One of the more far-fetched rumors is that Helene was an engineered storm to allow corporations to mine regional lithium deposits. Others accuse the administration of President Joe Biden of using federal disaster funds to help migrants in the country illegally, or suggest officials are deliberately abandoning bodies in the cleanup.
How come America is so uniquely like this?
I understand these crazy conspiracy types can be found elsewhere, but it feels far more common in the US?
Rich country with weak education?
lead poisoning?
Aliens?
Hurricanes?
PFAS?
America (and I fear soon Canada) is uniquely like this because plenty of media treats all information as facts regardless of its credibility and without consequences.
So any entity can say literally anything, and another entity will report it as credible information. So long as the report reinforces what certain groups of people want to hear, it’s immediately accepted as indelible truth from an undisputed authority making anyone who disagrees automatically wrong and probably the Devil.
Now apply this to entire regions that have homogenized media ownership that has a certain political leaning, and you get wall to wall propaganda of whatever “real” news you want people to feel/think, and people who actively reject anything that doesn’t support their fantasies.
Especially when media regularly headlines a lunatic as a perfectly normal individual with something meaningful to say and that they are perfectly acceptable to consider as a possible leader of your nation.
far more common
Or, at least more powerful. I imagine they are only more powerful.
Okay, like, let’s take a step back here and talk about how exhausting it is to see conspiracy theories every time we have a climate disaster. Seriously, why are we so obsessed with blaming anything but ourselves? Like, HELLO, hurricanes like Helene are literally getting worse because of climate change (thank you, fossil fuel industry 😒), but no one wants to talk about THAT. Instead, we’re out here debating if the government is controlling the weather??! Are we in a bad sci-fi movie??
My take on the conspiracy theory issue:
There are certain mental illnesses which make people more susceptible and prone to conspiracy theories. For most of history these people were largely isolated and spread randomly throughout various communities. This had a moderating effect, as contact with non conspiracy people didn’t fuel their theories as much.
Fast forward to the internet as a tool for finding and building communities, and conspiracy theorists take advantage of the new technology to find each other and form larger communities of conspiracy theories.
Finally, recognizing a new political constituency, the Republicans decide to start messaging directly to these conspiracy theorists. Their goal is to undermine and dismantle the government, and so they see government-suspicious conspiracy theorists as a natural constituency.
They will not stop as long as the conspiracy theorists continue to eat it up.
So if the government can control the weather than climate change is real and we can do something about it. I think we’ve done it everyone. We’re all on the same page now.
I feel like getting rid of the R word to describe people who believe in this stuff has made the problem worse. They’ve embraced being stupid, but the danger comes from conspiracies created specifically for them to be used in retarding progress with regards to maintaining a functional society.
I heard it was Bigfoot, but it also might be the people of Atlantis.
