The Epsilon semi-morons and the rise of conspiracy theories

[NotHardUp1]

Is it the Brave New (Stupid) World that we live in?

Recently, I have been touched at least twice by near friends who espoused conspiracy theories. One was a Ukrainian who wouldn't hear of getting the COVID vaccine in Ukraine. His first responses were that he believed the whole thing was a hoax, and he may have even alluded to the microchip stuff and Microsoft. I wrote it off to him being a musclehead and not any reader or intellectual, as well as not being very educated, plus in the orbit of Russia (before the invasion.) Then, after he was fleeing Ukraine, it was because the vaccines in Ukraine were supposedly contaminated, not as good, which just seemed like he was hunting for any reason not to give up his position.

The other incident was just this week when an old school mate called up in a moment of boredom, having moved back to the hometown as his mother was dying, and being a bit marooned there after she did. I was very happy to hear from him, but at the end of the call, he texted me a link of some wacko website for such idiot theories, specifically to one denying oil is a "fossil fuel' but part of some dark global control model started by Rockefeller. It was really farcical. He's an engineer.

This makes me wonder what the great appeal that is drawing in so many in this era.

What do you think? Why is it on the rise.

 

[unloadonme]

I hate to turn this into a religious thread Jason, but for as long as people are prepared to believe in God, the attraction of relatively minor nonsense theories such as those you've highlighted is of little surprise. I'm sure social media has a lot to do with it. It's the "I read it on Facebook so it must be true" generation.

 

[Vannie]

I have a Nephew who is like the son I never had. Love him dearly. Well rounded great guy now 45 years old and married to a sweet woman in Ocean County.

But he is a conspiracy theorist with many topics. It started on/from 911 and continues.
He will try to lead me down all kinds of rabbit holes to the point of my exhaustion. Although some things will get you thinking more. Most of the time I just nod my head.

 

[LeicsDom]

I have a friend, a very wordly guy of some 60 years, who, while wholeheartedly embracing vaccines etc is profoundly paranoid about sharing his information in any form. He won't use online banking, he won't use any phone apps that he has to register for. His house is surrounded by CCTV cameras.
He is convinced that round every corner is someone looking to either rob him or hit him over the head
Oddly enough he has both a son and a brother who both believe all the conspiracy theories about vaccines

 

[NotHardUp1]

I hate to turn this into a religious thread Jason, but for as long as people are prepared to believe in God, the attraction of relatively minor nonsense theories such as those you've highlighted is of little surprise. I'm sure social media has a lot to do with it. It's the "I read it on Facebook so it must be true" generation.

The problem with correlating those two is that I don't see people of faith that I know and grew up around more susceptible to swallowing dumb conspiracy theories than secular people I know. I know plenty of rational people of faith who don't suspect the government of deep dark things and who got their vaccines without thinking the white man was trying to pull a Tuskegee Experiment, etc.

 

[rareboy]

I think that collective societal paranoia has always been more common than we suspect.

I think it has exploded around the world because fear and lack of certainties have been weaponized by global mass social media....most of this nonsense might have only had a small cult following it a few centuries ago, but from the spread of newspapers, radio, television and then the internet, suddenly people all over the world are linked together and find common cause in crackhead theories.

And the masters at this game are the compulsive liars who learned that you can fool all the people all of the time and make a living at it.

I would say though, that a lot of this is generated by some human need to believe in something outside of the actual reality of existence. That some force has control over our lives for good or evil and the more helpless we feel ourselves to be, the more we search to identify the cause of it.

For centuries, we have had religion to provide us with imaginary friends and devils to praise and blame.

Suddenly, in the age of flagging belief in deities, we search for other forces at work.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

People are always up to something... the conspiracy folks are right to be suspicious... they're just looking in the wrong place and drawing the wrong conclusions from the information that they do have.

 

[HoodedRat]

I know a couple of acquaintances who are quite happy to take any type of recreational drug, from any source, however dodgy.

But they are opposed to all vaccines, almost to the point of hysteria, because 'you don't know what's in them... man'.

They believe that the governments of the world are using engineered vaccines to kill us off.

It seems to me that it would be far easier to do that by simply releasing cheap, dangerous, drugs onto the recreational market.

 

[Peloso]

I hate to turn this into a religious thread Jason, but for as long as people are prepared to believe in God, the attraction of relatively minor nonsense theories such as those you've highlighted is of little surprise. I'm sure social media has a lot to do with it. It's the "I read it on Facebook so it must be true" generation.

Religion is one of the earliest (and certainly the most far reaching) conspiracy theories.

If you're going to turn to religion to answer the unanswerable, then why not turn to idiotic abstractions to answer the answerable?

In most of today's modern world, the primary needs of man are not food or shelter or safety but comfort. Surrounded by uncertainty, violence, and other people whom are deemed inferior (read: threatening), people are grasping for a sense of comfort.

But at base, I think it's really all about stupidity.



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[fabulouslyghetto]

The human mind is capable of some fantastic things. You'd be surprised how far a little knowledge and a lot of arrogance will take a person who doesn't have a sincere hunger for truth or learning. Once one is convinced they have all the answers, there's seldom, if ever, any hope for recovery.

 

[NotHardUp1]

My guess is that it is a combination of two primary drivers. We live in a post-Watergate era where mass media was given the go-ahead to publish exposes on everything from the Bay of Pigs to Watergate to the Tuskegee Experiment. So, more of the public is aware of actual conspiracies than ever before. In the same vein, more data is available to more people online to eventually tease out reality vs. official versions. The effect of this is to cause many to see shadows where there is no actual thing to cast them.

The second driver is a creeping nihilism. Once the human mind is challenged to deal with too many problems or concerns, it finds a way to deal with those. It's a coping mechanism. In the case of conspiracy theorists, the supposition that almost everything is some kind of fix or sham a) satisfies the need to understand the unknowable, and b) alleviates personal accountability for failure. When your core belief is that the entire world is rigged against you, you then do not have to examine your life for the very real mistakes you made in education, relationships, work ethics, lawbreaking, health, and other factors.

 

[LeicsDom]

I know a couple of acquaintances who are quite happy to take any type of recreational drug, from any source, however dodgy.

I know a guy who is quite happy to inject street steroids but is anti-vax. Go figure!

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

When your core belief is that the entire world is rigged against you, you then do not have to examine your life for the very real mistakes you made in education, relationships, work ethics, lawbreaking, health, and other factors.

I've never found conspiracists to be "Woe is me, nothing I do matters." They work, they march, they protest, they vote, they live normal lives outside of being glued to third-party blogs with goofy alternatives to the truth. Kinda feels like the speeches about "lack of personal responsibility" are just something we default inject into any conversation in America cuz it sounds, in a really superficial way, great on the ears.

They're just looking for answers in a world where nobody is interested in being honest and everyone speaks their opinions as if it's the gospel. I myself have grown utterly weary of know-it-alls who have every answer to every question ever asked and speak with the confidence of an omnipotent higher being. More than ever I go out of my way to differentiate "What I know" from "What I think." Without that barrier we're all peddling some conspiracy or another.

 

[NotHardUp1]

What you describe is the difference between asserting a point firmly, versus softening it with phrases like "what I feel" or "my opinion is." The latter is an evolved manner of speaking that grew in the 20th century that endorses that every view is valid.

In writing classes, and in speech, we are taught to assert points with positive air, and that it is understood implicitly that it is the speaker's official or personal view. When the softening phrases are added, it simply weakens the point being made, and that is not the role of the pursuasive speaker, unless the speech or debate point is made in effort to reconcile or encourage harmony.

In short, the difference is whether points are in debate, or whether speeches are made in an effort to gain consensus in an assembly or group. It's context.

And the vast majority of people I know, whether middle class or poor, do not march, do not actively politic and are passive other than their voting and water cooler talk.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

What you describe is the difference between asserting a point firmly, versus softening it with phrases like "what I feel" or "my opinion is." The latter is an evolved manner of speaking that grew in the 20th century that endorses that every view is valid.

In writing classes, and in speech, we are taught to assert points with positive air, and that it is understood implicitly that it is the speaker's official or personal view. When the softening phrases are added, it simply weakens the point being made, and that is not the role of the pursuasive speaker, unless the speech or debate point is made in effort to reconcile or encourage harmony.

In short, the difference is whether points are in debate, or whether speeches are made in an effort to gain consensus in an assembly or group. It's context.

And the vast majority of people I know, whether middle class or poor, do not march, do not actively politic and are passive other than their voting and water cooler talk.

I cannot describe to you the supernova that goes off in my mind and ears when I hear the phrase "I feel." If one more person says "I feel like" I'm gonna cut my ears off. It's never been followed by anything profound or, minimally, worthwhile.

 

[Alistair]

Elvis is still alive, and aliens crashed in Roswell. It’s nothing new, it just has a better way to be disseminated.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Elvis is still alive, and aliens crashed in Roswell. It’s nothing new, it just has a better way to be disseminated.

Dont forget the microchips in the covid vaccine

 

[unloadonme]

I cannot describe to you the supernova that goes off in my mind and ears when I hear the phrase "I feel." If one more person says "I feel like" I'm gonna cut my ears off. It's never been followed by anything profound or, minimally, worthwhile.

I feel like I should test that assertion.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Elvis is still alive, and aliens crashed in Roswell. It’s nothing new, it just has a better way to be disseminated.

The tabloid headlines of yesteryear were recognized by the majority as yellow journalism, read by many as tongue-in-cheek rags for entertainment, very much akin to the following of the WWF Wrestling shows, Elvira (tiddies vamp) Mistress of the Dark, or Charo (hoochie, hoochie) on Johnny Carson. They were all sendups of reality, with only the lunatic fringe believing them.

But now, with the decades long decay of the U.S. Congress, the naked assertion of plutocrat tax exemptions, and the failure of the government to perform the most basic functions (like save New Orleans' population in the aftermath of a hurricane), then a much larger swath of Americans began believing the worst when it was only implied, not backed up with any evidence.

That is a fundamental change, not merely modal.

And I don't argue it from authority or truth, only opining on what I see. There can be many factors and influences, which is why I made the thread.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I have a Nephew who is like the son I never had. Love him dearly. Well rounded great guy now 45 years old and married to a sweet woman in Ocean County.

But he is a conspiracy theorist with many topics. It started on/from 911 and continues.
He will try to lead me down all kinds of rabbit holes to the point of my exhaustion. Although some things will get you thinking more. Most of the time I just nod my head.

I have a former student, from one of the few advanced sections of sophomores that I once taught, and we have kept in touch across the years and across two of his wives. He was the only student I ever came out to, which was all the more remarkable since he was and is straight, although very progressive and accepting. (In the schools where I taught, there was no acceptance of gay men at all in the 1980's and being out then likely would have resulted in being removed for false reasons in those rural districts. It was technically legal to discriminate against gays in employment, but it would likely have been done on a pretext to avoid a lawsuit.)

He is almost the age of your nephew now, and he had alluded to some things that he justifies with the dark web and other nefarious, almost Illuminati-type refernces. For him, he is in the military in work that involves their intelligence, but knowing him well, I can usually tell when it is embroidered versus something that can be backed up. Whenever he is pressed on them, he becomes frustrated and restates.