The illusory truth effect is the tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure. People are comfortable with what is familiar. Familiarity can even overpower rationality. This is why social media is the perfect place for disinformation to spread.

If you're familiar w/ the rule of 7 in marketing which says you need a potential customer to interact with your brand 7 times before a purchase is made. Brand loyalty is big with a certain block of consumers, so they will need extra exposure and incentive to consider a purchase.

Brands market products in a variety of ways based on what is must important to their customers. (Price, results, ecofriendly etc.) And no matter what a brand does, some customers will remain loyal to their brand. You'll notice brands point out their strengths in positive ads.

It's cheaper, tastes/works better, all natural...

Many brands need to point out the weaknesses of competitors to win business. Brand A doesn't do this, costs more, ineffective etc...

Generally they back up each type of ad with images of what I call Joy and Agony.

Joy is clean, happy, & care-free. Agony is disheveled, dissatisfied, frustrated. Only Brand B can get the consumer to Joy.

Pricing plays a role for customers who aren't loyal to a brand. Low prices attract some consumers. Yet many people assume if it costs more, it's better,

Brands hit the jackpot when consumers are excited about their product/service and become free surrogates. People tend to like and automatically trust what's popular, especially when recommended by a person they already trust. I know this is true, but doubted how strong it is.

I thought certain people would be suceptible to this kind of marketing. But doubted savvy or highly educated people would fall for it.

I was proven wrong by quite a few law professors, CEO's, and a former Lt. Governor of Texas, all who when I spoke with regarding an important

change to their insurance policies. One was choice removal of coverage for a certain important risk. The second choice was adding one of three possible amounts of coverage for the risk for one of three increased premiums. The #1 question was "What are most people doing?"

The last thing I'm thinking of when making potentially big financial decisions is what other people are doing. I think about what is best for my situation. I'm also largely brand loyal.

But the appeal of being part of the majority is a big deal to a lot of consumers.

Around 2013-14, I started seeing memes of Vladimir Putin, drawn w/ exaggerated muscles portraying him as a strong.& powerful leader. Americans were posting them. I was confused. Putin is an adversary to this country, remember the KGB? These memes also portrayed Obama as weak.

I really didn't think about Putin being responsible for these, because I couldn't imagine how he could get Americans to be his surrogates. I began hearing prominent Republicans praising Putin's strength. They rallied over hatred of Obama.

It was like a snowball rolling downhill from there. These combined with the never-ending repetitive cries of Obama dividing the country, that he a Muslim and that he had provided a fake birth certificate & shouldn't even be president began creating a new Republican party.

Suddenly, opinions they'd heard became "fact." The truth had lost any hold it had on Republican citizens. They doubled down on falsehoods when Hillary Clinton ran for POTUS. Conservative news sources read like tabloids. Donald Trump took full advantage of his base's willingness

to disregard the truth. He wasn't afraid to say anything, no matter how awful, how untrue or how racist, and they loved it. We thought it was a relatively small percentage of the population, and it did start out that way, but social media, foreign actors,

and Cambridge Analytica had taken the illusory truth effect to heights never before seen in this country. When truth didn't matter, and having a fair and functioning government was no longer important, not just the Republican party was hijacked, but the entire country.

The worse Trump was, the more they loved him, he somehow rallied or scared key Republicans into 100% loyalty to him instead of their constituents or the Constitution. He has eroded trust in our intelligence agencies, our allies & even the Constitution. He has cultivated a divide

so deep, we may be united again. Every day as president he degraded Democrats, he's called us evil, crooked and frauds, he's lied continually about every Democrat policy, he's attacked Democrat governors & worked to punish states he said didn't like him. His base ate every bite.

*we may never be united again.