Bad Conspiracy Theorizing Alert
I've seen this a lot with the recent ebola situation, but it certainly runs through everything that falls under the term "conspiracy theory".
So, here are a few hallmarks of what I consider "bad conspiracy theorizing":
1) predicting an imminent terrible future: martial law; gun confiscation; mass genocide; everyone dying of disease or radiation; rounding up of the general population into concentration camps
2) pompous, complete certainty in your theory; acting as if you know exactly what happened without any doubt; rejecting other ideas out of hand; not fully considering other theories
3) calling every weird thing a psyop and/or calling everything fake/staged; overuse of the "crisis actor" idea.
4) being overly paranoid about the government and acting as if it is a monolithic entity of malevolence; overly simplifying a large complex entity.
5) drawing extreme conclusions from vague or fuzzy photo imagery.
6) not showing sources for information or videos or photos. (This one drives me CRAZY.)
7) not showing due skepticism from someone making a wild claim; not fully questioning an interview subject.
8) showing tons of photos, tons of quotes and unrefined information, writing extremely long posts but not giving any sort of synopsis or abstract or doing any real synthesis of the material. These theorists are kind of insidious because they kind of numb you with too much info and make it hard to pass on a clear message to others. It's also hard to know how they have time to do so much research.
The biggest themes I see in bad conspiracy theorizing are:
1) paranoia about guns
2) paranoia that the government is going to enact martial law
3) paranoia that the government is going to kill us all by Ebola or some infectious agent or toxin.
Alex Jones of course is a huge offender here. But there are seemingly endless weird conservative-leaning conspiracy blogs that amaze me by writing LONG posts about some issue but then just being useless because there is too much unrefined information. IMO, the worst are many of the people who make YouTube videos about Sandy Hook, the Boston bombing, or some other suspicious event. Republicans/conservatives tend to be very bad, even very dumb, conspiracy theorizers. And yes, I'm sure I have done some of this too, as much as I may strive to not. I think early on, I did this more but have tried to not do this in more recent years.
The MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION, of course, is whether these "bad conspiracy theorists" are just dumb, or are lazy or are some sort of intel agents put out to muddle the field and make the conspiracy theory look bad. Of course, it's likely all three types are out there. The bigger ones, like Alex Jones, are clearly agents of some sort. A tricky one is Republican politicians-- most likely they are just kind of dumb and susceptible to people feeding them bad ideas. The real problem is that in all of this "bad conspiracy theorizing", there is usually some germ of truth and some good info. It just gets swamped out or discredited by the problems noted above.
So, here are a few hallmarks of what I consider "bad conspiracy theorizing":
1) predicting an imminent terrible future: martial law; gun confiscation; mass genocide; everyone dying of disease or radiation; rounding up of the general population into concentration camps
2) pompous, complete certainty in your theory; acting as if you know exactly what happened without any doubt; rejecting other ideas out of hand; not fully considering other theories
3) calling every weird thing a psyop and/or calling everything fake/staged; overuse of the "crisis actor" idea.
4) being overly paranoid about the government and acting as if it is a monolithic entity of malevolence; overly simplifying a large complex entity.
5) drawing extreme conclusions from vague or fuzzy photo imagery.
6) not showing sources for information or videos or photos. (This one drives me CRAZY.)
7) not showing due skepticism from someone making a wild claim; not fully questioning an interview subject.
8) showing tons of photos, tons of quotes and unrefined information, writing extremely long posts but not giving any sort of synopsis or abstract or doing any real synthesis of the material. These theorists are kind of insidious because they kind of numb you with too much info and make it hard to pass on a clear message to others. It's also hard to know how they have time to do so much research.
The biggest themes I see in bad conspiracy theorizing are:
1) paranoia about guns
2) paranoia that the government is going to enact martial law
3) paranoia that the government is going to kill us all by Ebola or some infectious agent or toxin.
Alex Jones of course is a huge offender here. But there are seemingly endless weird conservative-leaning conspiracy blogs that amaze me by writing LONG posts about some issue but then just being useless because there is too much unrefined information. IMO, the worst are many of the people who make YouTube videos about Sandy Hook, the Boston bombing, or some other suspicious event. Republicans/conservatives tend to be very bad, even very dumb, conspiracy theorizers. And yes, I'm sure I have done some of this too, as much as I may strive to not. I think early on, I did this more but have tried to not do this in more recent years.
The MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION, of course, is whether these "bad conspiracy theorists" are just dumb, or are lazy or are some sort of intel agents put out to muddle the field and make the conspiracy theory look bad. Of course, it's likely all three types are out there. The bigger ones, like Alex Jones, are clearly agents of some sort. A tricky one is Republican politicians-- most likely they are just kind of dumb and susceptible to people feeding them bad ideas. The real problem is that in all of this "bad conspiracy theorizing", there is usually some germ of truth and some good info. It just gets swamped out or discredited by the problems noted above.
posted by spooked at 1:57 PM
7 Comments:
Agree with some of what you said, but there's too much evidence that Sandy Hook WAS hoax/conspiracy. You must not have spent much time studying bout it. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure you'd agree with it.
Jonah was inside the whale for 3
days. Jesus was in his tomb for 3 days.
Yet you believe AP was right about 3 being a code by evil PTB, but
Ssndy Hook wasn't a conspiracy.
Unlike yourself, I won't resort to
calling you a "stupid troll" - just someone who hasn't studied all the available facts - and thought critically about them.
wow. i have a lot to say but i was sidelined by the fact that the previous comment was posted @3:03 -
you coudn't have planned a better 33.
i am giving up entirely.
you are the man! see ya around old freind.
james ha.
Why are you so superstitious?
There's a puff piece about a house for sale in today's WSJ. One photo sgows THREE candles perched on the edge of a swimming pool. Does that scare you too?
In almost any residential neighborhood, you usually will see THREE vehicles very near to each other.
Do you know anything about world religions? THREE is the most-often found symbol in them.
The irrational superstition about THREE is something this site is fixated on...despite that the owner says he got the idea from a genuine, certified, paranoid nut.
Have you ever visited his web "site" and read some of his truly bizarre ravings?
Relax...with EXLAX. The candy with fluid drive.7995
Why are you so superstitious?
There's a puff piece about a house for sale in today's WSJ. One photo sgows THREE candles perched on the edge of a swimming pool. Does that scare you too?
In almost any residential neighborhood, you usually will see THREE vehicles very near to each other.
Do you know anything about world religions? THREE is the most-often found symbol in them.
The irrational superstition about THREE is something this site is fixated on...despite that the owner says he got the idea from a genuine, certified, paranoid nut.
Have you ever visited his web "site" and read some of his truly bizarre ravings?
Relax...with EXLAX. The candy with fluid drive.7995
As I've posted here before, I do think Sandy Hook was a conspiracy. I imagine you know that too.
Please stop trolling me about the 3/33 motif. It is tiresome. If my 3/33 posts bug you, just stop coming here or just deal with it. I am not going to stop pointing out 33s because some anonymous commenter repeatedly trolls me about it.
good for you spooked - fuck that guy s/he is a troll and tries to make you look foolish based on 33 alone.
the reality is that you know more about 9/11 than anybody else does, and that is why s/he tries to discredit you.
do you remember "conspiracy smasher" ? i can't remember any of those other fags names but they were all trying to discredit you way back when.
fuck it - it is all about 9/11.
The truth is that in any conversation there can be a fairly even exchange of ideas if you can just move yourself down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs a little bit and not focus on your own stress.
The 10 Commandments of Logic
1. Thou shall not attack the person's character, but the argument. [Ad hominem]
2. Thou shall not misrepresent or exaggerate a person's argument in order to make them easier to attack. [Straw man fallacy]
3. Thou shall not use small numbers to represent the whole. [Hasty generalization]
4. Thou shalt not argue thy position by assuming its conclusion is true. [Begging the question]
5. Thou shall not claim that because something occurred before, it must be the cause. [Post Hoc/False cause]
6. Thou shall not reduce the argument down to two possibilities. [False dichotomy]
7. Thou shall not argue that, because of our ignorance, your claim must be true or false. [Ad ignorantum]
8. Thou shall not lay the burden of proof onto him that is questioning the claim. [Burden of proof reversal]
9. Thou shall not "this" follows "that" when it has no logical connection. [Non sequitur]
10. Thou shall not claim that because a premise is popular, therefore it must be true. [Bandwagon fallacy]
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