I love conspiracy theories. They either give you a sense that something’s severely wrong with the world, which feels thrilling (like in a movie or something), or it offers explanations for why things that you already know are wrong exist. Some of these theories are plausible, and probably have some truth to them. Others are just INSANE:
But there’s one conspiracy theorist that has made a name for himself, and has clearly devoted his entire life towards making conspiracies mainstream. That man is Alex Jones. I don’t agree with a lot of what he says, but a few of his arguments have some clear evidences for them. And Alex Jones usually sources his material from mainstream news sites, so even if you disagree with him, you know he isn’t trying to make stuff up out of thin air (at least from what I’ve seen; I could be wrong). And you do get a sense that he is sincere about what he does. Whether you hate him or love him, one thing is for sure: he has effectively used the Internet to distribute his material. First, he has his radio show, Prison Planet, which is live-streamed and video-recorded. During his radio show he covers all of the relevant material for the news that day, and talks to listeners about their thoughts on the subject. He will also spend hours interviewing experts (or “experts”) about a particular topic, such as Obama’s plan to start World War 3 with Russia, or the possibility that the U.S. government is creating nano-robots to sneak into our mouths and inject fluoride on our teeth. Yes, the range is that severe.
Alex Jones also has a website called Info Wars, which is his news aggregate site. This is where he will link to current articles involving subjects that he or his team find important. And of course, like all good conspiracy theorists, he uses YouTube. The thing about watching a conspiracy video on YouTube is that, after finishing it, there is always a hundred other recommended videos that look really interesting. So you end up watching a ton of videos in one go and then end the night huddled under the covers.
Conspiracy theories have flourished online because of the tendency for people to search for things that they believe (again, the confirmation bias). But their popularity reflects something else in society. For example, I mentioned in a previous post that the controversy about vaccines “causing autism” has become a mainstream issue. And in other recent new, the debates about guns in the US have reached a boiling point, and conspiracy theorists believe that the government is trying to take away all access to guns so that no one will be able to defend themselves if there is a military take-over.
So why are all these conspiracies becoming so popular now? I think that it has to do with a general distrust with government as a whole. If we’re talking specifically about the U.S., the NSA scandal didn’t help to quell fears about an ever-watching absolute government. And the many revolutions occurring across the world demonstrate an overall antagonism with the established powers. In both of the cases, the Internet helped play a big role in facilitating people to bring out theories about why these things were happening. I guess our increasing dependence on the Internet means that we will have to constantly deal with ideas about imminent wars and governments ruled by aliens.
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