i was looking for a text file of a thing i wrote a couple years ago, and there are a lot of .txts named using conspicuous keyboard-pounding (asdawedsf, ddddddff, wwdwwweweew, etc). i opened up “dkkdkdk.txt” to find this from 6:37 PM on may 31st 2010:

i have no memory of this at all. my guess is that it was me trying to “bookmark” where i was in that movie about george bush, but google shows nothing about him hitting his aunt, i don’t remember the movie, and i don’t care enough to watch it again.

it ruined my breakfast

“morgellon’s disease” seems to be the next popular conspiracy theory. it involves picking maybe-existent fibers from your skin. reading empirical sources, it appears to be brand new and actually a mental illness. reading conspiracy theorists, they perform the usual over-linking and claim it’s because of chemtrails and vaccinations and they’re being targeted for being truthers etc etc etc.

conspiracy theorists are fascinating to me – their minds are broken in such a discrete and apparent way that they naturally come to similar conclusions and when they communicate, this results in even further bolstering of the insane ideas that were already entrenched. it’s a very strong feedback loop.

in the mind that produces conspiracy theories, the inbuilt evolutionary tendency to find and recognize patterns is over-firing. everything becomes intentional and profoundly meaningful. nothing unusual is a one-off, and there are no coincidences. any denial, empirical or logical, can safely be written off as coming from either the brainwashed or actual agents of the conspiracy.

this leads to hilarious ‘networks’ of conspiracy theories: chemtrails cause morgellon’s (a bioweapon from an alien race which has, of course, been hidden from the public), which is used by the new world order to silence 9/11 truthers, and nobody cares because of water fluoridation.

for the conspiracy theorist, that sentence is entirely open-ended and modular – other “theories” can be added or swapped out as per the current fashion.

i’ve thought a bit about how the conspiracy theorists compare with the religious. there are huge similarities (extreme credulity, circular reasoning, willful ignorance or discrediting of fact, a tendency toward “converting” or “saving” the “lost”), but also huge differences. unlike the vast majority of those with a religion, conspiracy theorists aren’t often indoctrinated from birth. potentially related to this, most religious don’t have the anarchist “fuck the police” ideologies that conspiracy theorists do. often, the exact opposite has been instilled: obedience without questioning.

despite those fundamental differences, i feel like i’ve met more religious conspiracy theorists than areligious. is this the shared trait of credulity overcoming the differences? the simple fact that a majority of people hold on to the tribal concept of religion? or just confirmation bias?

i don’t have any sources to cite, and many or most of my points are highly debatable or even unfalsifiable. i could be wrong about stuff. this is me being humble. that said, i hope for a repeat of my last big skeptic post, when i wrote extremely critically about electrohypersensitivity and a bunch of crazies with google alerts came out of the woodwork.