The tagline for most of the episodes of The X-Files
No one is an island unto themselves. We all live our lives together within a society that's held together by tenuous threads that interconnect us. One of the most cherished and claimed values of western societies is freedom of thought. We're all entitled to our own opinions and can believe what we want to believe. But that's only true to the extent of what's inside the box that we call life. We first have to agree that there is a box and it has six sides. The only way the world can work is if like-minded people can agree on certain fundamental truths. If we all look up at the sky, we at least have to agree the sky is blue. Because if we can't agree on what the nature of reality is, then we can't really have a conversation that goes anywhere. And the inability to have a reasonable discussion impacts important public policies, because you can't debate facts if some people believe 2 and 2 equaling 4 is a conspiracy.
And sometimes the contours of this tendency are an interesting mix of media influences and human stupidity. At no other point in human history has the amount of information and art that's accessible today via technology been available to the populace. On the very same computer or device you're using to read this sentence, almost every painting, image, sculpture, book, film, TV show, porn movie, song, symphony, and bit of information that has ever existed might be just a click away. If you want to learn to speak Mandarin or how to change the oil in your car, it's out there. So in theory, the internet and media as a whole should be tools that clarify and educate. However, it's more often than not a medium that obfuscates and one in which the most ridiculous conspiracy theories come to fruition and spread. How many electrons have been wasted looking for Kenyan birth certificates, death panels, and half-assed "smoking guns" about Benghazi?
So, as we live in an internet age of viral half-truths, why do so many people believe bullshit when they have all the information necessary to discover the truth sitting in front of them? And which one of the various conspiracy theories pisses you off the most and is the most ridiculous?
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“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.” ―Alan Moore
Joan Rivers died last week at the age of 81. However, for some people, it couldn't just be that an 81-year-old woman had health problems and sadly passed away. Instead, according to some, Rivers was either
killed by President Obama or was murdered by Beyoncé and Jay Z, whom they allege are
members of the Illuminati. Of course, there's no evidence to support either theory, they're just asking (dumb) questions. Of course, in the history of the world and our own history as a country, there have been times where weird shit has happened and the government has been shown to be acting in a nefarious manner. Sometimes crazy theories are true and have to be looked at and hard questions asked. But, in and of itself, that's not proof that
every theory may be true.
Also, instead of providing accuracy, the internet can make things worse instead of disproving bullshit. When people used to believe in crazy and preposterous theories, there was probably little or no outlet to promote such ridiculousness. With the internet, it allows every kook to find other kooks and reinforce their kookiness because … "Hey, you may be on to something."
From Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy:
In a sense, the loudest proponents stick to their movement the way a racist sticks with their prejudices. You can tear down their specific claims about a particular group of people point by point, but in the end the racist simply hates people in that group.
It’s not rational, or logical, or reasonable. It just is.
And this is where entertainment, news policies, and this sort of thing intersect. The quote from Alan Moore is only half right. Conspiracy theory is comforting because it gives order to chaos, but it also shifts blame and makes the world more exciting than it really is. The way the news media covers most issues plays right into this. News programs have to always give "both sides" of the story, even when one side of the argument is obviously wrong and insane, because it makes for good television to see people screaming at each other.
And the way most news stories are covered has become more infotainment. In most movies and television shows, there is someone behind the curtains. There are giant, secret societies attempting to control the world. So every reporter is looking for the next Watergate and every idiot like Alex Jones and Glenn Beck—and their followers—sees themselves like Mulder and Scully fighting off the forces of the Cigarette Smoking Man, hence the reason the -gate suffix is attached to every potential scandal that makes its way onto a website or into a cable news program.
Beyond that, it creates a society where no one has to accept reality as it is if they don't want to.
- My political philosophy didn't really lose. The election was rigged.
- We're the real majority and the socialist-fascist president is being kept in office illegally.
- My team didn't really lose. The refs and league fucked us to get the result they wanted.
If no one can accept reality, there can't be any growth. People are supposed to learn from their mistakes. But in a world where existence is a multiple-choice option, there are no mistakes. There's just a bunch of people screaming at each other about how the other side is wrong or part of the conspiracy.
Usually most nonsense comes in two forms:
- An irrational and adamant belief the universe behaves in a certain way, and any information that contradicts that belief must be false, contrived or concocted, no matter how much evidence to the contrary is produced. If science disagrees with the belief, then science is wrong.
- An irrational and adamant belief that there must be some hidden or secret agenda to different governmental and private structures, even if it's not supported by facts or evidence. When evidence and science disagree with the belief, they are either another part of the conspiracy or not the "right" evidence and science, leading to some absurd pseudoscience argument.
For example, the Apollo moon landings are one of the greatest accomplishments in human history. Millions of people, with their own eyes, watched NASA launch rockets toward the moon. We have pictures and video documenting the journeys. The astronauts even brought back Moon rocks. And yet there are still idiots who think the whole thing happened on a sound stage in Nevada.
These are among some of the most popular and absurd conspiracy theories that get play on Facebook, Twitter, and social media. Just remember while reading them, people actually believe this.
- Climate Change is a hoax designed to micromanage the way people live—No matter how much science is put on the table, or alternative reasons for why getting off fossil fuels is a good idea (i.e., even if you think climate change is bullshit, wouldn't it still be a good idea to have alternative forms of energy?), there are people who believe it's all a liberal hoax designed to take people's pickup trucks away and force communism and socialism down their throats.
From Paul Krugman at the New York Times:
Some people say that bizarre conspiracy theories play a disturbingly large role in current American political discourse. And they're right. For example, many conservative politicians and pundits seem to agree with James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, who has declared that "man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
- 9/11 was an "inside job"—What does it take for a person to watch two airplanes loaded with jet fuel crash into enormous skyscrapers, then watch the buildings burn for hours and collapse on live television, causing a massive amount of damage around Lower Manhattan, and then call up a friend and say, "I don't really believe that was the cause?"
- Vaccines cause autism—I've written about the vaccination issue before, going one by one through some of the more oft-repeated anti-vax claims. Some felt I was mean with the title of that diary ("Anti-Vaccine Idiocy"). In the comments there were some who felt I shouldn't have called the anti-vaccine movement idiotic if I wanted to persuade 'em. But if something is ridiculous and idiotic, it deserves to be called ridiculous and idiotic, since hopefully those who have an open mind can recognize it as ridiculous and idiotic. And in this case, it's not only ridiculous and idiotic, it's also dangerous to public health. What else can you call it when you have a place like the Huffington Post putting out articles advising people to treat the flu with diluted water that's supposed to have a memory (aka homeopathy), instead of vaccination?
- JFK was assassinated by...—The mafia? Cubans? Russians? The CIA? Time travelers from the year 5000?
- Phantom Time—According to this theory, today is not September 8, 2014. The real date is September 8, 1717. According to the "Phantom Time" hypothesis, 297 years of the Middle Ages (614-911 A.D.) never happened. Artifacts ascribed to this period of time were classified by accident, misinterpretation or deliberate deception. And all events that occurred during those years either happened in a different time period or is a fiction. Of course, this hypothesis has some problems. For one thing, there is an organization that was around between the 7th to 10th centuries, kept records and still exists today. It's called the Catholic Church. Those who like to wear tinfoil hats might respond by saying, "Well, how do you know it's not the Catholics who added 297 years to the calendar?" In order for this theory to work, you have to believe that every other culture on the planet is also in on adopting an erroneous date (i.e., current Hebrew Year 5774, current Chinese Year 4712, etc.). And beyond that, there are these things called stars and other astronomical events (e.g., eclipses) that are mentioned in records that correlate to a date, since they could have only appeared in a certain portion of the sky above a given point at a certain time.
- Fluoride in the water—The first step in the communist conspiracy to weaken American vigor and rob us of our precious bodily fluids.
- Chemtrails—When an airplane flies through the sky, water vapor in the engine exhaust and changes in air pressure cause thin artificial clouds to form behind behind the aircraft. See, a nice scientific explanation. However, that's just the story the government wants you to believe. In fact, those contrails are chemtrails filled with chemicals to either control the population and make us docile, part of the big pharma conspiracy (in addition to fluoridation) to make us sick or ... aliens?
- Time Cube—If there's one thing common to most conspiracy theory hangouts on the internet, it's that they look like they were an Angelfire website made in the 1990s. No other website proves this maxim like Gene Ray's Time Cube. It's a mostly incomprehensible rant that posits that all of physics is wrong and a day is not really a day. It is, in fact, four separate days occurring simultaneously.
- KFC serves mutant chicken—KFC used to be Kentucky Fried Chicken. Around the time of the name change, an urban legend sprang up that KFC was forced by the government to change the name because they don't really serve chicken. Instead, the theory goes, the colonel's secret recipe included six-legged, genetically engineered mutant chickens. The real reason for the name change was that KFC marketing said health-conscious customers were turned off by the "fried" part of their moniker.
- Doctors concocted the AIDS virus—I was watching HBO's The Normal Heart, which is based on the play of the same name by Larry Kramer, in which one of the characters claims the HIV virus may have been created in a bioweapons lab to target gays. In the play and movie, it's a moment where the character is at the end of his rope and is desperately searching for an answer to why it's happening. It's not meant to be rational. But this sort of thinking comes in different forms. I once met a man who firmly believed the HIV virus was created by the government to kill black people, and nothing I could say would convince him otherwise. Another permutation of this one are the people who refuse to believe 30 years of research and claim AIDS is not caused by the HIV virus, which has complicated fighting the virus in some countries.
- Aliens (or mutants) crashed in New Mexico—Some years back, journalist Annie Jacobsen threw some red meat to the tinfoil hat crowd by claiming that an unnamed "source" told her the craft that crashed at Roswell was of Soviet origin, built with Nazi technology, carried mutant children created by Dr. Mengele, and its purpose was to cause a panic of an alien invasion in the United States. So to review, the Russians, with the aid of Nazi Super-Science, genetically engineered two mutant child pilots. And did it six years before Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. They then put the mutant kids into some sort of flying disc (which the kids would've had to have been taught how to fly, and still been capable of operating after undergoing severe physiological changes) and instead of flying over a major American city to cause a panic, they crashed it in the middle of the desert. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?