Quacks, fake experts, influencers, political commentators, trolls, gurus, charlatans, contrarians, pundits and other media manipulators currently dominate the public discourse on a range of medical and scientific topics. Manipulators build small digital fiefdoms where the most outrageous or popular, not the most correct, get to shape the particular flavor of alternative reality. Manipulators also reap in windfall profits from leveraging algorithmically created echo chambers and filter bubbles.

From anti-vaxxers to lableak truthers, from climate contrarians to AIDS deniers, supplement grifters, and alternative medicine charlatans, each parallel universe comes with its little niche rituals, idiosyncratic fallacies, and historical trajectory. They are all part of the current fragmentation of reality perceptions and epistemic crisis plaguing society.