Why do people believe conspiracy theories?

[Yuuko Aioi]

Assuming the government did want to destroy the towers with bombs, why bother with the planes? They could just claim the terrorists planted the bombs, like they did in 1993.

Because this is about convincing the population that they don't spend enough on the military, and the price of their freedom is their safety. A security guard can't protect you from planes flying into you, so there's a larger fear factor.

I don't think I'll become an expert in demolition, but I think there would be a huge difference in the methods between carefully bringing down a building without producing harmful materiels that people would breath in or the workers would get in contact with in the rubble, and bringing down a building no matter the cost. Yes, preparations are needed, but I don't assume this whole thing was improvised, I think some things might have been prepared. "You need to pull the plug? We have some options."

IIRC there were some floors that were made into one big floor, so if I understood it correctly, the WTC7 was weakened structurally way before the collapse. Also CIA had offices there. If this is an inside job, the CIA would be in it. They had their own floor. That's access. I think this is like social engineering. You would think that you can't get away doing suspicious things, but if you are confident enough, no one will question you and you'll get what you want.

The series of events that day are just completely incongruent with any hypothetical false-flag attack.

This just sounds weird to me. Incongruent? Like is there a scientifically approved pattern in false-flag attacks? Is there a norm to them? Can we ask some magic questions that will tell us that "Nope, large amounts of money changed place, the poor people got poorer, rich people got richer, the politics fucked the poor a little more, we fucked other countries beyond repair without any acceptable reasons, we're under constant surveillance, we're not allowed to ask certain questions about it, etc... But no, this whole thing doesn't match our official false-flag pattern. Like definitely not."

Also are you sure that it takes 24 hours for an interceptor to get ready to take off? 2 hours I can understand, but 24? So all the possible amount of bad luck, incompetence, blind spots and the failure of the system was needed for 9/11 to happen, and some sandnigger on the other side of the world figured it out before anyone else could. I'm not mocking you, I'm just trying to point out your double standards here:

A) A group that wasn't perceived as competent enough to pull out this attack, was willing to pull out this attack, succeded, and it is absolutely unquestionable.
B) On the other hand, a group that is more than competent to do it, has access to everything needed to do it, and also can sway the public's opinion about it real time, and the consequences of the attack also bring more profits and power to that group is absolutely, unquestionably innocent.

And it didn't have to be a controlled demolition. If you have some control of groups (like ISIS or Al-Quaeda) then the whole scheme is pretty much undetectable. What happened that day, is suspicious. How politics/society changed after it, is suspicious in itself. Even if the attack itself was "genuine" (which I doubt), the reaction of the government was bad for democracy, bad for its own people.

 

[Clockwork_PurBle]

"Conspiracy theories" is kind of a broad statement but I digress.

I think some people choose to believe them because for them, simplicity is too hard to believe. They would rather blame it on aliens and government pedophiles rather than a perfect storm of happenstance and bad luck. They refuse to accept that the government or FBI or whatever entity may have actually been right about something. They refuse to believe that unfortunately bad things can happen randomly. They also do it as a form of coping and denial.

To give an example, I remember a quote from some really old Reddit thread I was reading a while back about murders: "People believe Courtney Love murdered Kurt Cobain because they could not believe the far-gone junkie who wrote songs about death and wanting to kill himself actually did kill himself." This also applies to Biggie and Tupac: people refuse to believe rappers involved in a music industry that glorifies violence and gangbanging with heavy ties to gangs got shot, so they blame the CIA.

When you think about it, conspiracy theories don't necessarily have to be aliens and the CIA and Shrub did 7/11. The parents of a shithead bully child at school who believe their son is a gudboi who dindunuffin and it's the administration conspiring against them have created their own conspiracy.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

Real life is boring. Hell, the further back we go, the more fantastical we thought of the world.

 

[Rupert Bear]

I wish the elite was as fucking wild and occultist as these conspiracy theories make it out to be. If i got invited one day into their ranks i would join their freemason satanic moloch worshipping LARPs while laughing at the Hoi Polloi online with my new billionaire jew friends

 

[mario if smoke weed]

The real world is boring as fuck. Conspiracy theories make people feel more interesting, more special - like they're part of something bigger than themselves. Some of the reasons why people believe in Jesus, Krishna and Xenu likely apply to conspiracy theorists too.

 

[Syaoran Li]

The real world is boring as fuck. Conspiracy theories make people feel more interesting, more special - like they're part of something bigger than themselves. Some of the reasons why people believe in Jesus, Krishna and Xenu likely apply to conspiracy theorists too.

*tips fedora*

Let me guess, you have a beard, enjoy Marvel movies and fucking love "Science" too, right?

Your first point does have merit though. But when it comes to things like conspiracies, keep in mind that "conspiracy theory" is a textbook example of a thought-terminating cliche.

The term itself was popularized by the CIA and KGB on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Honestly, when it comes to conspiracies of any kind, Occam's Razor can be a major boon to sifting through the obvious bullshit like the Moloch cults and flat earth nonsense and the stuff that has a lot more substance to it like corporatism and political corruption.

The Earth being flat, vaccines causing autism, and Satanic Moloch cults? Grade A major league bullshit.

Corporations and politicians being corrupt and greedy assholes who actively seek more power and wealth for their own personal ends? Entirely reasonable and completely in line with the trajectory of human history all the world over since the beginning.

George Soros being a shady scumfuck who bankrolls politicians and pet causes he thinks will get him ahead? That's not so much a conspiracy theory as it's real life.

Soros is no different from the Koch Brothers, Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, or the barons of yesteryear like John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, the East India Company, or the Hapsburg Dynasty.

The insane retarded conspiracies are saying that Soros and the Koch Brothers are Moloch-worshiping Satanists who kill kids so they can live forever by guzzling some chemical made up by Hunter S. Thompson when he was on a bad acid trip back in the 60's.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the corporate bigwigs and the glow spooks and politicians that work for them actively promote the more retarded obvious bullshit conspiracies to discredit anyone who questions anything via guilt by association.

 

[Real Fakeman]

The term "conspiracy theory" has a pretty sober definition in the dictionary.

From merriam-webster:
Conspiracy theory
: a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators
also : a theory asserting that a secret of great importance is being kept from the public

But when you say "conspiracy theory" it has the connotation that it'll be something like "the illuminati rule the world from their secret base on the dark side of the moon and they use the black knight satellite to irradiate your gonads".

In my estimation, one of the more widespread conspiracy theories is US police brutality against african americans. If you would believe the media, the police in the United States is basically a racist white gang that constantly gets away with murdering innocent black people for no reason, and the bureaucrats and courts protect them because they hate black people too. In reality, the simple explanation is that black people are more criminal, and thus have more problems with the police. Yet I rarely see this called out as a conspiracy theory.

And the media weaponizes this. Say there is something you don't want people to be thinking. If you can push the "just a conspiracy theory" angle hard enough, you can create guilt by association. Now the theory is just one of "those" theories, and can be dismissed out of hand.

Trump conspired with the Russians to steal the 2016 US presidential election? That's a controversy. That's obviously legit and you should keep believing it, despite the years long investigation which didn't amount to anything.

Fraud/interference/the slightest whiff of fishiness in the 2020 US presidential election? That's just a conspiracy theory. No investigations needed. What, are you one of those Qanon antivaxxer flat, young earth creationists who thinks the jews poison the groundwater with gay hormones? Get outta here, you conspiracy theorist, you.

 

[protomartyr]

With the obvious caveat that the cranks are occasionally correct...

I think it's more comforting than the reality, which is that nobody's really in charge and nobody's really in control. Most people don't have a fucking clue what's going on and that includes high level state and corporate actors. People get promoted above their competency all the time, people get lazy and inattentive all the time.

I can't remember where to find it now, but Dominic Cummings (former chief of staff to Boris Johnson) had a blog post about this exact thing. When he first started working in government he was dismayed by the inadequacy of even the most senior civil servants. He kept expecting to be ushered to some backroom where they keep the smart capable people who make all the key decisions. And eventually you have to acknowledge that there is no room, and there are no people. By and large, the people with power are just as hapless and exceptional as you are. It's not a pleasant thing to confront.

 

[Kyria the Great]

People can believe conspiracy theories for a variety of reasons but chief among them....

1. It is far easier to believe that a secret cabal of people are the ones behind all the bad things in the world and life like the Jews, the Corporations, the Government, the Man, etc...

2. People want to have the feeling that they have secret knowledge over others is rather enticing to many.

3. Some people are just lead easily astray when they are isolated in their life.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

A lot of conspiracy theories are being used by think tanks to draw people in and capitalize on fear or simply do smear campaigns and they are practical for how cheap they are to make viral and how effective they become specially if they proliferate in echo chambers that are already being botted to death like reddit or 4chan. In points in time when people have the most stress and uncertainty they are more likely to want to find villains and heros and a narrative to explain everything giving them clear targets to be outraged at so a good conspiracy tying up all the knots , clearing grey areas and reaffirming people's prejudices and worldview is going its a powder keg.

There's a play on people's emotions by very bad actors throwing all ethics out the window and that will only end up badly for the political climate of the future. Right now political propaganda is are done with below the line campaigns and everyone is bombarding disinformation left to right and back again. Not a good time to be a netizen.

 

[cybertoaster]

1-Real conspiracies are incredibly complicated and involve hundreds if not thousands of people, organizations and other parts, which is why the law takes years to uncover such cases. The kind of people who love conspiracy theories are in most cases too retarded to deal with this level of complexity and so they go for the easier dumb tinfoil theories

2-Fake conspiracies are often created on purpose to keep people from looking at the real shit, or to create noise and derail existing investigations. If you got smart people looking into something you dont want them to see you just get a bunch of spergs to zerg rush them with tinfoil shit and overwhelm them. And if they dont normalfags will still look at the investigation as nothing but a bunch of tinfoil crazies because thats what they see

 

[EarthquakeMachine]

1-Real conspiracies are incredibly complicated and involve hundreds if not thousands of people, organizations and other parts, which is why the law takes years to uncover such cases. The kind of people who love conspiracy theories are in most cases too retarded to deal with this level of complexity and so they go for the easier dumb tinfoil theories

Except we have examples of enormous conspiracies being kept secret. The Manhattan Project employed 130k, cost 2 billion dollars, took place in over thirty cities around the globe and involved building full on secret fake cities to make it happen. When Truman was sworn in, he had to be told about it. The Manhattan Project had leaks and spies, but it was so effectively managed as a conspiracy that the end result was still the U.S. getting the bomb before everyone else.

Conspiracies don't need to have every individual involved a puppet. Firstly, the only thing a potential Man-Behind-The-Curtain has to control are the channels by which information can travel. So in the case of the Manhattan Project, if you were some dumpy housewife putting widgets together and heard on your lunch break that you were building super bombs, why does this matter? Who she going to tell, the conscientious objector mormon milkman she's fucking? Dumpy Housewife co-workers? A local reporter? The reporter might be a threat, but a Conspirator just needs to "convince" that reporters boss to not spill the beans and ignore her. That's the only channel of information that matters. So instead of an entire factory of Rosie the Riveters that need to be managed, you just have a handful of Editors for the local news convinced through either hook or by crook, to ignore any stories of super bombs that turn up on their desk.

We know this works, because we have video of an ABC reporter admitting that they sat on the Epstein story for 3 years due to outside pressure.

https://youtu.be/3lfwkTsJGYA

Secondly, conspiracy theories that are discounted on the grounds of needing to involve hundreds or thousands of complicit parties for something to work don't take into consideration game theory; which is the is "the process of modeling the strategic interaction between two or more players in a situation containing set rules and outcomes". If you want an event to occur, you don't need to machinate every step of the way to make sure it occurs, you just need to create a "game" (Any set of circumstances that has a result dependent on the actions of two of more decision-makers), "players" (A strategic decision-maker within the context of the game), who have a "strategy" (A complete plan of action a player will take given the set of circumstances that might arise within the game), and who stand to receive a "pay-off" (The payout a player receives from arriving at a particular outcome. The payout can be in any quantifiable form, from dollars to utility), based off of an "Information Set" (The information available at a given point in the game. The term information set is most usually applied when the game has a sequential component).

So if Agency X wants event Y to occur, they just need to create a set of circumstances where a group of actors will be motivated by their own rational volition to ensure that event occurs. This process requires extremely minimal involvement from Agency X, which means as little evidence as possible.

As for why people believe in conspiracy theories? It's because when events occur, they create huge swaths of information. Some objectively useless, some incredibly vital. All of this is massaged into a readily digestible mainstream narrative, but stray bits of information are left out in this process. The information that is left out can often be actually useless, but sometimes it simply can't be accounted for. These stray bits of information, floating in the ether with very little identifiable connections (or none at all), are what draw people in and what they latch onto.

A big example for the complicity between government, intelligence agencies, and satanic cults is the pardon of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. Lucas claims to have worked for a satanic cult called "The Hand of Death" that operated along the Mexco/US border and cleaned up after the Jonestown Massacre. He was also a compulsive liar. Henry's criminal tendencies involved rape, torture, mutilation, dismemberment, necrophilia, cannibalism, and pedophilia and he ended up on death row in Texas under Governor George Bush, a guy with the high score for capital punishment. There's few people as deserving of good ole' Texas Justice than the likes of Henry Lee Lucas, however he remains the only person that Bush has ever taken off of death row, citing insufficient evidence.

What does this mean? It could mean entirely nothing. It could be an historical fluke. But there's no way any reasonable person could not call it extremely fucking weird. Some people will create huge and elaborate webs around this one stray bit of information, webs that are easily burned away like a field of dry grass; but this kind of information is like a rock in the field. Flames of logic can't burn the rock away.

In the case of something like Pizzagate, or the general Pedocracy narrative, people aren't being swayed by the narrative per say, they're being swayed by stuff like the Dutroux Dossiers, Epstein, and Jimmy Savile. Things that are actually reported on and really happened. When people try to talk others off the Q Cliff by scoffing at their often genuine concern, they have no answers for the likes of Savile and Dutroux and those are the things that brought them to the cliff in the first place. It's entirely within the realm of possibility that Saviles count of victims runs in the high hundreds, to just in excess of a thousand. So what's crazier? that a man, who was a celebrity knighted by the Queen and employed by the BBC where extensive MI5/6 background checks were run on all employees, was able to act alone for decades? Or that he was institutionally covered for by powers on high?

While I personally am obviously something of a schitzo-basketcase, I am concerned about the rise of conspiracy theories and conspiracy information because most people are not equipped to integrate this information into their normal lives, and it can drive people a little insane. These people than are useful to a variety of parties (need some voters? need "something to happen" at a major event?) , and the people who try to rehabilitate them have such a dismissive opinion on the entire swath of this information, and have no means of helping them heal the great wound to their psyche that is done by being a big comfortable normie who was exposed to some Lovecraftian black knowledge of what really goes on in the world. A splash with the holy water of good ole secular rationality just doesn't cut it.

 

[💗Freddie Freaker💗]

Twitterites hit the nail on the head.

 

[Hollywood Hulk Hogan]

Twitterites hit the nail on the head.
View attachment 1979563View attachment 1979592View attachment 1979579

Does that mean that you still Trust The Plan?

 

[💗Freddie Freaker💗]

Does that mean that you still Trust The Plan?

Nah, Q doesn't seem plausible at all in my eyes. It's like flat earth or ancient aliens. Anyways I don't really "believe" in conspiracy theories until they've been proven true beyond the shadow of a doubt, I just like to speculate about what could be happening behind the scenes.

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

Nah, Q doesn't seem plausible at all in my eyes. It's like flat earth or ancient aliens. Anyways I don't really "believe" in conspiracy theories until they've been proven true beyond the shadow of a doubt, I just like to speculate about what could be happening behind the scenes.

Q is mostly a gay op with bits of credible information located within it, and the only purpose being to discredit said credible information by being associated with Q.

 

[💗Freddie Freaker💗]

Q is mostly a gay op with bits of credible information located within it, and the only purpose being to discredit said credible information by being associated with Q.

I suspect most conspiracy theories are like that-- bits of genuine info mixed with a lot of garbage so that the real info is unlikely to be taken seriously. We can only guess what's true and what's not.

The original Q may have been some random troll. At this point the Q movement is so influential that it would be surprising if it hadn't turned into a government approved gayop, though.

 

[BullDogsLipBrandClamjuice]

Im starting to think the "Ancient Aliens" where a more advance civilization contacting more primitive cultures.
Look at the cargo cults that formed in the Pacific when US forces landed and gave the tribesmen candybars and coke. -some still think "john from" will come back and give them what ever. They still do mock military drills, made some runways. They want american money too. But Im not sure what they could spend it on... Theyre a real shifty bunch these days.
But I think that might explain some structures and ancient stories that found its way down to us.
Some thing like "open sesame" is like our 'okay google/hey siri'
Idk im retarded.

UFOs in my mind are real. Are they from another world? Ehhh dont know about that. I feel like many of them back in the late 40s- the 60s where experimental aircraft the US was working on or prototypes brought over under Operation Paperclip. Maybe theyre from another world, time travelers? Some wacky drones from the Orient? Dont know.

Historically speaking, governments across the world have done some real shifty shit. And anyone who takes mainstream news as fact seem to think the days of propaganda are long behind us.
I feel like there really is a "War for your Mind" today. Wouldnt doubt some real deal shifty shit is out there but is mixed with wacky stupid things to discredit it. Or maybe woth so much info put there some things can be out in the open, but who could tell woth everything to shift through? Dosnt matter if the talking head in the light box tells you your a fool for thinking that way.

 

[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

Marxists hate Christ because Christ is the father figure, the universal father, and marxists didn't have a dad (in their life) and they hate their father for not being there so they hate Christ by extension. They also hate all dads by extension, that's why they hate the family.

 

[Lemmingwise]

People on "both" sides forget about the word "theory", because we are habitforming creatures and our minds abhor a vacuum.

Theories should evolve concurrently with only the most likely one assumed to be true given the data prevailing. This doesn't mean that only those with a signed confession are true, nor does it mean the flimsiest of correlation means g4 is causing covid.

I think it is rational for people to be so skeptical of even the concept of conspiracy theories; I get why people believe that large organisations can't keep secrets.

There are so many that have come out over the years. Of course this is its own reverse survivorship bias. We literally only know about the conspiracies that have come out.

Another flaw in the "someone would have said something, even by accident" line of argumentation is that maybe the reason this theory is out there is because someone said something.

If any organisation has sufficient power, whether private, like scientology, or more governmental connections, like a secret service or a bank, then they can put pressure on individuals that speak out openly. So perhaps they speak out secretly, online.

Of course this means it gets thrown on a pile with everything every schizo says, because people with a reputation to protect are more credible then xenumaster44 on the kiwifarms.

Then from there you have alex jones type people who go wade through the crank files and report on them. Of course some of these turn out to be true. Anyone that engages with this kind of media without an understanding that most of it is bullshit looks as wrong to me as the person who engages with it presuming nothing can be true.

----

I guess it really takes only one.

One experience where you see a conspiracy and are frightened the fuck about speaking up with your name attached to it. You know dozens of people bear the burden of knowing the truth, of wanting to share the truth but having seen what happened to the one that did.....

You just need one such an experience to become more open towards conspiracy theories in general; even if it doesn't mean you'll believe every half baked one.