Conspiratorial thinking is often an in-kind response. For instance, the theory that the virus came from a lab was common, but had no particularly strong convict

Conspiratorial thinking is often an in-kind response. For instance, the theory that the virus came from a lab was common, but had no particularly strong conviction to it until every authority source became 100% certain that it did not. If they had just accepted the lab origin story as a possibility, it wouldn’t be a conspiracy theory, it would just be a theory. But what you saw was a well-dressed layman spokesperson on every major news channel telling you that only stupid and evil people disagree with them, and they are all plotting against you. This handbook reads like a guide to script writing in the popular media. Everything that ever happens is always a conspiracy that is far more widespread an nefarious than anybody would have assumed from normal experience. It’s never just one random accident that affects only a few people in billions. Until there actually is an event that affects billions of people, and then it’s just a random accident, until election time, and then it’s a conspiracy again. And if you question any of this, you’re an extremist. And I don’t think anybody cares if it came from a lab or not. That’s not the conspiracy part of the theory.