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How did we get so casual about conspiracy theories? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 23 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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How did we get so casual about conspiracy theories?

I was talking with someone today about nutrition. This person has a PhD in material science. They mentioned eating beef daily and I asked about the cholesterol implications. The answer was about a vague 'they' wanted us to think that, but it wasn't true anymore.

I hear the vague 'they' so frequently now it's just a normal conversation. In truth, as soon as I hear the vague they I dismiss the speaker's credibility on the subject, but how did we get here? Vague they wanted us to think X is a valid counter argument by the most highly educated people in our society?

This sounds like more of a rant than a question, but I do truly want to know how this happened? Was it pop culture like the X Files that made conspiracy theories main stream? Was it social media? When will the vague they stop being an accepted explanation? Has it always been this way and I didn't notice?

Thanks, love you!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Deconditioning. If we had a really serious full-on plague we'd eventually get casual about the corpse disposal wagon.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

covid sends its regards. "hey, 30k people died today of just this disease."

its still a thing, that kills and cripples some people, but its like it doesn't even exist anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 35 minutes ago

A perfect example. Early "conspiracies" like bloating the numbers by counting anyone who died "with COVID" as having died "from COVID" and the disease having come from a lab due to gain of function research appear to have been borne out, among many others, too many to count, that ended up being bullshit.

That was a perfect storm of misinformation and disinformation that is still being pored over to this day.

Another good example is 9/11. People who refused to believe that steel infrastructure could not be damaged to an extent that it would implode and collapse into its own footprint - even if it wasn't hit by a plane at all - were labeled "truthers". Whatever you believe about 9/11, it's very difficult to look at it in retrospect and not admit that something very wrong happened, and many questions are glossed over or left unanswered.

Labeling something a conspiracy immediately causes people to recoil lest they be categorized as tinfoil hat kooks, but the idea that powerful people will do horrifying things for their own interests under the thinnest cover and get away with it is not new.

That said, it is far too easy to lose grip on reality and start seeing everything as a conspiracy, so it's always advisable to hold truths lightly, and examine them frequently. Hand waving things away with "they" statements is the worst kind of intellectual laziness and doing so is a great disservice to oneself.