This happens all the time in our current media landscape. "Yeah health insurance denies claims sometimes, that's normal" to "wait actually health insurance denies claims routinely to increase its profits!?"
There are tons of things that we decide to ignore to go on with our lives. It's exhausting to freak out about all the things that deserve to be freaked out about.
Absolutely, we all need to filter the overwhelming amount of information we're faced with. The part that seems terrifying is that occasionally our filters can line up in such a way as to pick up what's just pure noise and escalate it into an enormous positive feedback loop.
And of course there's a whole discussion about how those filters are shaped (by the media we consume, authorities we decide to trust, direct experience) and how that's changed over time.
> When General Magic finally shipped in 1994 — under the threat of Apple’s Newton — they hadn’t made the Pocket Crystal that Porat first dreamed of in 1989. Instead, they released something they called the Sony Magic Link. It weighed 1.5 lbs (0.68 kg) and was priced at US$800 (US$1560 in 2022 dollars). It offered futuristic features like a touchscreen, downloadable apps and animated emojis — the first of its kind. Fadell thought it would be revolutionary — people could now carry a personal computer with them wherever they went. But nobody bought it. In the end only three to four thousand Magic Link devices were sold, and mostly to family and friends.
There's a documentary too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTdyb-RWNKo