One of the more far-fetched rumors is that Helene was an engineered storm to allow corporations to mine regional lithium deposits. Others accuse the administration of President Joe Biden of using federal disaster funds to help migrants in the country illegally, or suggest officials are deliberately abandoning bodies in the cleanup.
America (and I fear soon Canada) is uniquely like this because plenty of media treats all information as facts regardless of its credibility and without consequences.
So any entity can say literally anything, and another entity will report it as credible information. So long as the report reinforces what certain groups of people want to hear, it’s immediately accepted as indelible truth from an undisputed authority making anyone who disagrees automatically wrong and probably the Devil.
Now apply this to entire regions that have homogenized media ownership that has a certain political leaning, and you get wall to wall propaganda of whatever “real” news you want people to feel/think, and people who actively reject anything that doesn’t support their fantasies.
Especially when media regularly headlines a lunatic as a perfectly normal individual with something meaningful to say and that they are perfectly acceptable to consider as a possible leader of your nation.