage anti social feeds are fertile grounds for this.
Because it can make false information appear true, it can also be used to deliberately manipulate the thinking of others. It can serve as an incentive for bad actors, commonly political or ideological extremists, to deliberately spread misinformation for their own goals. By intentionally creating echo chamber environments which are dirty ecosystems in which participants encounter beliefs that only amplify or reinforce those preexisting beLIEefs by communication and repetition inside a closed system and insulated from rebuttal. White collar criminal dark agents not only will flood the zone with crap so there is high noise to signal but hit you again and again with the crap and noise. With the goal of you giving up or not knowing up from down. In George Orwell's 1984 Big Brother's use of propaganda is a consistent restating, in a loudspeaker fashion, simple phrases such as "strength through ignorance", "freedom is slavery", "war brings peace", or "2 + 2 = 5" and those who allow such dystopian echos inside their minds make a ridiculous idea like there's heavy amounts of outcome determinative voter fraud unbreakably obvious to not just the dumbest dumbfucks that ever dumbed but rather smart individuals who have transmuted their former human brains into bird brains.
When we hear or read the same information multiple times, our human brains process it more fluently and you'll hear comments about the information getting to our "subconscious" mind even though a teacher of ours better described it as our "unconscious" mind. This fluency creates a sense of ease, which we unconsciously interpret as truthfulness. Even if we originally knew a statement was false, repeated exposure can make us forget the source and over length of time, move into a middle ground of thinking it might not be totally inaccurate and then even come to accept it as true. Our brains tend to prefer familiar information over complex verification processes leading us to have a sense of familiarity with repeated content. Which applies to Both True and False Information, because The illusory truth effect does not distinguish between truth and lies, and simply reinforces whatever is repeated, it's shocking how many people we hold in high regard can still fall for this joker spiral bias over time because repetition increases the perception of validity.
So counter solutions to this shadow darkness is to remove oneself from echo chambers (to have a mental detox) and not be one of many dominos passing on mental poo, checking sources (ideally original ones that are not hand-me-down), diversify information sources with lateral reading (meaning multiple sources from ideally variety viewpoints) especially ones which counter the false echo, pre-dubunking (meaning dip your toe into it in small doses before it can influence), remaining skeptical and push back against (meaning correcting disinfo publically while the original claim spreads), and most of all, like we've done in this insight with a specific phrase, use this knowledge of how the human mind works to repeat truths over fictions. Cause all that should matter is what is true.