Anti-Conspiracy Theories #7 Google told me, so it must be true. Sheeep!

[klarakluckbag]

I'm a life-long sci-fi fan, I'm also an amateur astronomer, so I live with the absolute (to me) certainty that even if we're alone at this particular time, in our particular corner of the Galaxy, there is no way that we are, or were, or will be, the only intelligent (lol) life in the Universe for all eternity. We're just not that special, humans aren't even that special on Earth. We've just been lucky enough to evolve on a planet that has circled a star which has been stable enough, for long enough, to give us time to develop speech, culture, language and a civilised society. And, like every other species which has lived, we will one day be gone, either by over-breeding and running out of resources, or by losing the battle for control of the Galactic Empire to the Imperial Forces (other space aliens are available...probably )

 

[Sideboard Bob]

Ok so, this is a long-read and I’ve not read it all yet, but it looks interesting. About a writer who keeps getting mistaken for another writer who’s gone full-on CT.

Naomi Klein on following her ‘doppelganger’ down the conspiracy rabbit hole – and why millions of people have entered an alternative political reality

For years the writer laughed off being mistaken for fellow author Naomi Wolf. Then her ‘double’ drifted into a world of conspiracy theories and became a favoured guest of Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. With the US standing on a political precipice, suddenly the stakes were a lot higher

www.theguardian.com

 

[Moth]

A government minister (Mark Harper, Transport Secretary) has just made a speech at the Tory Party Conference in which he vowed that Tories will stop "the misuse of 15 minute cities ... what is sinister is the idea of local councils deciding how often you can go to the shops". Not a sinister as a government pedalling ridiculous conspiracy theories in order to attract votes from the hard of thinking.

 

[Deeznutslol]

I honestly just despair of (general) people's ability to reason these days.

they cannot be serious? It’s so mad that not even a few years ago, people who saw “secret messages” in things like this were treated by society as the paranoid conspiracy theorists that they are… now they’ve been given a platform where they can link up with other delusional idiots all over the world and get 100k likes and loads of praise for their bizarre ramblings 🥹.

 

[Deeznutslol]

The thing is, scandalous news stories which drag on like this BBC nonce business actually do often serve to ‘bury’ other pieces of news. I think a lot of people are now aware that stories like this give the conservative government the perfect opportunity to do a load of disability benefit cuts or something equally as unpopular. However the CTists don’t seem to realize this as they’re too busy being distracted by their conspiracy theories .
Honestly, the tory party must absolutely love CTs. Whilst people are sat online all day crying over vaccines and 15 minute cities, they’re busy shoving through all sorts of horrible legislation, privatising public services, further destroying the welfare state and making life more difficult for the majority of the population.

 

[OwlAtTheMoon]

Has anyone seen this?

Liverpool: Protesters disrupt meeting over non-existent policy

About 30 protesters were removed from Liverpool Town Hall by security in 15-minute-city "confusion".

www.bbc.co.uk

Chrriiiiiiisstt!, this is a new level of stupid. This lot turned up to protest something that wasn't even being discussed, nor is it even proposed anywhere in Liverpool. They appear to have no clue what the 15-minute cities concept actually is...
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Interesting this today - The Mail doing a u-turn on covid vaccines, reporting that 'Data shows people aren't dying from the jabs despite anti-vaxx claims':

What IS the truth about Covid vaccines and myocarditis?

Experts have dismissed anti-vax conspiracy theories linking the Covid jabs with high-profile athletes suffering cardiac emergencies.

www.dailymail.co.uk

I thought this bit was apt too, relating to CTs attributing practically every notable death this past 2 years to the vaccine:

'Campaign group the Center for Countering Digital Hate said anti-vaxx groups are latching on to such incidents to promote their message despite, in many cases, it not even being known if the person in question was vaccinated.
Imran Ahmed, the group's chief executive, said: 'Online anti-vaxxers are parasites, cynically exploiting tragedy to baselessly connect any injury or death of a notable person to vaccinations.'

On Musk specifically, he added: 'It is particularly worrying that Twitter has rolled back its policy on Covid disinformation to reflect Elon Musk’s desperate need to prioritise controversy, engagement, and short-term advertising profits over the public good. 'Anti-vaxx lies are deadly and platforms must stop allowing dedicated spreaders of disinformation from abusing their platforms and the trust of other users.'

Fingers crossed this ghoulish continual relating deaths to the vaccine will ease off, and the CTs can go deeper into something else - crypto or 15-minute cities or election fraud or whatever...

 

[Deeznutslol]

Interesting tweet thread on link between those believing/supporting Brand and a tendency to believe other CTs:

https://x.com/IanDunt/status/1703716331718095084?s=20

Yeah! I actually just posted on the Lucy Letby thread saying isn’t it funny how pretty much all of the sickos who are currently insisting that Letby is an innocent scapegoat, even though it has been revealed that she was protected for months by hospital managers, are now also vehemently denying the allegations made against Brand…

Tbh tho, it doesn’t surprise me one bit that a lot of them are defending him given the fact that the following he has spent the last few years procuring is mainly made up of CTists. The thing I find funniest is that people are believing that he’s being silenced by the elite when he’s a multimillionaire with massive influence and has clearly managed to suppress these allegations for years already. Like, he literally IS the elite???

 

[shadowcat5]

Nor me . I’m starting to think this vaccine is a scam. I’m booked in for my 67th booster next week tho, so hopefully that should get the old jabber stuff flowing!
Either way it seems like the end is finally in sight for us, according to Dr. Chung Chung the booster increases myocardial injury by 800x and Helen from Shropshire reckons there’s only 2 more years to go until 70% of us are wiped out!

I would like to know what Helen from Shropshire deems a “good, well respected source”

 

[Deeznutslol]

This is cracking me up.

I can’t with this . Half my twitter feed seem to think she’s currently recovering from BBL surgery and the other half think she’s been working at the Willy Wonka immersive experience in Glasgow

 

[Onetwofour]

I mean I prefer they drink their own piss instead of something toxic like bleach or colloidal silver. It reminds me this "trend" for young mothers to eat their own placenta after giving birth. Many recipes on how to accomodate it could be found online.

My only concerns are the scam businesses generated around those bizarre trends, like the urine therapy or how people will use those unadvised "treatments" for things like cancers etc.

I have also read today that there is a measle outbreak in Northern England - of course all the sick children are unvaccinated... It worries me to where this could lead us thanks to the antivax propaganda.

Seven cases of measles linked to Stoke-on-Trent school and nursery

None of those affected had received the MMR vaccination, the UK Health Security Agency says.

www.bbc.com

 

[Doctor_Wibble]

So-called pure blood is overrated anyway.

It's like a menthol cigarette, it just leaves you gagging for a proper one afterwards.

Pro tip, add lime and cinnamon - these will make all the difference, with freshly ground black pepper if you want extra zing possibly offset with a dash of honey but always check the notes on the label, you'll need to use white pepper if it's pescatarian.

Stick of celery optional but recommended, being excellent for both gesturing and informal duels alike

 

[OwlAtTheMoon]

The ufo stuff does make me a bit anxious they can’t all be lying, surely? Why lie?? or is it as simple as their imagination is encouraged in order to cover up top secret government projects?

That article I linked to above describes some of the fascinating ways in which people think they've seen ufos and it's been absolutely bona fide debunked. Mis-sightings include photographing flying objects not realising they're reflections of seatbelt latches, watches or other shiny objects from inside a car, or thinking actual planets like Venus or Mars or the North star, are alien crafts in the night sky.

 

[Ensay]

Another interesting article about why some people are willing to believe conspiracy theories:

Why some people are willing to believe conspiracy theories

People can be prone to believe in conspiracy theories due to a combination of personality traits and motivations, including relying strongly on their intuition, feeling a sense of antagonism and superiority toward others, and perceiving threats in their environment.

www.apa.org

A couple of extracts:

“Conspiracy theorists are not all likely to be simple-minded, mentally unwell folks—a portrait which is routinely painted in popular culture,” said Bowes. “Instead, many turn to conspiracy theories to fulfill deprived motivational needs and make sense of distress and impairment.”

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The researchers found that overall, people were motivated to believe in conspiracy theories by a need to understand and feel safe in their environment and a need to feel like the community they identify with is superior to others.

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I thought the 'comfort' aspect was interesting, as I've seen some conspiracy theorists say that people who don't believe CTs do so because they want to feel comfortable in their little bubbles. This article seems to be suggesting those kind of accusations from conspiracy theorists could be a type of projection.

 

[Lovecrisps]

My nuttiest CT friend posted a YouTube video yesterday (I don't watch them for fear it'll skew my recommendations/adverts etc!) criticising the concept of 15 minute cities. Like wtf. I then did an incognito search on Google - apparently CT's problems with them is the idea that you'd be fined if you left your district of the city. Give me strength. This girl doesn't even live in a city...

 

[Ellelalala]

Omfg. Why? WHY?!

 

[MaineCoonMama]

Omg. Why.

Oh, man. She has children.
I hope she's not dosing her kids.

 

[Lovecrisps]

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The researchers found that overall, people were motivated to believe in conspiracy theories by a need to understand and feel safe in their environment and a need to feel like the community they identify with is superior to others.

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This superiority thing is the part that gets me. The people I know who have fallen down the CT rabbit holes definitely think they're geniuses. And as we stop engaging with their posts on social media, their CT friends then think this is evidence that we have no ability to defend our viewpoint and therefore they are right. And the community aspect is very strong, I've a CT friend who over covid has drifted away from most of us to now just be acquaintance level and her closest friends are all people she's in CT groups with.

 

[Grifters of the Caribbean]

Is this to distract us from something? Hehe
I read earlier today that the French lockdown/blackout is just a test then they'll inflict it on the rest of the world.
The fact that there are already countries living under extreme regimes seems to escape this lot.
Perhaps their inherent racism makes it seem worse when it's a Western country?

Imagine if someone told the conspiracy theorists that using the internet is a distraction.

 

[MaineCoonMama]

I suppose when people don't have much going for themselves, they clutch at things like this to feel superior.

I was reading a tweet the other day about someone who'd been sadly diagnosed with cancer and several people were in the comments either asking if the person was vaccinated, or saying things like "there's so much cancer about since the covid vaccine was rolled out". How ghoulish.

They always seem to want a simple explanation to everything, whereas there are multiple factors as to why cancer has increased - eg overwhelmed NHS not seeing people as quickly (yes it got worse during lockdown but it was bad before then too), people living longer, people exercising less and living more sedentary lifestyles, etc. Plus some of it's just down to genes. My dad was diagnosed with cancer in 2019 when it was too late to cure. But he'd lived a healthy lifestyle, he wasn't overweight, he ate well, he did all his cancer screenings and so on. He did everything right, but it still got him and his brother (my uncle), too.

I'm sorry to her about your dad.
It's the same story with my MIL. Never smoked a day in her life, lived in a non smoking house, etc but had aggressive lung cancer.
I can't think of anyone I know who hasn't been affected by cancer in some way whether it's a family member, a friend or even a celebrity we admire.

 

[Ensay]

Thanks Carole. Sorry it happened to you too. I can't believe after everything that's gone before, a segment of one of my posts was again shunted out of context onto a separate thread. Then I'm made a target of ridicule, for absolutely no reason. What the heck is wrong with people? By 'haunting' do you mean that kind of harassment, or the weird allusions to having multiple accounts? I really have no clue what that's all about. Feel a bit sick about it all tbh.

Honestly, people who behave like that are crying out for attention, usually because they’re lacking something. The best thing you can do is rise above it and put them on ignore.