I'll preface this by saying I can't stand conspiracy theories and and sometimes theorists (looking at you Jones and Icke). They are, generally, unsubstantiated, illogical, loaded with pseudoscience, and at times unintentionally hilarious right up to the point you realize people actually by into this drivel. Many, myself included, figured it was just harmless nuttery, but that notion has been laid to rest and then some in recent years for the obvious reason.

I learned today my very elderly uncle is in the hospital, very ill, and on a ventilator due to a COVID infection. I am not close to him, but am obviously worried. He also was one that thought it was all a hoax and refused to wear mask.

One of my brothers recently went full on conspiracy nutter in the last year or so. He's intelligent, successful in business, married, stable, and an otherwise "normal" individual. I am close to him and love him dearly. But on an almost daily basis I receive full on nutbag missives via email on COVID being a giant hoax, religious ramblings, crap about the election being stolen, and all sorts of wacky material. I don't respond to him, but am growing increasingly concerned about his outlook. (Bizarrely, he was one of the first to get out of the church in my family, though he, evidently, converted to some flavor Protestant Evangelicalism, or something like it.)

And there are other examples. But what is it that transforms are heretofore normal person into a conspiracy-spouting looney-tune?

Turning up my hearing aids and getting some popcorn. The festival of hate begins with these kinds of generalized characterizations.

Yay!

Um, OK. I don't know what "generalizations" you mean. Other than conspiracy theories being utterly stupid. And I stand by that notion. After all, 4% of Americans think the Lizard Alien "theory" is correct. :p

Check out the Amazon Prime sale on Conspiracy Crockpots! The selection is overwhelming!!

I reckon the OP has a fair idea of conspiracies, theories and all that occurs within that world.

There is a great deal of interest in bashing the nutcases. It seems to be some sort of affirmation of the notion that “it ain’t me, it’s you”.

So, I will watch the festival of mutual hate for the nuts.

It’s fascinating how badly people want to hate others.

A lot of people confuse hearty disagreement with hatred. That is unfortunate.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> A lot of people confuse hearty disagreement with
> hatred. That is unfortunate.
===============================

Same with hearty laughter.

:-D

I don't know where you are getting "hate". Using my brother for example, I love him (like all of my five siblings) and we're close. The crap he's been spewing, however, is literally concerning to me. Put another way, I can dislike the ideas, but not the person saying them.

There are people on this board who like to mischaracterize disagreement as hatred so that they can dispense with the defense of their positions.

And there are people who post provocative topics merely for the sake of ‘chumming’ for the ensuing mudslinging...

You seem confident that you know what is in other people's hearts. Not only do you intuit their emotions--hatred--you also instinctively grasp their intentions.

That confidence is misplaced.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> That confidence is misplaced.

But attractive in certain circles.

and even necessary, in those certain circles!

Chumming? Cute. No, it is a legitimate question. The topic is something I, and many others, simply ignored until recently. After recent events and the fact that it has come "home" in a big way in my own family, it can't be ignored any more.

If you don't like the thread then do us all a favor and head over to another one. And stop derailing the discussion with your whining and accusations. Sheez.

Fear of being fooled. Fear of being the last to know, last to be in on the secret.

Some people having been fooled once big time may have an extraordinarily strong need to be foolproof because deep down they can't get over the fact that, "that one time they got played for a sucker and looked really stupid," and its never going to happen again, dammit.

The conspiracy theories, being in on the "hidden truth" are their antidote, or, ironically, their vaccine against being seen as a dupe. Each new conspiracy theory is alike a booster shot. They hungrily believe anything to be the first "to know."

The life for the chance to say, "Well. I knew it all along!" and redeem themselves.


The above could be said about Mormonism I would say without changing too many words. Mormons. They are the ones who aren't fooled by the world, by other religions. Right? Your brother traded one conspiracy theory for another?



Well that's my theory. Not really a conspiracy though.

Done & Done Wrote:
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> Right? Your brother traded
> one conspiracy theory for another?

Sadly, I think there is a lot to exactly this. I read a study years ago that showed a direct correlation between religiosity and conspiracy horse-shit. Sadly, I can't seem to find it now via Google-Fu. The reasons are obvious of course; if one is willing to accept an idea on the insanely stupid basis of "faith", one is open to all sorts of other crazy crap. (While I'm obviously concerned, most of us always managed to right our ship. I'm sure sib #6 will as well. Or maybe I'm being overly optimistic.)

On a broader level, I am concerned how far into the conspiracy dumpster our society has dove. But there isn't much I can do about that. Other than shake my head at footage of conspiracy kooks (literally) crapping on the Capitol floor. :(

Her father was already a looney tunes defender of the faith Hugh Nibley wannabe independent Book of Mormon “researcher”.

When he gave up Mormonism, he ran straight into the arms of Scientology.

Some folks never learn.

Tyson

Done & Done Wrote:
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> Fear of being the last to
> know, last to be in on the secret.
===============================

Folks who do not need to belong to some arbitrary tribe and who don't need to Believe in something (because they have learned analytic thought) are immune to the flim-flam-man.

Most curious, the vulnerable often take up being offended as a lifestyle

There are evangelical crackpot preacher's up here who are preaching their "Jesus is stronger than Covid" horseshit and holding packed worship services. No distancing...no masks..no sanitizing. Kinda hope it bites them in the ass.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2021 10:07PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

Mother of God. I wish I could say I'm surprised, but I'm not. Not even remotely so. :(

Space Pineapple Wrote:
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> I'll preface this by saying I can't stand
> conspiracy theories. . .

Then find a way to remove yourself to outer space.

Because the history of planet Earth is one unbroken chain of endless conspiracies.

Why should our age be an exception?

We now drown in the stench of pharasee plots.

I say this with all sincerity: get help. Now. Good luck.

I've thought about this topic often and have had familly members go off the grid. I wish I had the answers but I do notice a few things.
-If you believe something in column X, then you must believe everything in the column. I've agreed with people on a certain subject only for them to offer the secret handshake that I'm one of them. No, I just agree with you on that one topic.

-I see ex-Mormons who leave the church only to take up with another religion. Two sides of the same coin. They seemed to go conspiracy also.

> -I see ex-Mormons who leave the church only to
> take up with another religion. Two sides of the
> same coin. They seemed to go conspiracy also.

Isn't that the truth? Leave the conspiracy but keep the predilection and find a new shepherd to follow.

It happens so very, very frequently.

Of course it's not just the credulous inclination; there's also the question of people's personal lives. When the economy fails to fulfill the needs of a very large number of people for decades, and then leaves many of them in fear of destitution for over a decade, the consequent anxieties galvanize the need for a higher cause, a higher purpose.

That's at play too.

Couldn't agree with you more moe.

Well . . . on that one topic, of course. ;)

NPR has done a couple of stories on this. One of the causes they cite is social media (such as Facebook) that see you click on certain things and then send you similar things to click on. These more easily allow conspiracy theorists to meet each other and to conjoin their theories.

While this may be true, I can tell you that conspiracy theories were around long before the advent of the Internet and social media sites. My late father, for example, believed to his dying day that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist and that the FBI had every right to go after him. My father was also very fond, and supportive of, Senator Joseph McCarthy, one of the nuttiest conspiracy theorist of his day.

No. I think that people believe in conspiracy theories because they *want* to believe in conspiracy theories. These theories put simple perspectives on a rather complicated world, and many of these people were raised in absolutist religions (such as Mormonism) that taught them that everything (or nearly everything) should be judged as absolutely good or absolutely bad with no in between; in other words, everything is seen in black and white terms with no room for the gray.

The problem is that the world is full of shades of gray. Most decisions we face are decisions that are not absolutely good or absolutely bad as the religionists claimed; rather, both sides have negative and positive consequences for us, and we need to weigh them carefully before coming to the best decision for us. Unfortunately, this weighing of possible consequences is beyond the (at least perceived) capabilities of those following and supporting conspiracy theories.

The other commonality I see among conspiracy theorists is the inability to change their own minds when new facts come in to challenge their beliefs. Yes, I think that education can take some blame for that, but again, I have to place most of the blame on absolutist religions that teach that if you do everything they say, you will be successful. Religious absolutism means that you cannot change your own mind when new evidence comes in to contradict what you've been told. And so, to keep your beliefs, you fall back on conspiracy theories that allow you to believe you were right all along, even when you weren't.

I hope I'm making sense.

blindguy Wrote:
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> I hope I'm making sense.

Yes. Life is about tolerances, gradation of things, probabilities and chance happenings. It has to be to survive.

Humans come along preaching to each other reducing everything to absurdity in simplicity now that we are alienated from of very social evolutionary baselines.

The tribes of whatever are conspiring against us because the great spirits think we are part of some grand design controlled by powers we don't understand.

"It's a rare person who wants to hear what they don't want to hear."
- Dick Cavett

I think that is a large part of it. The conspiracy either denies reality or shift blame, should reality be impossible to deny.

I saw a comment that anybody who believes a conspiracy that involves hundreds or thousands or even millions of people has clearly never been a project manager over 12 people where nobody was supposed to leak word of the project, and everyone had to execute their part flawlessly.

Most if not all conspiracies are small, and rather pathetic when examined in the full light of day. Watergate was initially around a dozen people. The more recent Ukrainegate, about the same. NY Governor Cuomo having deaths misreported as not being nursing home deaths, if the nursing home resident was sent to a hospital, and they died in hospital, was probably 4 people.

They all crumbled in a matter of a few months. Conspiracies between two people may survive detection permanently. Conspiracies between dozens probably have a shelf life of a few days at best after the conspiracy is sprung, usually minutes to hours. In "Ocean's 11" type movies, the conspirators either just barely make it out of the bank, or just barely don't.

The best example of a conspiracy that could never possibly happen is the "faked moon landing conspiracy". NASA faked the moon landing because they feared their budget would get cut.

Right. And nobody except a couple clowns on youtube ever figured it out, and the 400,000 employees at NASA never spilled the beans over the next 50 years.


IMHO, the prime characteristic of a conspiracy theory is that all disconfirming evidence gets wrapped into the conspiracy, and you wind up with massive numbers of people who are either all lying, or all incompetent, in both cases, without exception.

Example: **All doctors** are lying about what people really died of when the doctor puts covid complications on the death certificate. The hospitals get more money that way. Never mind that falsifying a death certificate is probably a felony, and also probably can get your medical license yanked, and if doctors were pressured to falsify death certificates, a rather large percentage of them would scream bloody murder to the press, county prosecutors, and anybody else they could buttonhole. Everyone on Parler knows the pandemic is faked.

Good Lord.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2021 11:44PM by Brother Of Jerry.

And don't forget that Bill Gates is now the most recent victim of conspiracy theories. Wow, how did that happen?

I used to be very concerned about the conspiracies inundating the United States but then I got my microchip vaccine and now I feel happy.

You must have gotten a bad dose. You are supposed to feel mild discontent that is only relieved by shopping.

I’m positive that is Gladys’ normal state!

moehoward Wrote:
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> And don't forget that Bill Gates is now the most
> recent victim of conspiracy theories. Wow, how did
> that happen?

Because he has way too much power and influence and is in the media all the time. He is a very rich man who bought into the game, and now regularly speaks on issues for which he has no other qualification. It's that simple.

He is also incredibly geek which means he is socially awkward. So in spite of buying his way in, that means he always looks a bit shifty and sends out the wrong signals with his body language and facial expressions. There is a video of him grinning when he talks about the second wave - you could say that this is because he is on the spectrum and so acts inappropriately, but it looks like he's taking glee in it.

Kentucky guy.

Your comments have to be a joke, aren't they? BTW, I'm a retired Engineering Geek ,socially awkward?

Never mind Youtube, seventies films already referred to the idea pretty openly. For example, "Diamonds are Forever" (1971) shows Sean Connery invading a set where archvillain Blofeld is staging a fake moon landing and then drives off with their buggy. (Probably the crappest James Bond car ever!)

https://youtu.be/rs0DNSfxt2U


"Capricorn One" (1978) plays with a similar idea, and again, that was watched by millions of people... Much like its main star's murder trial a few years later (OJ Simpson).

I do think we landed on the Moon, but what you're talking about is nothing new.

The weird thing is that they pick things that are either perfectly ordinary or explainable. Take Covid -- it's not like there haven't been deadly pandemics before. All you have to do is to look back at the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic to know that our country had been through something similar a hundred years ago. But even with the mounting deaths from Covid, and the horrible stories coming out of Italy, Brazil, and India, some people are still in denial.

People want to believe in good vs. evil and that they are on the side of good. So much so that they'll demonize 'others' to make themselves 'good'. Take for instance Q Anon and the appeal to people trying to save children from pedophile ring of cannibals'. So these well meaning people, who empathize with the poor kids getting their blood harvested end up believing a whole long series of conspiracies and storming the capitol.

The conspiracy theory route is one of laziness and arrogance. Far better to know your place and operate the best you can in that space. For instance, instead of getting all bent out of shape about the pandemic, why not spend your windfall of quiet time alone doing something useful like mastering a second or third language?

El padre del tiempo Wrote:
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> The conspiracy theory route is one of laziness

It takes a lot of work to follow elaborate conspiracy theories, let alone create them. They often take pieces of information or societies which are obscure - Bohemian Grove in the case of Jones - and could not have been found without legwork. Almost no one would have heard of Bohemian Grove otherwise. Flat Earth theory requires you to jump through a lot of hoops to justify it. People who think the Moon landings were hoaxed have spent days poring over thousands of photographs, looking for that one piece that they think will help their cause. You can call them loons (pun intended), but they ain't all lazy.

The QAnon follower, a person who goes down the rathole of conspiracy theories is choosing the arrogant and lazy way to live.

It’s so much better to know your place, and to humbly figure out how to best go forward in the world in which you find yourself. The best response to the pandemic is to use the gift of more time, of social isolation, to move forward in meaningful and new ways. I am particularly impressed by musicians, artists, hobbyists and others who have used this time to accelerate their creativity. In the past year, there has been enough time for many to become fluent in Spanish, for instance.

People who choose that humble, positive route move forward and have something to show for their time. Others who choose conspiracies, don’t.

Ironically, some things which are used to tackle them. If you have censorship, secrecy, heavy handed enforcement and shut down reasonable debate, then you create more conspiracy theories, not fewer.

It also happens if situations are mishandled, and the political class and police/military etc have a culture of corruption and/or favoring some interest groups over others (including select corporations). These are common already.

Personally, since getting the "vaccines" I feel so much more at ease knowing the government is tracking me through my micro-chip and will offer assistance if I ever need help--say being mugged or falling down a cliff. It's very reassuring.

I suppose with so many to track, at some point the government will need to privatize the system and we will get even more personal assistance when needed in an emergency.

I've nicknamed my microchip H.G. and the drone that follows me Hal.

Space Pineapple Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But what is it that
> transforms are heretofore normal person into a
> conspiracy-spouting looney-tune?

In my experience of my own birth family, I think a great deal of the "what" is the felt need to be "special"--which can be expressed in many different ways.

Having (or THINKING you have) "special" information or insight or human connections makes YOU special (at least, in the opinion of the person who needs to feel special).

Just asking but would this even be a topic on a board outside the United States? IMV many conspiracy theories have their origins in the Constitution and its creation.

I suppose a fair number of conspiracy theories can be tied to the US Constitution, especially the sovereign citizen and juris naturalist crowd and their beliefs.

However, the plethora of vaccine conspiracy theories, general and covid, don't fit that paradigm. Ditto faked moon landing, the CIA blowing up the WTC, no plane crashing into the Pentagon, Covid being a Chinese bioweapon, covid being no worse than the flu (so a piss poor bioweapon?) Bill Gates trying to sterilize third world countries, all climate scientists were bought off by wind powered generator companies, Dominion voting machines switch votes, and antifa invaded the Capitol and yada yada yada.

ziller even had a contribution: Rusty Nelson is encouraging covid vaccination because LDS Inc must own pharmaceutical stocks. It couldn't be because covid is dangerous and vaccinations work. That's just the cover story. Bwah-ha-ha.

Edit to add: Aack! I skipped the flat earthers and Hale-Boppers and the End-Timers. :-/.

Oh, and fluoride is a mind control drug.

Edit 2: and all those "excess deaths" last year in the US - didn't happen. The vital statistics divisions of all the states faked those 400,000 extra deaths. And papering the walls of your apartment with tin foil will block the microchip transmissions. That will also block calls about your car warranty renewal.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2021 11:28AM by Brother Of Jerry.

Chuckling.

When you put it like that I feel like I need to find a grove of trees and kneel and pray to find out which conspiracy theory is the One True Conspiracy Theory.

You are right to look to what he is hearing while sitting in the pews, probably mask-less, once or twice (or more!) per week.

A beloved family member of mine hears all kinds of bizarre, conspiratorial and anti-vaccine untruths through her church, the friends from there, recommended podcasts from those folks, etc.

It's heart-breaking, I know. I'm sorry you have to deal with this change in who he is.

Europe spent over 300 years deporting their schizophrenics as stoop labor and fertilizer. They got out of hand over here and the squatters ran away west. An invasive species took over North America, and we are it.