Let’s be clear: i’m not saying conspiracies doesn’t exist. By conspiracy theories, i mean the plots whose existence is at best highly unlikely, at worst totally senseless, notably if:
-They are breaking the laws of physics.
-They are too costly (logistically and/or financially) to be profitable.
-They are defended by untrustworthy sources (populist or cult leaders, random people, celebrities without expertise in the concerned domain, parodies taken seriously,…).
-They are often involving far-right’s scapegoats.
-They are involving a large amount of people.
-They reject science by principle.
-The interests of the supposed conspirators are unclear or incoherent.
-Their so-called proofs are incoherent, manipulated or are proving nothing at all.
-They would be funny if they were published as parodies in The Onion.
Time really. After a while none of the conspiracies played out, or I just “researched” enough on my own using actual legitimate sources as opposed to YouTube schmucks and learned how to reason things out.
I was a 9/11 truther because there were so many weird coincidences that day, but ultimately had to accept the accident theory. Shit happens.
I went to college and learned that not only was pretty much everything I was raised to believe as a young conservative a lie, but they were obvious lies that didn’t bear any scrutiny whatsoever. I learned everything that made me really uncomfortable when I was young was because I was surrounded by people living their entire lives in bad faith while I was genuinely curious about investigating things and learning why people thought what they did. The other cultists recognized I did not belong in the cult before I did, though my parents still emphatically try to get me to reintegrate because they are absolutely certain that their evidence-free belief system is in my best interests. I was never really integrated in the first place so I didn’t lose much other than a lot of very evil shit.
I used to think the government was hiding evidence of alien UFO encounters to prevent widespread panic. Now I think they’re using general UFO encounters as a cover for weapons testing.
The military-industrial complex doesn’t need to cover up weapons testing with little green men conspiracy theories, because people susceptible to crackpot alien theories pose no threat or obstacle to them. I think those theories are largely self-inflicted.
