It is one thing to banter about how wrong conspiracy theorist are. Yes it is fun but here in this article I'd like to explore why they are, so often, wrong about....well just about everything.
Conspiracy Theorists Don't Understand Science
Yes, science, is something that conspiracy theorists think they know but, trust me, they do not. They actually fundamentally fear it. However they know that the aura of science is a good way to get people to respect your brain feces so they try their best at a kind of cargo cult science. In a way it is kind of like a child who tries to get you to believe their cardboard robot will work with a bunch of nonsense words ending in "ium."
You see, when you look at what they actually try to employ their version of science for it all starts to come apart. For example: I have encountered conspiracy theorists who don't understand gravity. They seem to think that it is related to air. No air, no gravity. This leads to hilarious claims that with no air on the moon anyone actually trying to visit it will float away.
But this is not limited to conspiracies related to the moon landing. It crops up in almost everything.
For example when talking about the tsunami that hit Japan we get this quote from a conspiracy theory forum:
" The boat seems a little funny - like it's an unmanned invasion vessel from the land of fakery leading the charge.
Actually the thing that bothers me the most in that GIF is the cascading garbage/debris that looks like a patchwork blanket. The fires are a bit comical too, but ... er ... could be?? haha, it's hard to say these days. Looks extraordinarily fake-able, though."
Did you get that? This person did not understand that objects caught up in a wave of water will be drug along at the same speed as the water! And furthermore they do not seem to get that fires break out on top of flood debris all the time.
Conspiracy Theorists Are Very Bad At Paying Attention
For people that pride themselves on their ability to see through deceptions conspiracy theorists are notorious for missing very obvious details and then making that part of the conspiracy theory. For example when a very outlandish rescue scheme worked in bringing buried Chilean miners back to the surface from what would otherwise have been a slow death underground conspiracy theorists were on the scene. And they had apparently missed the very widely reported about first shaft that was used to ferry supplies down to the miners for the many weeks it would take to dig a second shaft to haul them out.
Again the following quotes are real:
" Considering that the miners are supposed to have been underground for ten weeks I was surprised by the clean shaven appearance of the first survivors and how strong they looked in appearance.
No dirty looking,emancipated,weak,injured survivors with beards here. :rolleyes:
And to think those guys were trapped underground for 17 days BEFORE the authorities knew they were still alive."
"I was wondering if all the miners were sent down the mine with lots of food because they looked healthy when they came back up. It looked like they all been on holiday."
So there you go. A conspiracy theory built around a huge detail that the conspiracy theorists were ignorant of.
Conspiracy Theorists Don't Understand How People Act
Maybe this has something to do with how conspiracy theorists tend to isolate themselves but it comes up time and time again that conspiracy theorists clearly have not interacted with many people. Or....perhaps did and just weren't paying attention (see above). Because they clearly have very odd expectations for how people should behave.
In the previous section I talked about the rescue of the trapped Chilean miners. Well when the CT crowd found out the miners would not return to the mine where they almost died they latched onto this as weird. And that gives us this quote:
"And now they are saying they will not return because of the trauma of seeing where they were trapped.
Sounds like more illogical human psychology from the people that brought us the 9/11 'missing family member' posters and the hundreds of thousands of grieving family members who are just too traumatized to go to ground zero on the anniversary."
Did you catch that? Yeah, they apparently have no concept of a person not wanting to revisit someplace where something traumatic happened. This is neither new or strange and yet it completely boggles conspiracy theorists.
What also seems to leave them baffled is grief. As in they don't get why different people act differently while dealing with grief. I've encountered numerous conspiracy theorists who seem to think there is only one way to do grief: break down sobbing and do nothing else for weeks! Seriously they think anyone that doesn't act in that manner is not actually experiencing grief. This is how they determined that the parents of kids killed in Sandy Hook Elementary were just actors. And the kids: never existed!
All because they saw someone ham it up in a movie once and now think that is the way everyone should do it.
Conspiracy Theorists Don't Know How The World Works
Extrapolating from their misunderstandings of how people act it also becomes clear that conspiracy theorists just plain don't know what reality is like.
Remember the tsunami in Japan I brought up earlier? Well here's a nice quote about something this person saw the night it hit:
"There are some sub-reports showing up in the lines scrolling by on the coverage assuring everyone that nuclear reactors are at normal levels and there are no abnormal radiation things going on. Interesting that in the wake of a major earthquake/tsunami they would have to tell the American public something that the Japanese (and we) have been trained to fear: nuclear fallout."
Yeah, that's it. It is weird to report on the status of nuclear reactors immediately after an earthquake!
This aspect of how conspiracy theorists think mostly comes down to one thing: they think Hollywood is how the world is. Does the Pentagon have a self destruct button? Of course not. That would be stupid. But conspiracy theorists think it must because all major lairs in cheezy fiction have them! Of course that is just because lazy writers invent self destruct countdowns as a crutch. That's why it is fiction.
Another specific incident comes from someone who said the footage of American Airlines Flight 175 slamming into WTC 2 on September 11 was fake because the plane didn't explode while in was on the outside of the building. Why would it explode when only the nose of the plane had hit? It wouldn't of course unless it was in a movie.
...and that's how electricity works.
And that is what is so strange with this. Movies are obviously fake but when conspiracy theorists notice this they assume reality is the one that got things wrong.
Conspiracy Theorists Don't Understand Science
Yes, science, is something that conspiracy theorists think they know but, trust me, they do not. They actually fundamentally fear it. However they know that the aura of science is a good way to get people to respect your brain feces so they try their best at a kind of cargo cult science. In a way it is kind of like a child who tries to get you to believe their cardboard robot will work with a bunch of nonsense words ending in "ium."
Contrary to popular belief, lipstick immediately humanogrifies a pig
and a pair of hipster glasses really does turn your Canadian Girlfriend into Zooey Deschanel.
You see, when you look at what they actually try to employ their version of science for it all starts to come apart. For example: I have encountered conspiracy theorists who don't understand gravity. They seem to think that it is related to air. No air, no gravity. This leads to hilarious claims that with no air on the moon anyone actually trying to visit it will float away.
The complete list of scientists conspiracy
theorists have heard of.
Scientist most conspiracy theorists have not heard of.
But this is not limited to conspiracies related to the moon landing. It crops up in almost everything.
For example when talking about the tsunami that hit Japan we get this quote from a conspiracy theory forum:
" The boat seems a little funny - like it's an unmanned invasion vessel from the land of fakery leading the charge.
Actually the thing that bothers me the most in that GIF is the cascading garbage/debris that looks like a patchwork blanket. The fires are a bit comical too, but ... er ... could be?? haha, it's hard to say these days. Looks extraordinarily fake-able, though."
Did you get that? This person did not understand that objects caught up in a wave of water will be drug along at the same speed as the water! And furthermore they do not seem to get that fires break out on top of flood debris all the time.
Conspiracy Theorists Are Very Bad At Paying Attention
For people that pride themselves on their ability to see through deceptions conspiracy theorists are notorious for missing very obvious details and then making that part of the conspiracy theory. For example when a very outlandish rescue scheme worked in bringing buried Chilean miners back to the surface from what would otherwise have been a slow death underground conspiracy theorists were on the scene. And they had apparently missed the very widely reported about first shaft that was used to ferry supplies down to the miners for the many weeks it would take to dig a second shaft to haul them out.
My head fits exactly between my hands. Therefore aliens.
Again the following quotes are real:
" Considering that the miners are supposed to have been underground for ten weeks I was surprised by the clean shaven appearance of the first survivors and how strong they looked in appearance.
No dirty looking,emancipated,weak,injured survivors with beards here. :rolleyes:
And to think those guys were trapped underground for 17 days BEFORE the authorities knew they were still alive."
"I was wondering if all the miners were sent down the mine with lots of food because they looked healthy when they came back up. It looked like they all been on holiday."
So there you go. A conspiracy theory built around a huge detail that the conspiracy theorists were ignorant of.
Or any vital information regarding gravity or the behavior of water
that has the potential to save me from internet embarrassment.
Conspiracy Theorists Don't Understand How People Act
Maybe this has something to do with how conspiracy theorists tend to isolate themselves but it comes up time and time again that conspiracy theorists clearly have not interacted with many people. Or....perhaps did and just weren't paying attention (see above). Because they clearly have very odd expectations for how people should behave.
In the previous section I talked about the rescue of the trapped Chilean miners. Well when the CT crowd found out the miners would not return to the mine where they almost died they latched onto this as weird. And that gives us this quote:
"And now they are saying they will not return because of the trauma of seeing where they were trapped.
Sounds like more illogical human psychology from the people that brought us the 9/11 'missing family member' posters and the hundreds of thousands of grieving family members who are just too traumatized to go to ground zero on the anniversary."
Did you catch that? Yeah, they apparently have no concept of a person not wanting to revisit someplace where something traumatic happened. This is neither new or strange and yet it completely boggles conspiracy theorists.
What also seems to leave them baffled is grief. As in they don't get why different people act differently while dealing with grief. I've encountered numerous conspiracy theorists who seem to think there is only one way to do grief: break down sobbing and do nothing else for weeks! Seriously they think anyone that doesn't act in that manner is not actually experiencing grief. This is how they determined that the parents of kids killed in Sandy Hook Elementary were just actors. And the kids: never existed!
All because they saw someone ham it up in a movie once and now think that is the way everyone should do it.
Human behavior. How the [bleep] does it work?
I believe this is from the book used in Sociology for Conspiracy Theorists 101.
Conspiracy Theorists Don't Know How The World Works
Extrapolating from their misunderstandings of how people act it also becomes clear that conspiracy theorists just plain don't know what reality is like.
Remember the tsunami in Japan I brought up earlier? Well here's a nice quote about something this person saw the night it hit:
"There are some sub-reports showing up in the lines scrolling by on the coverage assuring everyone that nuclear reactors are at normal levels and there are no abnormal radiation things going on. Interesting that in the wake of a major earthquake/tsunami they would have to tell the American public something that the Japanese (and we) have been trained to fear: nuclear fallout."
Yeah, that's it. It is weird to report on the status of nuclear reactors immediately after an earthquake!
This aspect of how conspiracy theorists think mostly comes down to one thing: they think Hollywood is how the world is. Does the Pentagon have a self destruct button? Of course not. That would be stupid. But conspiracy theorists think it must because all major lairs in cheezy fiction have them! Of course that is just because lazy writers invent self destruct countdowns as a crutch. That's why it is fiction.
Another specific incident comes from someone who said the footage of American Airlines Flight 175 slamming into WTC 2 on September 11 was fake because the plane didn't explode while in was on the outside of the building. Why would it explode when only the nose of the plane had hit? It wouldn't of course unless it was in a movie.
"they think Hollywood is how the world is"
ReplyDeleteThis line, dear sir, is a complete spot on! Some conspiracy theorists I know actually use various action movies as a reference material whenever they judge real world events.
Thanks for your article. I agree with every word.