It’s a curious thing. I’m not dismissing any of their claims, but I find it a bit interesting that they can so easily uncover everything that the government doesn’t want you to know when it’s hidden for a reason.
It’s a curious thing. I’m not dismissing any of their claims, but I find it a bit interesting that they can so easily uncover everything that the government doesn’t want you to know when it’s hidden for a reason.
Occam’s razor answer: They’re crackpots that seek out and/or surround themselves with other crackpots. One crackpot makes the stuff up, the others eat it up. Eventually it becomes a positive feedback loop of crackpot theory feeding more crackpot theories.
Did I mention they’re crackpots? Because they’re crackpots.
It can be worse than that sometimes. The crackpots see some nuggets of truth, and for whatever reason, they make some leap in interpreting them that leads them to nonsense. They keep finding things that are either true, and add them to their worldview, or made by people who took compatible leaps of logic away from reality. They propagate it to others.
Taking Kennedy’s assassination as a classic example: it’s true that a lot of people wanted him dead, some benefited from his death, the CIA has a history of assassinations, and Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist who had once lived in Minsk. I can see why someone with just enough information to feel confident can arrive at a belief that the CIA or USSR killed Kennedy, while missing critical information to realize there’s no reason to believe either is true.
There’s an episode of Voyager where Seven of Nine goes down conspiracy rabbit holes that’s a lot like that.
Basically, the first one turns out to be correct (although very minor), but it fuels more and more absurd theories. Essentially she goes into a feedback loop, over- and mis-analyzing everything until she’s convinced that every encounter she’s had with anyone has been part of a conspiracy against her.
So maybe “crackpot” was a bit harsh, at least in some cases.
Yeah that sounds like a realistic, if a bit hyperbolic, portrayal of at least some people’s experiences.
I haven’t personally been in any conspiracy theory rabbit holes, but I’ve seen a few people slide into them. There are some people who are so far out there they generate much of the nonsense, but I think there are a lot more victims than crackpots. And I think most of them have a nugget of truth or legitimate grievance in there somewhere.
Lazerpig called it a Woozle Hunt, after the Winnie the Pooh story. Pooh and Piglet think they’re hunting a woozle, but in reality they’re just following their own tracks around and around.
I’ll have to remember that. It’s much more well put than how I described it.