🥸 #207 - That's What THEY Want You To Think
Who controls the British Crown? Who keeps the Metric System down?
The shadowy figures in a dark room. The bureaucratic web obscuring the actual hands on the levers of power. A scheme so far-reaching that it explains every misfortune. The iconography of conspiracy storytelling may have many variations, but they all rely on the same core: Everything makes sense when you find the hidden malicious force in control.
But are storytellers doing a disservice to the truth by playing with conspiracy theorist toys?
Consider the recent release Fly Me to the Moon, which uses authentic NASA details (like the actual recording of the Apollo 1 astronauts burning to death) to support its comedic narrative about an attempt to record a fake Moon landing. Jeffrey Kluger doesn’t believe that the movie will create more Moon Landing Deniers, but takes issue with normalizing conspiratorial thinking.
In 2001, Fox televised a special called Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land On The Moon?1 In reaction, Phil Plait created a page debunking each and every piece of disinformation contained in the program. During that same time, Fox also ran The X-Files, a show with an alien conspiracy weaving a web throughout its many seasons. Andrew Whalen looks back on key episodes of the show, and how it interrogated and explored the mind of a conspiracist in effective ways:
"Conspiracism is driven not by conspiracy theories directly supporting one another, but by the coherence of each theory with higher-order beliefs that support the idea of conspiracy in general," [….] Incompatibilities between beliefs at a local level are dwarfed by coherence with broader beliefs about the world.”
Understanding the reasons for believing labyrinthian delusions can help depict this behavior:
Makenna Meade interviews Karen Robertson about how she broke the hold conspiracy theories had on her: The realization that she was looking for an explanation of why her life wasn’t following a better path instead of taking accountability for her own choices.
Justin Peters looks at how Joe Rogan uses the flimsy deniability of saying he’s “Just Asking Questions” in order to personally profit from platforming disinformation.
Carlos Diaz Ruiz examines how Flat Earthers latch on to existing ideological conflicts to make their ideas more palatable to a pre-existing tribe.
Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg connect meat eating to the ongoing American culture war through the fact-free conspiracies about the government forcing people to eat bugs instead of burgers.
Michael Marshall walks through numerous arguments made by Flat Earthers, including the belief that the Freemasons used Galileo, Isaac Newton, and Neil Armstrong in a centuries-long deception.
Any conspiracy is based around an idea of where power lies in a system. If you’re engineering an actual conspiracy in a story, consider some real-world power structures. Anil Dash has a series on systems of power including a look at how the ultra-wealthy think about money, and what corporate boards actually do. Or consider private equity firms buying up struggling companies, like this summary of the takeover of the Alamo Drafthouse, or Cory Doctorow’s take on the downfall of Red Lobster.
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Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, last issue’s most clicked link Yang from Accented Cinema looks deep into Tony Leung’s eyes to get to the heart of his acting style:
What else is inneresting?
Noah Brier looks at the origin of the 2x2 matrix frequently used to simplify concepts (such as SWOT or the Eisenhower Matrix).
Kat McGowan on how roboticists creating new assistive technology are also attempting to develop new ways of thinking about aging and dementia.
Mia Sato presents an in-depth example of how website design prioritizes feeding content to Google over acting as a useful resource for humans.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
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Post-Credits Scene
Fun Fact: Mitch Pileggi from The X-Files was the host (because synergy).