Online
I'm looking forward to our new Nanoparticle Overlords....
90% of Americans believe at least one conspiracy theory (2 Viewers)
- Thread starterOptimus Prime
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
- Joined
- Aug 1, 1997
- Messages
- 24,764
- Reaction score
- 22,555
- Age
- 54
- Location
- The People's Republic of Indianastan
Offline
I've heard that they can pass right through underwear and end up on seats like in waiting rooms, restaurants, busses and planes
- Joined
- Aug 1, 1997
- Messages
- 24,764
- Reaction score
- 22,555
- Age
- 54
- Location
- The People's Republic of Indianastan
Offline
I was just informed about a conspiracy to make 10% of America think 90% of Americans believe in at least one conspiracy.
Results are the remaining 10% non conspiracy folks now believe a conspiracy.
Everyone except for Pete Carmichael. He clearly doesn't believe in thinking anything.
Results are the remaining 10% non conspiracy folks now believe a conspiracy.
Everyone except for Pete Carmichael. He clearly doesn't believe in thinking anything.
Last edited:
OP
OP
- Joined
- Jul 18, 1998
- Messages
- 25,380
- Reaction score
- 55,064
Online
OP
OP
- Joined
- Jul 18, 1998
- Messages
- 25,380
- Reaction score
- 55,064
Online
Good article about someone who escaped the clutches of online conspiracy theories
============================
Brent Lee struggles to explain why he used to believe that a cabal of evil satanic paedophiles was working to establish a new world order. He pauses, looks sheepish, and says: “I cringe at all this now.”
For 15 years, Lee collected signs that so-called Illuminati overlords were controlling global events. He convinced himself that secret societies were running politics, banks, religious institutions and the entertainment industry, and that most terrorist attacks were actually government-organised ritual sacrifices.
He was also inclined to believe in UFOs, and that Stanley Kubrick staged and directed the filming of the moon landing. He saw satanic symbols in the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony and spent most of his time discussing these theories with an online community of fellow believers.
But in 2018 something shifted, and he began to find the new wave of conspiracy theories increasingly implausible. “I was sick of it. I felt, I can’t deal with hearing this any more because it’s no longer what I believe, so I just logged off the internet,” he says.
Now Lee is trying to help other conspiracy theorists to question their worldview. He will address a conference in Poland on disinformation in October, and has launched a podcast unpicking why he held these beliefs so fervently and why he was so deluded.
Amiable and articulate, Lee is disarmingly willing to admit that he got things spectacularly wrong, but it is still challenging to have a conversation with him about his abandoned belief system. Most of the theories seem so preposterous that the process of trying to understand them becomes exhausting.
When I strain to follow the logic, he says: “Don’t try to get me to make it make sense because it doesn’t. This is why I get so embarrassed about what I believed. You just buy into this ideology and think that’s the way the world works.”
His reasons for abandoning the “truther” movement (truthers believe official accounts of big events are designed to conceal the truth from the public) are also hard to slot into a conventional worldview.
Lee veers between feeling ashamed and amused by his own convictions while also pointing out that it would be a mistake to dismiss these ideas with an impatient eye roll, because they are very dangerous.
Versions of the same ideas have gained greater currency in the years since he stepped away from them. In the US, the influence of QAnon has shifted from the fringes to the mainstream, and social media has been flooded with the group’s misinformation.
A 2020 Ipsos poll found that 17% of Americans believed that “a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media”……..
What made him vulnerable? Partly, he blames his education. “I wasn’t taught how to assess information or how to do research,” he says. “I don’t think I lacked intelligence but I was very naive about politics and how the world actually works.”
He had a disrupted education: first, at a US high school on the Frankfurt military base where he spent much of his childhood with his English mother and American stepfather, who was serving in the US air force; later, at a college in England, from which he was expelled (for smoking weed) and started playing in a band.
He spent hours on music production on his computer and developed sophisticated internet skills, at a time when most people were barely online.
This gave him early access to sites run by conspiracy theorists such as David Icke; soon he was spending nine hours at a stretch consuming truther content online.
His friends, family and fellow band members were bored by his obsessions and he gradually withdrew to focus on online friendships with people who were also ready to believe that the Illuminati and Freemasons had infiltrated global governments……
Naomi Klein examines the mushrooming of conspiracism in her new book Doppelganger, noting that people often come under its sway because they are searching for a practical solution to a sense of unfairness. Conspiracists have a “fantasy of justice”, hoping that the evil-doing elites can be arrested and stopped.
“Conspiracy theorists get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right,” she writes. “The feeling that every human misery is someone else’s profit … the feeling that important truths are being hidden.”
She quotes digital journalism scholar Marcus Gilroy-Ware’s conclusion that: “Conspiracy theories are a misfiring of a healthy and justifiable political instinct: suspicion.”…….
www.theguardian.com
============================
Brent Lee struggles to explain why he used to believe that a cabal of evil satanic paedophiles was working to establish a new world order. He pauses, looks sheepish, and says: “I cringe at all this now.”
For 15 years, Lee collected signs that so-called Illuminati overlords were controlling global events. He convinced himself that secret societies were running politics, banks, religious institutions and the entertainment industry, and that most terrorist attacks were actually government-organised ritual sacrifices.
He was also inclined to believe in UFOs, and that Stanley Kubrick staged and directed the filming of the moon landing. He saw satanic symbols in the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony and spent most of his time discussing these theories with an online community of fellow believers.
But in 2018 something shifted, and he began to find the new wave of conspiracy theories increasingly implausible. “I was sick of it. I felt, I can’t deal with hearing this any more because it’s no longer what I believe, so I just logged off the internet,” he says.
Now Lee is trying to help other conspiracy theorists to question their worldview. He will address a conference in Poland on disinformation in October, and has launched a podcast unpicking why he held these beliefs so fervently and why he was so deluded.
Amiable and articulate, Lee is disarmingly willing to admit that he got things spectacularly wrong, but it is still challenging to have a conversation with him about his abandoned belief system. Most of the theories seem so preposterous that the process of trying to understand them becomes exhausting.
When I strain to follow the logic, he says: “Don’t try to get me to make it make sense because it doesn’t. This is why I get so embarrassed about what I believed. You just buy into this ideology and think that’s the way the world works.”
His reasons for abandoning the “truther” movement (truthers believe official accounts of big events are designed to conceal the truth from the public) are also hard to slot into a conventional worldview.
Lee veers between feeling ashamed and amused by his own convictions while also pointing out that it would be a mistake to dismiss these ideas with an impatient eye roll, because they are very dangerous.
Versions of the same ideas have gained greater currency in the years since he stepped away from them. In the US, the influence of QAnon has shifted from the fringes to the mainstream, and social media has been flooded with the group’s misinformation.
A 2020 Ipsos poll found that 17% of Americans believed that “a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media”……..
What made him vulnerable? Partly, he blames his education. “I wasn’t taught how to assess information or how to do research,” he says. “I don’t think I lacked intelligence but I was very naive about politics and how the world actually works.”
He had a disrupted education: first, at a US high school on the Frankfurt military base where he spent much of his childhood with his English mother and American stepfather, who was serving in the US air force; later, at a college in England, from which he was expelled (for smoking weed) and started playing in a band.
He spent hours on music production on his computer and developed sophisticated internet skills, at a time when most people were barely online.
This gave him early access to sites run by conspiracy theorists such as David Icke; soon he was spending nine hours at a stretch consuming truther content online.
His friends, family and fellow band members were bored by his obsessions and he gradually withdrew to focus on online friendships with people who were also ready to believe that the Illuminati and Freemasons had infiltrated global governments……
Naomi Klein examines the mushrooming of conspiracism in her new book Doppelganger, noting that people often come under its sway because they are searching for a practical solution to a sense of unfairness. Conspiracists have a “fantasy of justice”, hoping that the evil-doing elites can be arrested and stopped.
“Conspiracy theorists get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right,” she writes. “The feeling that every human misery is someone else’s profit … the feeling that important truths are being hidden.”
She quotes digital journalism scholar Marcus Gilroy-Ware’s conclusion that: “Conspiracy theories are a misfiring of a healthy and justifiable political instinct: suspicion.”…….
Escape from the rabbit hole: the conspiracy theorist who abandoned his dangerous beliefs
For 15 years, Brent Lee spent hours each day consuming ‘truther’ content online. Then he logged off. Can he convince his former friends to question their worldview?
OP
OP
- Joined
- Jul 18, 1998
- Messages
- 25,380
- Reaction score
- 55,064
Online
OP
OP
- Joined
- Jul 18, 1998
- Messages
- 25,380
- Reaction score
- 55,064
Online
Online
Well, i survived so far, anyone know how long it supposed to take to turn into a Zombie?
Online
the irony is the same tools used for understanding post-modern art and performance can also be used to believe in conspiracy theoriesGood article about someone who escaped the clutches of online conspiracy theories
============================
Brent Lee struggles to explain why he used to believe that a cabal of evil satanic paedophiles was working to establish a new world order. He pauses, looks sheepish, and says: “I cringe at all this now.”
For 15 years, Lee collected signs that so-called Illuminati overlords were controlling global events. He convinced himself that secret societies were running politics, banks, religious institutions and the entertainment industry, and that most terrorist attacks were actually government-organised ritual sacrifices.
He was also inclined to believe in UFOs, and that Stanley Kubrick staged and directed the filming of the moon landing. He saw satanic symbols in the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony and spent most of his time discussing these theories with an online community of fellow believers.
But in 2018 something shifted, and he began to find the new wave of conspiracy theories increasingly implausible. “I was sick of it. I felt, I can’t deal with hearing this any more because it’s no longer what I believe, so I just logged off the internet,” he says.
Now Lee is trying to help other conspiracy theorists to question their worldview. He will address a conference in Poland on disinformation in October, and has launched a podcast unpicking why he held these beliefs so fervently and why he was so deluded.
Amiable and articulate, Lee is disarmingly willing to admit that he got things spectacularly wrong, but it is still challenging to have a conversation with him about his abandoned belief system. Most of the theories seem so preposterous that the process of trying to understand them becomes exhausting.
When I strain to follow the logic, he says: “Don’t try to get me to make it make sense because it doesn’t. This is why I get so embarrassed about what I believed. You just buy into this ideology and think that’s the way the world works.”
His reasons for abandoning the “truther” movement (truthers believe official accounts of big events are designed to conceal the truth from the public) are also hard to slot into a conventional worldview.
Lee veers between feeling ashamed and amused by his own convictions while also pointing out that it would be a mistake to dismiss these ideas with an impatient eye roll, because they are very dangerous.
Versions of the same ideas have gained greater currency in the years since he stepped away from them. In the US, the influence of QAnon has shifted from the fringes to the mainstream, and social media has been flooded with the group’s misinformation.
A 2020 Ipsos poll found that 17% of Americans believed that “a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media”……..
What made him vulnerable? Partly, he blames his education. “I wasn’t taught how to assess information or how to do research,” he says. “I don’t think I lacked intelligence but I was very naive about politics and how the world actually works.”
He had a disrupted education: first, at a US high school on the Frankfurt military base where he spent much of his childhood with his English mother and American stepfather, who was serving in the US air force; later, at a college in England, from which he was expelled (for smoking weed) and started playing in a band.
He spent hours on music production on his computer and developed sophisticated internet skills, at a time when most people were barely online.
This gave him early access to sites run by conspiracy theorists such as David Icke; soon he was spending nine hours at a stretch consuming truther content online.
His friends, family and fellow band members were bored by his obsessions and he gradually withdrew to focus on online friendships with people who were also ready to believe that the Illuminati and Freemasons had infiltrated global governments……
Naomi Klein examines the mushrooming of conspiracism in her new book Doppelganger, noting that people often come under its sway because they are searching for a practical solution to a sense of unfairness. Conspiracists have a “fantasy of justice”, hoping that the evil-doing elites can be arrested and stopped.
“Conspiracy theorists get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right,” she writes. “The feeling that every human misery is someone else’s profit … the feeling that important truths are being hidden.”
She quotes digital journalism scholar Marcus Gilroy-Ware’s conclusion that: “Conspiracy theories are a misfiring of a healthy and justifiable political instinct: suspicion.”…….
Escape from the rabbit hole: the conspiracy theorist who abandoned his dangerous beliefs
For 15 years, Brent Lee spent hours each day consuming ‘truther’ content online. Then he logged off. Can he convince his former friends to question their worldview?
Once the FaceBook 'Marked safe from Zombie virus" posts land, you're good.
OP
OP
- Joined
- Jul 18, 1998
- Messages
- 25,380
- Reaction score
- 55,064
Online
I do wonder how many of these were started by someone who genuinely believed them versus started as a joke and just took on a life of their own
Was 'the Moon landing was faked' and 'the Earth is flat' originally the equivalent of "Birds aren't real'?
Was 'the Moon landing was faked' and 'the Earth is flat' originally the equivalent of "Birds aren't real'?
Online
That, or started by someone who was mentally ill and was just a delusional person..
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2006
- Messages
- 56,092
- Reaction score
- 90,161
Offline
Didn't you just describe 90% of the posters here?
Online
we are just crazy, there is a difference...
Create an account or login to comment
You must be a member in order to leave a comment
Create account
Create an account on our community. It's easy!
Log in
Already have an account? Log in here.