"me and my colleagues"
I really wish I could use all of this to teach a course in confirmation bias.
What this is individual is crafting is a narrative that leeches off online fodder born of people who need to have an antagonist for their very precious woobie.
A subsection of Simone fans believe she's not a around because of Nicola. So what do you do? You create a persona where you codify those beliefs and make them impossible to dislodge.
This literally affects information processing.
I said it on Twitter, but this is low-stakes cause none of you (probably) are actually affected by the numbers of season 3, or by the belief that Nicola is an insidious person with an agenda, like this doesn't affect your livelihood in any real, tangible way – but this person is sowing low-level misinformation. Shit like this is feeding the underswell of people believing conspiracy theories around a couple from two seasons ago.
Basically what I'm saying you're not immune to disinformation or propaganda. It's not just politics where it happens. It happens everywhere with people who trust unofficial anonymous sources without doing a lick of due diligence.
