A strange thing happened in one of my classes recently. It was one of those moments that teachers live for, not because it was tidy, but because it was revealing. We were talking about how people decide what to believe, especially when looking for what’s true online.
How Do You Know What’s True?
I started with a simple observation: nobody evaluates every claim from scratch. We all rely on authority of some kind. We trust doctors about medicine, historians about history, and mechanics about engines. Even when we think we’re being independent thinkers, we’re usually outsourcing our trust to someone or something. So I asked my students a question that felt almost too obvious:
“When you watch videos online (e.g., YouTube, TikTok, Instagram), how do you decide which ones are worth believing?”
They didn’t hesitate. “The number of views,” they agreed. High view count meant credibility. Low view count meant ignore it. At first glance, that sounds reasonable. After all, millions of people can’t be wrong… right? But then I asked a second question, “What determines how many views a video gets?”
That’s when things got awkward. Why? Because the honest answer is not the truth. It’s not accuracy. It’s not “wisdom.” It’s engagement.
Videos rise because they are entertaining: fast cuts, dramatic tone, outrage, humor, suspense, shock, charisma, editing tricks, music, cliff-hangers, thumbnails that promise secret knowledge. The algorithm does not reward careful thinking. It rewards stickiness.
So, when my students said they trust high-view videos, what they were really saying (without realizing it) was something much more troubling: We trust what is most entertaining.
When Entertainment Becomes Epistemology
We have quietly allowed entertainment value to become our filter for truth. That is a terrifying epistemology.
In older societies, authority was at least tethered to something, like tradition, training, apprenticeship, reputation built over time. A physician didn’t gain credibility because people enjoyed watching him bleed patients. A theologian wasn’t trusted because he was funny. A judge wasn’t believed because he spoke dramatically.
But today, credibility is algorithmic. The digital world asks only one question: Did people watch? Not Was it right? or Was it good? or Was it wise? Instead, it’s just “Did it hold attention?”
This means that what rises to the top of our feeds is not what best describes reality but what best stimulates our nervous systems. Outrage beats nuance. Certainty beats humility. Drama beats truth.
Salience versus Significance
What’s more, because we are human, we confuse salience with significance. What feels vivid feels true. What feels emotionally charged feels important. What is repeated feels authoritative.
So we scroll. We watch, and we nod along. Slowly, without ever choosing to, we allow entertainment algorithms to tutor our minds and form our moral instincts. This is not just a problem for “fake news.” It’s a problem with how we think. Period.
When entertainment becomes the basis for credibility, truth itself becomes optional. What matters is not whether something corresponds to reality, but whether it performs well. The cost is enormous: distorted politics, polarized cultures, anxious minds, shallow beliefs, moral confusion.
My students saw it immediately once it was named. They realized that they weren’t just consuming content. They participate in a system that trains them to grant authority to whatever is most watchable.
The danger isn’t that young people are gullible. The danger is that we have built a world in which credibility has been outsourced to software designed to monetize attention.
That is a machine that does not care whether it is teaching us what is true, only whether it is keeping us watching. And that should make all of us uneasy.
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