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The Conspiracy Fact Thread


misteraven

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This reply is mostly for @misteravenand based on the first post (haven't read any further) but will hopefully be of use to others as well.

 

There are a few 'facts' around conspiracy theories:

- Humans crave clarity. When we are uncertain about things we can't make informed decisions on how we should react. Thus, we crave answers

- In times of crisis (which commercial media loves to promote to grab your attention), we seek answers more than usual, because time frames for making decisions have been shrunk and the consequences of our decisions can greatly impact our own survival (think about how bad you want to know your enemy's position in a firefight and the consequences of making a bad decision)

- Conspiracy theories most often involve a villain, and that means there is most often some one who will benefit out of you believing it

 

 

We like to believe in conspiracy theories because:

- They provide the believer with clarity or answers

- They appeal to our narcissistic tendencies - we are able to defeat the people trying to fool us ("those people" are often framed as having access to vast resources and having nefarious intent)

- They make the world a more interesting and dramatic place

- They provide community and belonging - this is a pretty big deal in the internet age. Previously those who bought into flat earth/no moon landing/JFK/etc. would be isolated among many who didn't believe. But with the internet and social media, believers can get in touch, provide nurture and encouragement as well as organise and 'defend against' those vast forces who are trying to rule the world and whatever

 

 

Conspiracy theories often have common elements:

- They are nebulous and vague but centered around a couple of facts which act to make the whole story believable

- They can rarely, if ever be disproved - indeed, trying to disprove them often acts to only entrench belief

- All new facts can be retro-fitted to suit the narrative

- There are always plausible alternative explanations

 

 

This is not to say conspiracies don't happen, the Church Committee, the Suez Canal Crisis, Iraq WMD all prove that beyond doubt. But the internet makes concocting conspiracies easy (just read through the relevant sections of Reddit and 8Chan/Kun to watch people do it in real time), and it has become very politically useful to to harness the broad conspiracy communities out there (Qanon, ANTIFA, Anti-Vaxxers). Add this to the constant crisis we seem to be living in and you can see the fertile ground that exists. 

 

Case in point - Bill Gates has vast resources, one arm of a non-profit he's connected to is working on a medical micro-chip, another fund he has does vaccines in Africa. There's your elements of truth, now you retro-fit a story to link them together - mega-rich villain is developing microchip for vaccines to control you - and you have your text book case of a modern conspiracy theory.

 

Always ask yourself - are there plausible alternative explanations? Have there been similar rumours about other people before? Who stands to gain out of me believing this?

 

Hope that helps as a bit of a template to sift through the mountains of dis/information that get piled on us every day.

 

 

 

Edited by Hua Guofang
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I dived into a reddit thread on the cop suicides and a lot of users there trying to write the suicides off as legit on the basis that these cops were Trump supporters and they couldn't handle the fact that he was willing to sell them out to a rabid mob.  Doesn't hold water for me. 

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On 8/3/2021 at 1:55 PM, metronome said:


Interesting to say the least, what’s the conspiracy though? This is the first i’ve heard of this so i’m in the dark of what people think is going on with the suicides. 

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4 hours ago, abrasivesaint said:


10 years ago someone on here was trying to get everyone to buy Bitcoin and i wrote them off as a lunatic. 


wish my head wasn’t quite so far up my ass back then. Ironically @Mercer was working with us at the studio where we had a room full of high end workstations playing screen saver animations instead of mining Bitcoin. Your boys could have been crypto gazzionaires right now. SMH

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12 hours ago, abrasivesaint said:


Interesting to say the least, what’s the conspiracy though? This is the first i’ve heard of this so i’m in the dark of what people think is going on with the suicides. 

 

No conspiracy per se just thought this was the best thread for it.  If nothing else its a bizarre/eerie set of coincidence.

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On 8/4/2021 at 3:55 AM, metronome said:

 

IF I was looking into this, the first place I'd start is the obvious explanations:

 

What is the societal average for suicide in the US?

What is the societal average for suicide in DC?

What is the social average for suicide by cops US/DC?

What is the suicidal average for returned service men ?

What is the suicidal average for cops with PTSD?

etc. etc.

 

Match with the rate of cops that were at the Capital on Jan 6 and see if it fits any known patterns. If it does not, move on to the next question about whether the national spotlight on their actions might be a contributing factor - feelings of betrayal from political system (surveys of living cops from Jan 6 would be the starting point, etc.). IF there's no matching trend here, move on to the next explanation.

 

Develop a theory, starting with the most obvious explanation and do what you can to disprove it. Once you arrive at a theory you can't disprove, that is the working theory until disproved.

 

Jumping to sensational and hugely consequential explanations right at the jump can have you easily manipulated and believing almost anything. Think systematically and critically.

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1 hour ago, Mercer said:

LE officers are generally very prone to suicide in the United States.


True, and it adds to the figures of officers dying in the line of duty if i’m not mistaken. I dove into officer deaths somewhat recently and the amount of officers who die on the job at the hands of violent criminals is very low. Suicides, car accidents, health.. all seemed to play more of a role. Inconvenient facts for Blue Lives Matter proponents. 

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@misteraven

 

This thread isn't the right place, but there's a connection and I know that you'll be interested in this as it involves how media narratives are manufactured and the agenda for public communications are set.

 

Here is a "Washington insider" putting his name to how crowds are inflated and manipulated and how the media narrative is set, by attacking the media itself:

 

 

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I dont know if i can get behind the claim that the outrage against US media is faked. Seems like a nonsense claim. 

 

I fully appreciate the idea that the media crafts divisional narratives that are spoon fed and then regurgitated back out, the same way social media creates its own viewership by keeping you engaged. I also agree that they take convenient photos and video to slap on the screen while the chyron spews bullshit. As far as fake outrage towards them, i don't buy that. 

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