Until it’s time to put on the purple track suits.
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Nothing has surprised and dismayed me more than witnessing my dear wife embrace this putrid tomfoolery. I both admire and despise the system of thinking whereby failed predictions prove the correctness of the premise of the selfsame failed prediction. Maddening. How can one reason with a person who is willfully retreating from reason? Still though, as a gesture of support I showed my wife a fresh Q drop. Rather than study it further she just made me flush the toilet immediately.
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Exactly. Like just about every baseless conspiracy theory (the right-wing ones just get there faster).
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Careful about this, because people do sincerely believe this stuff. Many academics didn’t bother studying groups like Flat Earthers at first because people didn’t believe those people really believed that stuff. And sure, some probably don’t- they’re just there because they have friends and Wednesday is doughnut night. However, it is true belief that motivates someone to go try and shoot up a pizza restaurant that didn’t even have a basement.
We are all capable of incredibly strong belief in almost anything. Understanding this mechanism in our brains will be the key to surviving our own ignorance.
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Never thought I’d say this, but I miss the olden days of yore, back when conspiracies involved Elvis’ supposed death.
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Any of it really. I don’t understand the mental gymnastics required to accept that Trumpolini is working to uncover this vast paedophile network while the dude has actively courted a paedophile and continues to wish the best to the other. I don’t get it! I have no real desire to understand these people either but then we have to live with them and that worries me for the future.
I agree with others that it’s a pathological narcissism from a bunch of lonely people feeling they belong to something greater, that they’re part of the light brigade or something that’ll shine a path. Like that interview with the mind-worm guy and his conspiracy mind-maps…
Hopefully a shift is happening soon of those negative ones getting pushed out and the positive ones playing more of an open role. Sadly, we have to push out the negative forces ourselves. We are getting help in the form of sending light codes, sending people like me who are ground crew, light workers, and light warriors. It does surprise me that the light forces have let the evil forces rule earth for so long, but I guess that’s part of the free will contract.
Now it starts to make some sort of sense; it’s exceptionalism. They’re the chosen ones, right? Otherwise they face the prospect of returning to their dreary 9-to-5s like the rest of us worker drones.
Still, we’re gonna have to live with these people.
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And this is inherently false, as far as I understand. It’s not far-right or right-wing, it’s pro-Trump, period.
I agree that we all have our blind spots, however I don’t think it can happen to all of us that we suddenly find ourselves believing in batshitshit crazy stuff like “the idea that pedophile alien lizard people led by Hillary Clinton are running everything”. From my personal and limited experience - which includes the acquaintance of several people who believed shit like that, I can tell you there are people who are more likely to believe that stuff, and others who are less likely, and the difference is pretty obvious pretty fast.
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Cmon, wouldn’t you trolley too? Half this surge of activity is libs getting Qberts fired up just because they can! It’s complete shite all the way down! 
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That’s entirely true. People want to be with the group that “knows stuff”. That’s easy to recognize,and take advantage of. How do you counter it when “knowing stuff” means buying in to conspiracy theories and countering their own best interest?
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…What is God, but the greatest conspiracy theory of all?
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Umberto Eco has entered the chat.
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Immanuel Kant must be turning in his grave and screaming"I told you so!". His whole thing was that it is not the information people have that creates (the) enlightenment but their willingness to be independent thinkers.
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! ( Sapere aude. ) “Have the courage to use your own understanding,” is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.
In fact his whole essay on What is Enlightenment? makes for fascinating reading in the context of Trump and the evolution of the internet as a mass phenomenon.
There is a reason that some of the extreme right want to roll back the enlightenment while others of the more Jordan Peterson vibe try to cosplay as enlightenment figures.
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What a novel idea!
… and basically every other major movement that inspired fanatical devotion back to the beginning of time…
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I mean, I’d argue that Scientology are more trying to imitate religion rather than the enlightenment (like the cult they are) but, yeah, there is a lot of cachet attached to the concept in the western world, so of course everyone wants to be associated with it. Plus, you get to call yourself rational and everyone else irrational, no matter the merits of your case and you get to put on the respectable mantle of philosophy, even if your ideology is a hodgepodge of silly ideas and willful misunderstandings. Like these chucklefucks.
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Well, I think it is more trying to replace Enlightenment with their own, alternative-facts “enlightenment”. I thought of making a collage of Scientology with the Nazis, Soviet Communism, etc., etc., but there were too many. Religion really isn’t any different, either.
They all want to “enlighten” you to the REAL facts of the universe which aren’t apparent to the unschooled. The people who get hoodwinked feel “enlightened.” Suddenly everything makes sense, the universe has an order that wasn’t visible to them before.
Scientology is just eerily close to the Q stuff because they inject this science fiction good v. evil, and tear away at accepted ideas like psychology, etc.
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I don‘t think that more than 5-10% of the people understand what democracy actually means, and on top of that the US democracy is totally fucked up. So I‘m not that surprised that people would replace politicians with experts, there‘s even democratic ideas that aim to achieve this, e.g. some forms of liquid democracy.
An even better summary:
The Truth is Paywalled but the Lies are Free
Most of them don’t, they just see that controversial stuff drives up page views, and that’s . A capitalist economy will inevitably promotes that kind of antisocial behavior.
Critical thinking is also a competency that has to be learned, and many people don’t have it, or just to a limited degree. It is, of course, not the people‘s fault, but the consequence of a system that failed them. Those of us who have learned critical thinking were mostly just lucky to have the right parents, friends or mentors.
The more we achieve equality of opportunity, the more people will be able to develop the competency for critical thinking. And in a society with a more even distribution of wealth more people will find the free time and the energy to actually engage in critical thinking.
Well, if you make them believe that lizards will become so much more powerful when the average temperature rises just one degree more, you might get them all on board 
Edit: fixed line break after quote tag
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It’s really sad. I have a number of family members who have fallen for this shit and with kids of their own. One can only debunk so much. We’ll never truly know where this totally originated. It is now a wind up multi-headed hydra.
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I’m reminded of the near-future scenario Neal Stephenson presents in his novel “Fall”, where those with the means to do so hire editors (automated or human) to filter out fact and truth from the swirling media sea of misinformation, conspiracy theories and other BS and lies. The unfiltered dreck is mainly targetted at and consumed by what Stephenson calls “Ameristan”.
Paywalls to reputable news sources are just a blunt, primitive version of that, but the affluent have always had their ways of enforcing information asymmetry. Back when Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal, there was much fretting that he’d Fox-ify the news coverage (the op-ed page was already an asylum for right-wing nuts) but I wasn’t worried. Subscriptions to the paper were expensive because the main purpose of the straight reportage was to help the readers who could afford it make and keep their money, and Rupert wasn’t going to mess with that business model or upset his fellow wealthy people.
The same goes for media literacy and financial literacy. There’s a reason why incorporating these three competencies into K-12 curricula is a very low priority for most American public school districts, and why the teachers who make sure their students learn them despite that are the best of the best.
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I’ve mentioned before, how one source explained how/where The Enlightenment fits in.
(Shhh… that’s like blurting out “Niagra Falls”!)
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