On Facebook, I frequently see shared posts that look interesting at first sight, but after a little reading, are nothing but woo. What is "woo"?
Woo-woo (or just plain woo) refers to ideas considered irrational or based on extremely flimsy evidence or that appeal to mysterious occult forces or powers.
1. The Mind Unleashed tops the list with 6.6 million followers. It's a pseudoscientific, woo-peddling, click bait website with a propensity to misrepresent data from studies and present it as scientific fact for their own gain. On it you may find things like vaccine hysteria, food woo, including opposition to GMOs and gluten, UFOs/aliens, vibration healing, HAARP weather manipulation, chemtrails, and quantum misrepresentation.
2. Spirit Science comes in next with 5.1 million followers. Created by Jordan Pearce, the site promotes a wide range of New Age woo including but not limited to astral projection, chakras, crystal woo, orgone energy, quantum woo and sacred geometry. Watch a video of Jordan infiltrating an hospital operating room, and then complain about the lack of "healing crystals".
3. Collective Evolution with only 1.7 million followers. CE is a woo-mongering click bait website. They label themselves as an alternative news source that seeks to expand their way of "thinking" to create "big change" on the planet. On it you may find vaccine fear mongering, quantum woo, aliens, Illuminati and 9/11 conspiracies, and various types of food woo.
4. Natural News with 1.4 million followers. NaturalNews.com is an anti-science conspiracy website founded by Mike Adams which promotes numerous alternative medicines and assorted woo. The site particularly specializes in vaccine denialism, AIDS/HIV denialism, quack cancer treatments, and conspiracy theories about "Big Pharma", and modern medicine. Furthermore, Adams supports quantum woo, specifically quantum healing and quantum consciousness. Natural News advances a hard green position, even though the site also promotes global warming denialism.
5. World Truth with 1.1 million followers. It's a website run by a man named Eddie Levin, who claims to have "spent the last 32 years researching Theosophy, Freemasonry, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, the Bavarian Illuminati and Western Occultism". On it, you'll find things like "cleansing" diets, global warming denialism, vaccine hysteria, and most importantly, antisemitism, claiming that The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is an authentic manual on how Jews are going to take over the world.
6. Food Babe with 950,000 followers. The usual ration of nature woo crap. She's strongly anti-GMO, anti-vaccine, pro-organic, chemophobic, the whole works. She's a raw milk advocate and a nitrite basher. She's a fan of Masaru Emoto's water woo. She's claimed that the pressurized cabins in airliners compress your internal organs, and that the cabin air can contain "up to 50% nitrogen." Essentially, she fancies herself a consumer advocate whose job it is to protect you from toxic food ingredients, with said toxicity determined by how scary or unfamiliar the name of the ingredient is. In reality she uses fear as a selling strategy. Her products mainly consist of items from companies she has a commission referral system in place with. Ms. Hari demonstrates little to no dignity or humility when challenged by experts. A National Public Radio (NPR) article on 4-December-2014 covered her irresponsible tactics and was scathing as it identified her as a fear-monger. In response, Ms. Hari has recently written an essay to portray herself as the victim of corporate shills.
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