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I have observed that speed of change in supporting facts is very important in Internet conspiracy theories (CT) vs. the old conspiracy theories. It goes like t

I have observed that speed of change in supporting facts is very important in Internet conspiracy theories (CT) vs. the old conspiracy theories. It goes like this: you find a surprising fact that, if true, will support the CT. You go to investigate it, which, of course, take some time. You realize that the fact has a normal explanation but, when you go back to conversation of the CT, that's not a relevant fact in the conversation anymore. There is a new fact, or more, supporting the CT. Start the process again. It's impossible to catch with the fact that it's, at the moment, supporting the CT. I think, this is different from the old way conspiracy theories, where people just believed highly improbable things. It also makes it more appealing to more people, because, if you take it all globally and don't look carefully, it really looks like there is a lot of evidence.

jjk166 6y ago
I think the opposite is really the case. Back in the day, fact checking was incredibly difficult. If you were a domain expert, you might notice something was off, then go to the library to double check the information, and if the library happened to have what you needed you could try to convince your close friends and family of the truth. The other 99.99% of what you heard on the news or read in the paper was simply accepted as fact. Conspiracy theories were, at the time, either what the news said were conspiracy theories, or ideas so fringe that the news didn't even talk about them. Nowadays, we are a few thumb movements away from fact checking literally any piece of human knowledge. There hasn't been a sudden proliferation of fake news, it's just more readily apparent. As it has become easier to spot the holes in shoddy reporting, faith in journalistic institutions has plummeted. More people are getting news from alternative sources whose quality is variable. For better or for worse, there are simply more versions of stories nowadays. To try to retain viewers, traditional media outlets have tried to cultivate an image of themselves as the arbiters of truth which they once defacto were, and to do so have been quite liberal with labelling their competition as conspiracy theories. We haven't seen any uptick in the number of people wearing tinfoil hats to keep out the mind control rays or claiming any given senator is a lizard person. Instead, we live in a world where you're labelled a conspiracy theorist if you don't think there is a shadowy cabal of government agents spreading misinformation to manipulate us or depending on which of the past two presidential elections you think was illegitimate. Even small deviations from the narrative of any particular bubble are heretical, but that narrative, and every other one, is composed from the incomplete knowledge of fallible people, so invariably as time goes on you will start to notice inconsistencies in the story. In years gone by, we would have simply chalked this up to someone being misinformed, people could admit they were wrong and papers could print retractions and we'd all forget about it. But now the combination of the record being so readily accessible and the increased role of our media consumption in our personal identity means we have forgone nuance and are strongly pressured to adhere to increasingly absurd stories. It's so much easier to label the other side as stupid and crazy than to try to demonstrate the veracity of our position and face the fact that we are not entirely correct either, but if we do not strive for truth ourselves, it becomes easy for them to see the faults in our logic and further convince themselves that we, in fact, are the crazy and stupid ones. tl;dr there are many more non-mainstream narratives being labelled as conspiracy theories at the same time that the mainstream narrators who would normally dispel them are losing credibility.
dagmx 6y ago
You might enjoy reading a Game Designers Analysis of QAnon. https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5 https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analy... The author has a pretty compelling explanation for the design of mass believed conspiracy theories, which I think is fairly close to what you posit in spirit, though not exactly.
PeterisP 6y ago
Modern CTs are also sometimes the result of disinformation campaigns where (contrary to your example) there is not an attempt to provide multiple facts that would support "the" CT but rather continuously providing multiple plausible different (and incompatible) CTs to drown out the true situation - especially since most parts of the true explanation (which the disinformation campaign wants to muddle) would also overlap with one or more of the debunkable and debunked CTs, thus eventually getting to the desired end position of "ah, noone can really know what's true".
- throwaway80332 6y ago
  It will be interesting to see what algorithms like the one in the linked article will reveal about the people and organizations behind those conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. We already know that Trump is secretly colluding with Vladimir Putin, the Koch brothers and homophobic nazis like Milo Yiannopolous, and recieving behind-the-scene support from far-right capitalists like Fox News, Breitbart and the proud boys. They are practically running the hate-filled cesspits like 4chan, and we saw the results last summer when they burned down the inner cities to stop the peaceful protests against white supremacy and George Floyd. When I've tried to bring attention to this, right-wing extremists have called me a malicious collaboration hypothesizer, but I just report them to the mods and that's that. Hopefully under Biden, and with new technology that respects people of all backgrounds, all this disinformation can be dealt with legislatively once and for all, so that you'll be able to trust the news and what you read online, and never have to deal with any racist fascist misogyny ever again.
- wtfiswiththis 6y ago
  See: Republicans and the election. Trump's call basically was precisely this. We heard claims, claims on the internet. No not social media but "Trump media" so there are golden. The best claims ever. And those claims, not the substance of them but the fact that the claims exist, are the basis of disputing the election now. To drive this point home, they now want panels to investigate "what happened" despite the claims already being tested in court. The substance doesn't matter, it never mattered. Sowing doubt and mistrust of the process was always the purpose.

jjk166 6y ago

I think the opposite is really the case. Back in the day, fact checking was incredibly difficult. If you were a domain expert, you might notice something was off, then go to the library to double check the information, and if the library happened to have what you needed you could try to convince your close friends and family of the truth. The other 99.99% of what you heard on the news or read in the paper was simply accepted as fact. Conspiracy theories were, at the time, either what the news said were conspiracy theories, or ideas so fringe that the news didn't even talk about them. Nowadays, we are a few thumb movements away from fact checking literally any piece of human knowledge. There hasn't been a sudden proliferation of fake news, it's just more readily apparent. As it has become easier to spot the holes in shoddy reporting, faith in journalistic institutions has plummeted. More people are getting news from alternative sources whose quality is variable. For better or for worse, there are simply more versions of stories nowadays. To try to retain viewers, traditional media outlets have tried to cultivate an image of themselves as the arbiters of truth which they once defacto were, and to do so have been quite liberal with labelling their competition as conspiracy theories. We haven't seen any uptick in the number of people wearing tinfoil hats to keep out the mind control rays or claiming any given senator is a lizard person. Instead, we live in a world where you're labelled a conspiracy theorist if you don't think there is a shadowy cabal of government agents spreading misinformation to manipulate us or depending on which of the past two presidential elections you think was illegitimate. Even small deviations from the narrative of any particular bubble are heretical, but that narrative, and every other one, is composed from the incomplete knowledge of fallible people, so invariably as time goes on you will start to notice inconsistencies in the story. In years gone by, we would have simply chalked this up to someone being misinformed, people could admit they were wrong and papers could print retractions and we'd all forget about it. But now the combination of the record being so readily accessible and the increased role of our media consumption in our personal identity means we have forgone nuance and are strongly pressured to adhere to increasingly absurd stories. It's so much easier to label the other side as stupid and crazy than to try to demonstrate the veracity of our position and face the fact that we are not entirely correct either, but if we do not strive for truth ourselves, it becomes easy for them to see the faults in our logic and further convince themselves that we, in fact, are the crazy and stupid ones. tl;dr there are many more non-mainstream narratives being labelled as conspiracy theories at the same time that the mainstream narrators who would normally dispel them are losing credibility.

dagmx 6y ago

You might enjoy reading a Game Designers Analysis of QAnon. https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5 https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analy... The author has a pretty compelling explanation for the design of mass believed conspiracy theories, which I think is fairly close to what you posit in spirit, though not exactly.

PeterisP 6y ago

Modern CTs are also sometimes the result of disinformation campaigns where (contrary to your example) there is not an attempt to provide multiple facts that would support "the" CT but rather continuously providing multiple plausible different (and incompatible) CTs to drown out the true situation - especially since most parts of the true explanation (which the disinformation campaign wants to muddle) would also overlap with one or more of the debunkable and debunked CTs, thus eventually getting to the desired end position of "ah, noone can really know what's true".

throwaway80332 6y ago
It will be interesting to see what algorithms like the one in the linked article will reveal about the people and organizations behind those conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. We already know that Trump is secretly colluding with Vladimir Putin, the Koch brothers and homophobic nazis like Milo Yiannopolous, and recieving behind-the-scene support from far-right capitalists like Fox News, Breitbart and the proud boys. They are practically running the hate-filled cesspits like 4chan, and we saw the results last summer when they burned down the inner cities to stop the peaceful protests against white supremacy and George Floyd. When I've tried to bring attention to this, right-wing extremists have called me a malicious collaboration hypothesizer, but I just report them to the mods and that's that. Hopefully under Biden, and with new technology that respects people of all backgrounds, all this disinformation can be dealt with legislatively once and for all, so that you'll be able to trust the news and what you read online, and never have to deal with any racist fascist misogyny ever again.
wtfiswiththis 6y ago
See: Republicans and the election. Trump's call basically was precisely this. We heard claims, claims on the internet. No not social media but "Trump media" so there are golden. The best claims ever. And those claims, not the substance of them but the fact that the claims exist, are the basis of disputing the election now. To drive this point home, they now want panels to investigate "what happened" despite the claims already being tested in court. The substance doesn't matter, it never mattered. Sowing doubt and mistrust of the process was always the purpose.