Trump is a fucking moron. However, he did not respond “Big deal” - it was part of his sentence “they made such a big deal…” If you listen to the interview, this is so obvious it shouldn’t even need to be pointed out. Misinformation like this does harm to the cause. Plus, it’s super annoying.
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When you look at those huge conspiracy grids, where everything is connected in a complex spiderweb, they are nearly impossible to make useful sense of. It’s like “six degrees of Kevin Bacon”-- everyone is connected somehow, including people they think are “the good guys”, it’s just that they rule them out.
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I wouldn’t really characterize any of that as a “conspiracy” though since it’s all happening right out in the open.
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I never really considered secrecy mandatory, is it? Like, I would consider Tammany Hall under Boss Tweed to be a conspiracy, but it was shamelessly out in the open. I guess some would need to be, like conspiracies to assassinate this or that person, but for the most part I think of them as just the coordination of power between the empowered toward a nefarious purpose.
I just looked it up and yeah, the definitions do more often than not include the word “secret”. I just never thought of it that way. I wonder if “everyone knows, but the ones who benefit won’t admit it” counts as secret…
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I have real mixed feelings about linking this material. In the same way that some brain chemistry makes one prone to substance addiction, I think some brain chemistry makes you prone to conspiracy addiction. I think that the huge glut of interconnected information systems in which we now swim overwhelms some people’s pattern matching wetware, and the yarn murder-boards are a manifestation of the downward spiral into ghost-patterns.
One the one hand, I think it’s irresponsible to link to the interview in the same way it would be irresponsible to leave a pile of cocaine on the lunch table in a high-school cafeteria. On the other hand, I read the interview, and it reminded me of someone I knew growing up, who I watched first-hand descend into the maelstrom.
You can see the faulty pattern-matching constantly looking for footing. Elon Musk, isn’t he a bad guy? You know, I thought he was good, but his cars have star-link, maybe he’s a bad guy. It’s a fluid world, where people clutch to some shared pillars (Her emails!) like a life-jacket.
It’s possible the world we’ve built has become too complex for our monkey-brains to internally model. Maybe this is what extinction by information overload looks like. In the end, I felt sorry for the guy, while raging at the damage he and the Qs are wreaking.
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I am just AMAZED that that particular photo didn’t set off EVERY SINGLE conspiracy theorist in the world. Instead, crickets.
Just imagine Obama doing that instead of Trump and what would have happened. It would have been like World War Z in the streets with AK-47s and self-immolation on every street corner. Minds would have asploded.
Instead, the people who think they’re looking out for us, the first-warning conspiracy minders, just shrugged it off. Trump touched a glowing globe, so what, happens every day.
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My analogy was supposed to refer to real life conspiracies like the Watergate break-in, or organised crime, or the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, or the conspiracy to discredit smoking. Those are actual conspiracies that were uncovered. So you start seeing conspiracies everywhere.
Our human brains are all too well wired to recognise patterns, to see people pulling strings and to believe those who claim to see who is pulling the strings. It’s a big part of why people fall for conspiracies.
I just think people with a little artistic bent like this poor person are even more susceptible, that having a talent actually can harm if the ability to question one’s own beliefs gets short circuited. And it gets even harder if you get it confused with Imposter Syndrome.
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So’s the Unabomber’s manifesto. Ted Kaczynski is still a crackpot and a murderer. And there’s a helluva lotta overlap between QAnon followers and jackasses who agree with Kaczynski.
Alas, that’s not how conspiracy theorists think. If empirical evidence mattered to them they wouldn’t be delusional in the first place. When their fantasies falls apart they’ll invent new ones to rationalize it.
ETA: Sorry, @thomdunn. I didn’t mean to snipe at you. I’m just in a foul mood.
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New File Category to drop Monroe’s type of shit into: OTHERWISE, I’D STARVE.
Fascinating? You used that to describe someone whose work makes the world a worse place?
Shakes head.
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I don’t think this post achieves it, but I think there is a ton of value in studying the people and recruiting materials for fringe and hate groups. Knowing what hooks are used to onboard people allows for better attempts to break that cycle. It also allows you to spot subtle uses of language and memes to spot someone who might be sliding into that world, or already be deeply committed. One of the (not always intentional, but usually present) techniques for dragging someone into fringe groups, whether cults, hate groups, or weird political groups is to induce subtle language shifts that will lead people further into your world.
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