Conspiracy Theorists & The Great Reset



Its class when they say they won't provide the evidence
I find it slightly terrifying that someone can make it into their fifties and be this absolutely thick as shit. On the one hand I suppose it’s just the law-of-averages village idiot down on the far left hand side of the bell shaped curve but the amount of these people who become evident via their internet ‘communities’ make me wonder if there has been some sort of significant glaring failure of society / education that allows these people out into the world being so gullible and stupid.
 
I find it slightly terrifying that someone can make it into their fifties and be this absolutely thick as shit. On the one hand I suppose it’s just the law-of-averages village idiot down on the far left hand side of the bell shaped curve but the amount of these people who become evident via their internet ‘communities’ make me wonder if there has been some sort of significant glaring failure of society / education that allows these people out into the world being so gullible and stupid.
Critical thinking skills need to be brought into the school curriculum imo. Religious groups will no doubt resist though.
 
My pal , an Architect , intelligent , caring normal sort of guy . Salt of the earth decent honest man.

He’s lost the f***ing plot recently - everything is a conspiracy- this vaccine has sent him into orbit- he’s begging me not to have it.

I m seriously distancing myself from him and not for Covid reasons.

It's a dangerous path to tread.

I was in California 12 months after the planes flew into the world trade centre.

The sheer length and breadth of the bills posted and flyers hanging from street signs was both astonishing and fascinating so I started following some of the leads.

Even as a cynic only looking out of curiosity I started to get drawn in, but I noticed that my views were changing and stepped back for a while.

In the interim period I've seen what it can do to people. A couple of blokes I know think I'm the crazy one for believing anything at all in non-alt media.
 
I find it slightly terrifying that someone can make it into their fifties and be this absolutely thick as shit. On the one hand I suppose it’s just the law-of-averages village idiot down on the far left hand side of the bell shaped curve but the amount of these people who become evident via their internet ‘communities’ make me wonder if there has been some sort of significant glaring failure of society / education that allows these people out into the world being so gullible and stupid.

Its basically the same old shit as the idea of blood libel through to the protocols of the elders of zion. Blame the other in all cases.

Where as it used to just be openly be "blame the Jews" now its the terms "Globalists" and "Bankers" .It the same rasict stuff the the american republician party under Lee Atwood pulled with the famous you cant say speech. Add to that a toxic mix of fairly open stuff from right wing news sources and morons on social media and youve got a toxic mixup.

Look at some of the people on here who quote people like Tucker Carlson and Stephen Yaxeley-Lennon as if they are unbiased sources, the recomendation algorithims for youtube and twitter push poeple down a echo chamber of propaganda
 
I find it slightly terrifying that someone can make it into their fifties and be this absolutely thick as shit. On the one hand I suppose it’s just the law-of-averages village idiot down on the far left hand side of the bell shaped curve but the amount of these people who become evident via their internet ‘communities’ make me wonder if there has been some sort of significant glaring failure of society / education that allows these people out into the world being so gullible and stupid.

They are still in the vast minority. They just have an amplified voice because of the internet. People have believed absolute nonsense for as long as the species has existed, although at least thousands of years ago they knew a lot less.
 
Critical thinking skills need to be brought into the school curriculum imo. Religious groups will no doubt resist though.

Agree, however it’s not the young people who are the biggest problem imo. The results of this American study match my experience of talking to some older people here. The way some retired people use the internet is absolutely mental:


On average, American Facebook users over 65 shared nearly seven times as many articles from fake news domains as those aged between 18 and 29, researchers from NYU and Princeton found in the study, which also concluded sharing such false content was “a relatively rare activity”.

The authors wrote: “As the largest generation in America enters retirement at a time of sweeping demographic and technological change, it is possible that an entire cohort of Americans, now in their 60s and beyond, lacks the level of digital media literacy necessary to reliably determine the trustworthiness of news encountered online
 
I find it slightly terrifying that someone can make it into their fifties and be this absolutely thick as shit. On the one hand I suppose it’s just the law-of-averages village idiot down on the far left hand side of the bell shaped curve but the amount of these people who become evident via their internet ‘communities’ make me wonder if there has been some sort of significant glaring failure of society / education that allows these people out into the world being so gullible and stupid.

Some kids have stopped learning by the time they reach puberty.

Having such a poor education must be a terrible handicap and the liklihood is that even analysis of basic arguments is beyond them.

Just pick something and go with it seems to be the choice for too many.
 
Some kids have stopped learning by the time they reach puberty.

Having such a poor education must be a terrible handicap and the liklihood is that even analysis of basic arguments is beyond them.

Just pick something and go with it seems to be the choice for too many.
True but the conspiracy theorists on here take it to a new level / depth.
We are less free now than we were ten years ago
Really - in what way
There’s loads of ways it’s so obvious
Can you name some
Do your research it’s all out there
But if there are so many and it’s so obvious can you name some
There’s loads
Which ones
Several

Ad nauseum. You can’t fix stupid.
 
The advent of smartphones and social media being accessible to an age group who previously would have picked up a newspaper in the morning or tuned into the 6pm news has absolutely flipped the f***ing script as far as paranoia and fake news spread goes. They believe everything they read, if it has some thin link to their own worldview. No idea what an algorithm is and why everything they’re suddenly recommended carries the same threads either.

Turned a rump of previously rational over 50s into absolute f***ing wallys to be honest.
 
Critical thinking skills need to be brought into the school curriculum imo. Religious groups will no doubt resist though.

This.

The people who are keen on spreading some of the nonsense about (usually far right groups?) I think even realise this, which is why phrases like “think for yourself” and “do the research, then make your own mind up” seem to have been hijacked - I’ve seen lots of people commenting similar at least, despite blinding following a YouTube video they link to “before it gets taken down by the powers that be”
 
The advent of smartphones and social media being accessible to an age group who previously would have picked up a newspaper in the morning or tuned into the 6pm news has absolutely flipped the f***ing script as far as paranoia and fake news spread goes. They believe everything they read, if it has some thin link to their own worldview. No idea what an algorithm is and why everything they’re suddenly recommended carries the same threads either.

Turned a rump of previously rational over 50s into absolute f***ing wallys to be honest.

I m 62 - I m still in control.

Just.
 
It's a dangerous path to tread.

I was in California 12 months after the planes flew into the world trade centre.

The sheer length and breadth of the bills posted and flyers hanging from street signs was both astonishing and fascinating so I started following some of the leads.

Even as a cynic only looking out of curiosity I started to get drawn in, but I noticed that my views were changing and stepped back for a while.

In the interim period I've seen what it can do to people. A couple of blokes I know think I'm the crazy one for believing anything at all in non-alt media.

@Nukehasslefan reckons no planes hit, they were all digital faked videos, that all the news channels and all the public who videoed it live used.
 
I think this thread in the last day is showing what some of the mentality of a conspiracy theorist is like.

Make a statement but without anything specific, like our freedoms are being eroded away. When pushed for examples a number of times, they can't offer anything, because it is clearly not true. At this point your typical CT will have four responses, the first is to use the old classics 'do your own research' or 'look around for yourself'. This is a good one as it fails to answer the question but starts to suggest the CT knows more than you and you are perhaps a bit stupid for not having the faintest idea what they are going on about.

The second is usually an attack on the person, I'd expect that quite soon in the form of something like "It is obvious but you can't see it because you have been brainwashed into thinking your are free. I used to be like you and it took be a few years of free thinking before I realised the truth. I don't blame you". This one has the nice balance of trying to elevate the CTs self esteem by showing they are 'better', giving the questioner an insult and being patronising. Put together, this is designed to make the questioner annoyed and it is difficult for them to resist responding, which they do and the troll gets another feed.

The third typical technique is to forget about defending their 'truth' but attack the accepted truth. In a situation like this, it is very hard to do. Something like the twin towers it is easy "You really think they can't just CGI a plane onto the news footage. Do you really think a flying saucer destroyed the White House in Independence Day?". When the theory being talked about this time is a gradual erosion of freedom, then this hard to attack the norm, without coming out and saying what the norm is. This means they have to be specific about what freedom has been lost.

Theories like this one are harder work for your typical CT. "They never landed on the moon, prove it", is a nice one. While there may be strong evidence to suggest it happened, you can't take the CT by the hand to the moon in 1969 and say "look, fool". However if you come out with something and say "Oh, but we are not allowed to clean our teeth on a Tuesday morning", the following Tuesday by lunch time there will be a lot of evidence of people cleaning their teeth. To make it work you need to keep vague.

This does lead us to our fourth possible response - ignore it. However that means walking away from attention and that is difficult, so it is usually better to keep repeating the original statement and dancing around between the first and second responses. This can string it out for days without you actually saying anything.

The mind of a CT is an interesting place.

Though, having said all that, I will concede a point of a freedom that has been lost in this country, more so in the last 15 years, but definitely in the last 40. We can no longer be openly and outright racist, sexist and homophobic in public, in writing or on TV. It was well accepted not so long ago but now it can land you in serious trouble. So a nod to those saying we are losing freedom, we have lost that little bit. Personally I feel this is a very very good thing and people might start seeing each other as fellow humans.
@Nukehasslefan reckons no planes hit, they were all digital faked videos, that all the news channels and all the public who videoed it live used.
The witnesses were all actors too
 
Don’t get me wrong - I like a bit of jolly mystery , Loch Ness Monster and Anne Boleyns ghost. Some unexplained stuff is intriguing.

But some of the unsubstantiated crap spouted is just taking the piss.

It borderline paranoia.
 
I think this thread in the last day is showing what some of the mentality of a conspiracy theorist is like.

Make a statement but without anything specific, like our freedoms are being eroded away. When pushed for examples a number of times, they can't offer anything, because it is clearly not true. At this point your typical CT will have four responses, the first is to use the old classics 'do your own research' or 'look around for yourself'. This is a good one as it fails to answer the question but starts to suggest the CT knows more than you and you are perhaps a bit stupid for not having the faintest idea what they are going on about.

The second is usually an attack on the person, I'd expect that quite soon in the form of something like "It is obvious but you can't see it because you have been brainwashed into thinking your are free. I used to be like you and it took be a few years of free thinking before I realised the truth. I don't blame you". This one has the nice balance of trying to elevate the CTs self esteem by showing they are 'better', giving the questioner an insult and being patronising. Put together, this is designed to make the questioner annoyed and it is difficult for them to resist responding, which they do and the troll gets another feed.

The third typical technique is to forget about defending their 'truth' but attack the accepted truth. In a situation like this, it is very hard to do. Something like the twin towers it is easy "You really think they can't just CGI a plane onto the news footage. Do you really think a flying saucer destroyed the White House in Independence Day?". When the theory being talked about this time is a gradual erosion of freedom, then this hard to attack the norm, without coming out and saying what the norm is. This means they have to be specific about what freedom has been lost.

Theories like this one are harder work for your typical CT. "They never landed on the moon, prove it", is a nice one. While there may be strong evidence to suggest it happened, you can't take the CT by the hand to the moon in 1969 and say "look, fool". However if you come out with something and say "Oh, but we are not allowed to clean our teeth on a Tuesday morning", the following Tuesday by lunch time there will be a lot of evidence of people cleaning their teeth. To make it work you need to keep vague.

This does lead us to our fourth possible response - ignore it. However that means walking away from attention and that is difficult, so it is usually better to keep repeating the original statement and dancing around between the first and second responses. This can string it out for days without you actually saying anything.

The mind of a CT is an interesting place.

Though, having said all that, I will concede a point of a freedom that has been lost in this country, more so in the last 15 years, but definitely in the last 40. We can no longer be openly and outright racist, sexist and homophobic in public, in writing or on TV. It was well accepted not so long ago but now it can land you in serious trouble. So a nod to those saying we are losing freedom, we have lost that little bit. Personally I feel this is a very very good thing and people might start seeing each other as fellow humans.

The witnesses were all actors too
Dave your patience and insightfulness in particular on this and the flat earth thread are to be saluted. On another message board there’s a dribbler for whom a cut and paste of your post would serve perfectly as he’s guilty of all that. It started when I made a disparaging remark about Trump’s Barnet and he replied with “Do you think he likes your flat top?” Which was puzzling to me as I don’t have nor have ever had a flat top. Also I was thinking “is he a Trump fan? And if he is, is he seriously trying to defend that Barnet?” He’s since made vague pro Trump statements but the most mind boggling is his anti mask stance, saying they’re unhealthy and that ‘we’ should do the research etc just as you outlined above. I’ll have to tell the surgery team next time I’m in an OR that they’re risking their health and should not wear masks. Bloody dribbler made some statement about masks not protecting the wearer from COVID, completely missing the point that their function is much more to prevent the wearer passing COVID on to anyone else. Anyway - well done matey!
 

Back
Top