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Emma Brooks
Worked Alone

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RED FLAG 1: Celebrity Endorsement (Appeal To Authorities)

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RED FLAG 1: Celebrity Endorsement (Appeal To Authorities)

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Definition: To promote all distractions that point to the impressiveness of the item, not the truth of the claim.

Connection: The photo I have attached to this thread is a photo from a Samsung ad that promotes Samsung as a great device to have. He had a 100$ million contract with them but ironically ended up slipping up and tweeting out a tweet about how his Samsung Galaxy Note 2 had broken saying "My phone just erased everything I had in it and rebooted. One of the sickest feelings I've ever had in my life!!!", which of course he ended up deleting rather quickly which I'm assuming was due to Samsung themselves. It shows that even our favorite celebrities, athletes etc. can easily endorse a product to us and say it's good, but that doesn't mean that it's good.

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Article on the dangers of false advertising for All Natural beauty products

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RED FLAD 2: "All Natural" In The Beauty Industry

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RED FLAD 2: "All Natural" In The Beauty Industry

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Definition: That it is naturally made using ethical ingredients and harbour's no chemicals or harmful toxins and isn't created artificially.

Connection: The link attached to this thread talks about the dangerous toxins and chemicals we actually end up putting into our bodies, despite the packaging on most beauty products that say “all-natural” I can assure you that there is a high chance it’s not actually all-natural. Some may argue that why to make a product and claim it’s all-natural when it isn’t. Ironically an example of this is Dermatologists claiming that you should use Petrolatum or products with Petrolatum despite how it can actually cause skin irritation and even skin allergies. A study was shown to have been done by The University Of Ferrara with 6.22% users of Topical Herbal Product had multiple people stating they had horrible reactions to their face due to it. Most “all-natural” beauty products contain harmful toxins that can actually disturb your skin and can actually change the structure and even the function of the skin. This alone is a good enough reason to read your ingredients on the back of your products and not always trust a label. Just because it says All Natural it doesn’t mean it is.

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RED FLAG 4: BLM Protests And Tiktok (Suppress By Authorities)

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RED FLAG 4: BLM Protests And Tiktok (Suppress By Authorities)

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Definition: To be put down and hidden by authorities to avoid public knowledge and eyes.

Connection: 2020 was a year full of protests for Black Lives Matter after the death of George Flyod, the BLM movement went into full swing with multiple protests happening all around America and even sparking protests in multiple different countries. You could see these movements on many different social media platforms but one I'd like to point out that often censors a large group of minorities is Tiktok. As a young teen at the time I was consistently on my phone and scrolling through tiktok and despite all those massive protests there wasn’t a lot of content for Black Lives Matter despite them putting that on a banner on the discovery search bar. I’ve spoken to many of my friends on tiktok and realized whenever we posted about BLM movement our videos never got as much views as they usually do, for me i usually get 100-2000 views on a post but whenever I posted about BLM for awareness I was getting so much less interaction on that post then anything else. We believe that the app itself was actively silencing those who spoke up about it, not only that a lot of black creators I followed and were friends with had their accounts banned temporarily or even sometimes permanently taken down for no reason or for an unfair reason. It wouldn’t be the first time an App had silenced creators and people who spoke up against something important like racism or simply the company just wants to hide this knowledge from public view to avoid drastic situations like protest.

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RED FLAG 3: Bloodletting (Ancient Wisdom)

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RED FLAG 3: Bloodletting (Ancient Wisdom)

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Definition: A belief, Practice or ideal that has been around for years that predates christian knowledge, philosophy and beliefs.

Connection: Bloodletting was quite a famous medical treatment around 3000 years ago with the ancient Egyptians being the ones known best for the use of this practice and continued on to the Greeks and Romans etc. This form of practice had reached its peak in 19th century Europe before being declined and shunned as a medical practice. The idea of bloodletting was to take blood out of a patient to cure them of their illness or to prevent them from getting an illness. It makes sense as to why this medical practice is no longer in use simply because it doesn’t work. Once a Pathogen has entered your system, you cannot get rid of it by taking out some blood. This method usually did more harm than good usually due to the fact that their wounds were never disinfected which caused patients to fall ill and it was an all around painful process. It’d be foolish to continue this practice seeing as there's no actual health benefits.

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With a history spanning at least 3000 years, bloodletting has only recently-in the late 19th century-been discredited as a treatment for most ailments.

The practice of bloodletting began around 3000 years ago with the Egyptians, then continued with the Greeks and Romans, the Arabs and Asians, then spread through Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It reached its peak in Europe in the 19th century but subsequently declined and today in Western medicine is used only for a few select conditions.

Humors, Hippocrates, and Galen
To appreciate the rationale for bloodletting one must first understand the paradigm of disease 2300 years ago in the time of Hippocrates (~460-370 BC). He believed that existence was represented by the four basic elements-earth, air, fire, and water-which in humans were related to the four basic humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile.

Each humor was centred in a particular organ-brain, lung, spleen, and gall bladder-and related to a particular personality type-sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, and choleric.[ 1]

Being ill meant having an imbalance of the four humors. Therefore treatment consisted of removing an amount of the excessive humor by various means such as bloodletting, purging, catharsis, diuresis, and so on. By the 1st century bloodletting was already a common treatment, but when Galen of Pergamum (129-200 AD) declared blood as the most dominant humor, the practice of venesection gained even greater importance.[ 2]

Galen was able to propagate his ideas through the force of personality and the power of the pen; his total written output exceeds two million words. He had an extraordinary effect on medical practice and his teaching persisted for many centuries. His ideas and writings were disseminated by several physicians in the Middle Ages when bloodletting became accepted as the standard treatment for many conditions.

Methods of bloodletting
Bloodletting was divided into a generalized method done by venesection and arteriotomy, and a localized method done by scarification with cupping and leeches. Venesection was the most common procedure and usually involved the median cubital vein at the elbow, but many different veins could be used. The main instruments for this technique were called lancets and fleams.[ 3]

Thumb lancets were small sharp-pointed, two-edged instruments often with an ivory or tortoise shell case that the physician could carry in his pocket. Fleams were usually devices with multiple, variably sized blades that folded into a case like a pocketknife.

Localized bloodletting often involved scarification, which meant scraping the skin with a cube-shaped brass box containing multiple small knives, followed by cupping, which involved placing a dome-shaped glass over the skin and extracting the air by suction or prior heating.[ 4]

Leeches used for bloodletting usually involved the medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis. At each feeding a leech can ingest about 5 to 10 ml of blood, almost 10 times its own weight. The use of leeches was greatly influenced by Dr François Broussais (1772-1838), a Parisian physician who claimed that all fevers were due to specific organ inflammation. He was a great proponent of leech therapy along with aggressive bloodletting. He believed in placing leeches over the organ of the body that was deemed to be inflamed.[ 5]

his therapy was very popular in Europe in the 1830s, especially France, where 5 to 6 million leeches per year were used in Paris alone and about 35 million in the country as a whole. By the late 1800s, however, enthusiasm for leech therapy had waned, but leeches are still used today in select situations.

Famous bleedings
When Charles II (1630-1685) suffered a seizure he was immediately treated with 16 ounces of bloodletting from the left arm followed by another 8 ounces from cupping.[ 6] Then he endured a vigorous regimen of emetics, enemas, purgatives, and mustard plasters followed by more bleeding from the jugular veins. He had more seizures and received further treatment with herbs and quinine. In total he had about 24 ounces of blood taken before he died.

After riding in snowy weather, George Washington (1732-1799) developed a fever and respiratory distress. Under the care of his three physicians he had copious amounts of blood drawn, blisterings, emetics, and laxatives. He died the next night of what has been diagnosed retrospectively as epiglottitis and shock.[ 6] His medical treatment aroused significant controversy, particularly the bloodletting.

Warring physicians
The practice of bloodletting aroused deep emotions in both practitioners and detractors, with intense argument about the benefit and harm of venesection. Drs Benjamin Rush, William Alison, and Hughes Bennett exemplify this conflict.

Dr Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) was one of the most controversial physicians in his time. He was arrogant and paternalistic but dedicated to eradicating illness wherever he saw it. He worked tirelessly during the yellow fever epidemics in Philadelphia in 1793 and 1797 and devoted much time to the problem of mental illness.[ 7]

Unfortunately he had a very simplistic view of disease and thought that all febrile illnesses were due to an "irregular convulsive action of the blood vessels." Therefore in his mind all therapy was directed at dampening down this vascular overexcitement. He was a great proponent of "depletion therapy," which meant aggressive bloodletting and vigorous purging.

He was known to remove extraordinary amounts of blood and often bled patients several times. "It frequently strangles a fever... imparts strength to the body... renders the pulse more frequent when it is preternaturally slow... renders the bowels, when costive, more easily moved by purging physic... removes or lessens pain in every part of the body, and more especially the head... removes or lessens the burning heat of the skin, and the burning heat of the stomach..."[ 8]

In addition he held a firm belief in his calomel purgatives, which were loaded with mercury and which he called "the Samson of medicine." In numerous articles he boldly proclaimed the benefits of his therapy.

He aroused both extremely positive and negative reactions in those around him, including many physicians. Some doctors referred to his practices as "murderous" and his prescribed doses as "fit for a horse." He had a long-running feud with his college of physicians, which forced him to resign, and his application to the faculty of Columbia Medical School in New York was denied. However, Rush Medical College in Chicago was named in his honor and gained its charter in 1837.

At the Edinburgh School of Medicine Dr William Alison (1790-1859) and Dr Hughes Bennett (1812-1875) were a study in contrasts. The former was a dignified old-timer and strong believer in bloodletting, while the latter was an arrogant newcomer and resolute debunker of bloodletting. Whereas Dr Alison followed the old tradition of clinical experience and empirical observation, Dr Bennett believed in the new methods of pathology and physiology supported by the microscope and the stethoscope.[ 9]

Central to their debate was the observation that the improved outcome of patients with pneumonia paralleled the decreased usage of bloodletting. While Dr Alison ascribed this to a "change in type" of illness which had gone from sthenic (strong) to asthenic (weak), Dr Bennett believed it due to diminished use of a dangerous therapy.

Both were implacable in their point of view, thereby underlining the significant gap between their beliefs in empirical observation versus scientific verification. Dr Bennett had the advantage of the latest techniques and "grounded his rejection of bloodletting on pathologic concepts of inflammation and pneumonia derived from microscopic studies of inflamed tissues."[ 9]

The tide turns
In Paris Dr Pierre Louis (1787-1872) was another scientific-minded physician who wanted to assess the efficacy of bloodletting. He examined the clinical course and outcomes of 77 patients with acute pneumonia taken from his own and hospital records.

He compared the results in patients treated with bloodletting in the early phase versus the late phase of the illness. In his conclusions he did not condemn bloodletting but concluded that the effect of this procedure "was actually much less than has been commonly believed."[ 10]

Subsequent studies by Pasteur, Koch, Virchow, and others confirmed the validity of the new scientific methods, and the use of bloodletting gradually diminished to a few select conditions.

Bloodletting today
Today phlebotomy therapy is primarily used in Western medicine for a few conditions such as hemochromatosis, polycythemia vera, and porphyria cutanea tarda.[ 11]

Hemochromatosis is a genetic disorder of iron metabolism leading to abnormal iron accumulation in liver, pancreas, heart, pituitary, joints, and skin. It is treated with periodic phlebotomy to maintain ferritin levels at a reasonable level so as to minimize further iron deposition.

Polycythemia vera is a stem cell bone marrow disorder leading to overproduction of red blood cells and variable overproduction of white blood cells and platelets. Its treatment includes phlebotomy to reduce the red blood cell mass and decrease the chance of dangerous clots.

Porphyria cutanea tarda is a group of disorders of heme metabolism with an associated abnormality in iron metabolism. Phlebotomy is also used to decrease iron levels and prevent accumulation in various organs.

In the last 25 years leech therapy has made a comeback in the area of microsurgery and reimplantation surgery. Hirudo medicinalis can secrete several biologically active substances including hyaluronidase, fibrinase, proteinase inhibitors, and hirudin, an anticoagulant.

The leech can help reduce venous congestion and prevent tissue necrosis. In this way it can be used in the postoperative care of skin grafts and reimplanted fingers, ears, and toes. Because of concern regarding secondary infections a "mechanical leech" has been developed at the University of Wisconsin.[ 12]

Why did it persist?
We may wonder why the practice of bloodletting persisted for so long, especially when discoveries by Vesalius and Harvey in the 16th and 17th centuries exposed the significant errors of Galenic anatomy and physiology. However as Kerridge and Lowe have stated, "that bloodletting survived for so long is not an intellectual anomaly-it resulted from the dynamic interaction of social, economic, and intellectual pressures, a process that continues to determine medical practice."[ 9]

With our present understanding of pathophysiology we might be tempted to laugh at such methods of therapy. But what will physicians think of our current medical practice 100 years from now? They may be astonished at our overuse of antibiotics, our tendency to polypharmacy, and the bluntness of treatments like radiation and chemotherapy.

In the future we can anticipate that with further advances in medical knowledge our diagnoses will become more refined and our treatments less invasive. We can hope that medical research will proceed unhampered by commercial pressures and unfettered by political ideology. And if we truly believe that we can move closer to the pure goal of scientific truth.

References

1. Magner LN. A History of Medicine. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc; 1992:66-74.
2. Magner LN. A History of Medicine. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc; 1992:86-96.
3. McCormic S. Blood and magic-the evolution of phlebotomy. www.associatedcontent.com/article/959576/blood_and_magic_the_evolution_of_phlebotomy.html?cat=37 (accessed 4 April 2009).
4. Seigworth GS. Bloodletting Over the Centuries. New York State Journal of Medicine 1980;Dec:2022-2028. www.pbs.org/wnet/redgold/basics/bloodlettinghistory.html (accessed 4 April 2009).
5. Adams SL. The medicinal leech. Ann Intern Med 1988;109:399-405.
6. Parapia LA. History of bloodletting by phlebotomy. Brit J Haemat 2008;143:490-495.
7. North RL. Benjamin Rush, MD: Assassin or beloved healer? Proc Bayl Univ Med Cent 2000;13:45-49.
8. Rush B. A Defence of Blood-letting, as a Remedy for Certain Diseases. In: Medical Inquiries and Observations. Vol 4. Philadelphia, PA; 1815. Available online at: Arnebeck B. Benjamin Rush's A Defence of Blood-letting, as a Remedy for Certain Diseases. www.bobarnebeck/defence.html (accessed 4 April 2009).
9. Kerridge IH, Lowe M. Bloodletting: The story of a therapeutic technique. Med J Aust 1995;163:631-633.
10. Morabia A. P.C.A. Louis and the birth of clinical epidemiology. Clin Epidemiol 1996;49:1327-1333.
11. Lee GR, Foerster J, Lukens J, et al. Wintrobe's Clinical Hematology. 10th ed. Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins; 1999:1063,1079,1539.
12. Whitaker IS, Rao J, Izadi D, et al. Historical Article: Hirudo medicinalis: Ancient origins of, and trends in the use of medicinal leeches throughout history. Br J Oral Maxillofac Surg 2004;42:133-137.

Dr Greenstone is a family physician in Surrey, BC.

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With a history spanning at least 3000 years, bloodletting has only recently-in the late 19th century-been discredited as a treatment for most ailments. The practice of bloodletting began around 3000 years ago with the Egyptians, then continued with the Greeks and Romans, the Arabs and Asians, then spread through Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

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'Vigilante treatments': Anti-vaccine groups push people to leave ICUs (related to covid-19)

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Definition: Ideology is set by either beliefs or philosophy attributed to one person or a group where unimportant evidence is just as important and theoretical science.

Connection: Stated in the article above many Anti-Vaxxers are pushing for people to avoid going to ICU’s and hospitals in general, simply due to their deluded and untrue theories on vaccines. It’s no new news to me that these Anti-Vaxxers claim that doctors are purposefully killing patients and blaming it on covid-19 or that vaccines can give someone Autism which in reality isn’t the case at all. Anti-Vaxxer seem to have a habit of only looking at the negative and refusing to look at how vaccines have been proved helpful and safe and most of those theories they hold onto so dearly are bogus. Anti-Vax communities online are causing an uproar, I've seen a video of an Anti-Vax group storming into a Tim Hortons and harassing the workers and customers inside, I’ve also seen them threat medical professionals online going as far to say they’d do harm to those who support getting vaccinated. Most groups have been promoting extremely harmful ways to get rid of covid-19 such as injecting bleach into their body which is a one way ticket to the grave. Covid cases seem to be rapidly rising especially with those who are unvaccinated. With harmful disinformation continuing to spread around all over social media, there's a new thing called vigilante medicine where people on facebook ignore life saving knowledge and try to disprove them on a facebook forum or post. With all said and done, people need to realize that you’re going to have to swallow your pride and get the shot to keep people safe whatever that vaccine may be, stop putting others lives at risk for your own selfishness.

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Anti-vaccine Facebook groups have a new message for their community members: Don't go to the emergency room, and get your loved ones out of intensive care units.

Consumed by conspiracy theories claiming that doctors are preventing unvaccinated patients from receiving miracle cures or are even killing them on purpose, some people in anti-vaccine and pro-ivermectin Facebook groups are telling those with Covid-19 to stay away from hospitals and instead try increasingly dangerous at-home treatments, according to posts seen by NBC News over the past few weeks.

The messages represent an escalation in the mistrust of medical professionals in groups that have sprung up in recent months on social media platforms, which have tried to crack down on Covid misinformation. And it's something that some doctors say they're seeing manifest in their hospitals as they have filled up because of the most recent delta variant wave.

"We were down to four Covid patients two months ago. In this surge, we've had 40 to 50 patients with Covid on four different ICU services, 97 percent of them unvaccinated," said Wes Ely, an ICU doctor and professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. "We were making headway, and now we're just losing really, really badly. There's something that's happening on the internet, and it's dramatically increasing steam."

Those concerns echo various local reports about growing threats and violence directed toward medical professionals. In Branson, Missouri, a medical center recently introduced panic buttons on employee badges because of a spike in assaults. Violence and threats against medical professionals have recently been reported in Massachusetts, Texas, Georgia and Idaho.

While Covid misinformation has been a persistent problem since the start of the pandemic, the introduction of vaccines has invigorated the anti-vaccine community and sparked a renewed push to find and promote alternative treatments - some of which are potentially hazardous.

Others are turning away from hospitals altogether. In recent weeks, some anti-vaccine Facebook groups and conspiracy theory influencers on the encrypted messaging app Telegram have offered instructions on how to get family members released from the hospital, usually by insisting they be transferred into hospice care, and have recorded those they've successfully removed from hospitals for viral videos.

Some people in groups that formed recently to promote the false cure ivermectin, an anti-parasite treatment, have claimed extracting Covid patients from hospitals is pivotal so that they can self-medicate at home with ivermectin. But as the patients begin to realize that ivermectin by itself is not effective, the groups have begun recommending a series of increasingly hazardous at-home treatments, such as gargling with iodine, and nebulizing and inhaling hydrogen peroxide, calling it part of a "protocol."

On Tuesday, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America put out a warning against nebulizing hydrogen peroxide.

With Covid cases rising among people who refuse to get vaccinated, and disinformation continuing to spread on social media, anti-vaccine groups have given rise to what Harvard Medical School physician Aditi Nerurkar calls "vigilante medicine," wherein patients are deferring potentially lifesaving care from doctors to try unproven cures pushed on Facebook.

"It's vigilante medicine: medicine being practiced by laypeople who are reading groups created by other laypeople in echo chambers and silos that, likely, someone in the anti-vax movement is profiting from," she said.

Facebook groups dedicated to purported miracle cures and at-home therapies, like ivermectin, have become de facto hubs for anti-vaccine content in the last month.

As Facebook has cracked down on groups and content with explicit anti-vaccine names and messages, groups with names like "Ivermectin MD Team" have popped up in their place, garnering tens of thousands of followers. In these pro-ivermectin spaces, endorsements of the vaccine are roundly mocked or viewed as a government plot, while unproven drugs are touted almost exclusively as alternatives.

A Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed statement: "We remove content that attempts to buy, sell, or donate for Ivermectin. We also enforce against any account or group that violates our COVID-19 and vaccine policies, including claims that Ivermectin is a guaranteed cure or guaranteed prevention, and we don't allow ads promoting Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19."

Anti-vaccination activists falsely believe that ivermectin is a secret miracle cure for Covid. Prescriptions for the drug have skyrocketed, despite some pharmacists refusing to fill them. Horse owners are facing a shortage of dewormers, which contains ivermectin, because anti-vaccine influencers and Facebook groups have falsely claimed that the drugs are effectively the same.

Many users in the Ivermectin groups push conspiracy theories about how Food and Drug Administration-recommended treatments frequently used by doctors and nurses in hospitals are secretly killing patients, and some have implied doctors and nurses are killing patients on purpose so they can receive government payouts.

Conspiracy theorists have pushed the idea that the antiviral drug remdesivir and the use of ventilators are "drowning" unvaccinated Covid patients. In reality, unvaccinated patients are dying of the debilitating effects Covid has on the lungs.

"There's no evidence whatsoever that works and it could potentially have toxicity," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to the president, said last month about ivermectin.

Still, viral rumors have led some Covid patients and their families to insist on receiving ivermectin from doctors who refuse to prescribe it as a treatment in their hospitals.

Earlier this month, QAnon supporters barraged a Chicago-area hospital with threats after a fellow QAnon supporter, Veronica Wolski, asked for and was not administered ivermectin.

Wolski, who was not vaccinated, later died in the hospital after three weeks of fighting Covid.

Nerurkar said patients are often understandably seeking immediate answers and relief once they contract Covid, but unlike snake oil and false miracle drugs, proven treatments for the virus can take days to be effective, "which has been a source of great frustration for clinicians, and also for patients and families."

"When we're feeling stressed, we need a target of that stress. For a long time, initially, the target might have been Covid," she said. "But now, it's no longer that. With the delta variant, and the stress of it has been so great that we are now no longer even looking at the virus and saying, 'That is our common enemy,' which is really how it should be. Instead, they're starting to target people, the messengers - nurses and doctors."

They're starting to target people, the messengers - nurses and doctors.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar
Ely said one particular patient who had been misinformed stuck with him. The woman who had Covid arrived in his ICU about five months pregnant. Ely said the woman was not vaccinated and refused any treatments that would help fight the virus.

"Why? Because, to her, it's not real," he said. "So now we're dealing with a woman in the ICU, the baby too young to live. We've got to make it several more weeks for the baby to be viable."

Ely said he takes the same approach with every patient who is skeptical of doctors or Covid.

He said he kneels down at his patients' bedside to make sure that he's not standing above them, so he can talk to them "from a place of reverence."

"When I'm kneeling down with them, holding their hand, I look in their eyes, and I say, 'Tell me. Tell me what you're afraid of. I am your doctor. I want to help you. I'm here to serve you.' And I tell them 'it always is a privilege to serve you,'" Ely said.

"So, I kneel down. I look her in her eyes. I hold her hand. I tell her, 'I'm hearing you. I'm not going to leave. I'm not going to abandon you.' But there are some people that you can't get on the other side of it," he said. "When people get this sick, they are very likely going to die, and almost all pregnant moms in this situation lose their babies. So we have two people dying without treatment for Covid."

Ely said this patient was not alone, and that some of those who refuse the vaccine "just keep denying until they're dying."

"And let me say, this is not rare. You asked me what I'm hearing, and this is happening. Real time. Right now."

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'Vigilante treatments': Anti-vaccine groups push people to leave ICUs

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Anti-vaccine Facebook groups have a new message for their community members: Don't go to the emergency room, and get your loved ones out of intensive care units.

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Definition: the quality or condition of being easy to understand or do and deciding to choose the easiest option available.

Connection: The photo is Donald Trump spewing one of his many lies. How Trump had so many supporters on his side is beyond me but I was not surprised seeing as the majority of those who voted for him were easily influenced, most likely racist and ring wing leaning. Trump knew his targeted audience and found it easy to cater towards them by telling lies that when asked to back up he usually couldn’t or blamed media or someone and his followers and supporters would mindlessly support without a second thought seeing as he to them was the easiest route to “An America They’d Be Proud Of”.

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BELIEF 7: Supernatural (The Unexplained)

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BELIEF 7: Supernatural (The Unexplained)

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Definition: This one is pretty self explanatory, Unexplained is when something is unable to be explained or unaccounted for to identify a cause.

Connection: In the video I linked up above is the Goatman's Bridge which is an episode of buzzfeed unsolved where they go to a bridge that's apparently haunted by a demon who resembles a human with goat features and head; and try to find out whether or not that is true. The supernatural is often dismissed by many skeptics as pure coincidence or since there’s usually no clear evidence as to what could have been. In this episode it is seen that Ryan seems to heavily believe that this bridge is haunted while Shane is skeptic and claims most of the “evidence” is merely coincidence, in the end the two never end up with any solid evidence to whether or not it is haunted and is deemed unsolved.

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Definition: To perceive meaningful patterns and connections in things that are completely unrelated. In short supports a result that's lacking in evidence.

Connection: Like in the photo above it is relatively common for us to see faces in food or in nature for example the virgin mary in toast or a face on a tree. Our brains for some reason often see faces in objects which is an effect known as Patternicity or face pareidolia, another form of patternicity would be hearing subliminal messages in music when there isn't any.

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Definition: How humans have a tendency to infuse patterns with meaning and intentions and agency.

Connection: In the photo above is a drawing of a sun with a smiley face, usually with kids they see the sun as friendly and warm and often follow them throughout the day seeing it as an agent when in reality the sun doesn't follow us individually at all.

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Define the problem: Did Tiktok Censor BLM

Gather information: https://time.com/5863350/tiktok-black-creators/

This article talks about how many black creators come forward that Tiktok is actively silencing them by shadow banning, temporarily banning their accounts or even sometimes taking their accounts down. Tiktok had apologized and called it a glitch but has made no efforts into correcting the “glitch”

Evaluate the evidence:

As stated before, I’ve spoken to many of my friends on tiktok and whenever we posted about BLM our videos never got as many views as they usually do and a lot of their accounts would also get a “community violation” unfairly. I have witnessed this myself as my account has also been temp banned for talking out against racism.

Recognize Assumptions, Emotions, Biases:

This information can be related to Emotional connection seeing as it's such a sensitive topic in general and has been affecting the black community for years with them having to deal with racism almost daily.

Synthesize Evidence, Identify Alternatives:

Tiktok may be censoring black creators. It may just be a glitch in the system, Tiktok isn’t censoring its just how the algorithm works.

Select Best Alternative:

That it really is just a glitch within the system that they're struggling to fix, and they are not actually silencing black voices.

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These Creators Say They're Still Being Suppressed for Posting Black Lives Matter Content on TikTok

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While TikTok has pledged to support Black creators, many of the app's users say they're facing consequences for posting about the Black Lives Matter movement.