grifts gatekeep themselves. it's part of how they thrive. the on-boarding only catches people who have the vulnerability needed to buy in & stay bought in. people who won't buy in don't buy in. the people who have bought in are, essentially by definition, the type of person who would buy in.
if someone's grift involves positioning themselves as an authority, & you know enough to investigate that claim & find reason to reject it, you weren't the audience. the grift doesn't need you. you don't have the vulnerability. the grift is only looking for the people who would get trapped by it, so it can trap them. simple enough, in a blunt way.
Information Literacy is a big thing and it doesn't really get explicitly taught or talked about to anyone but librarians who are never positioned to teach it to anyone but first year undergraduates for one hour their first semester and they don't pay attention.
When I'm clear headed and recovered maybe I'll write about the ACRL Information Literacy Framework
