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This doesn't resonate with me, but it strangely does because that timeframe just had these weird artifacts. I rejected the conspiracy theories and machismo-emp

by b33j0r 2y ago

This doesn't resonate with me, but it strangely does because that timeframe just had these weird artifacts. I rejected the conspiracy theories and machismo-empowerment waves of 2016 and 2019, and found myself completely isolated. My conservative friends said "join us" and my liberal friends said I wasn't woke. Kinda thought that was a fever that would pass, but besides my closest friends and family, that restaging was surprisingly permanent. I came into my own back in freshman year of college when I was convinced about 9/11 being fishy by "Loose Change." If true, that's outrageous! So I then kept looking into it and came to understand conspiracy theories and skepticism. It's so sad. All of my friends left and right are conspiracy theorists now, 20 years later. Anti-progress pendulum or something.

therobots927 2y ago
Welcome to the 21st century. It’s only gonna get worse.
ChainOfFools 2y ago
A big contributor to the problem is that the word conspiracy has become too broad to be useful as a test or label anymore. Everything novel in the world arises as a result of a recursively self-propagating memetic function, one that could be characterized in its earliest phases as a conspiracy: namely that one, two, and then a handful of people settle on a common notion about something universal that needs to change, whether it's for the good or the bad of everyone else, and when successful that idea fans out memetically to others so that it accumulates the necessary physical mass and force required to cause real change. By the time the impact of this force hits people who have no connection or even awareness of the original initiating group, it feels entirely exogenous and a search for the conspirators, those who triggered the initiation of this wave, is an understandable response especially if the change is unwanted. As a recent example, one of the cleverest bits of social engineering in the Bitcoin project was the possibly intentional disappearance of its pseudonymous founder, conveniently removing the ability of those so exogenously impacted to identify the origin of the change with any particular individual, greatly complicating accusations of conspiracy. A much earlier example, curiously similar in form, is the origin story of the traditional founder of alchemy, Hermes Trismegistus, to whom was even ascribed authorship of that movements own founding "white paper," called the Emerald Tablet.
- b33j0r 2y ago
  We can’t even call news that is literally “fake news,” anything short of a mini-speech anymore. That’s the power of language as a very tangible example within your lifetime of a pretty straightforward concept becoming impossible to name in a culture.
BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
Lack of trust in institutions due to economic hardship imo

by b33j0r 2y ago

therobots927 2y ago

Welcome to the 21st century. It’s only gonna get worse.

ChainOfFools 2y ago

A big contributor to the problem is that the word conspiracy has become too broad to be useful as a test or label anymore. Everything novel in the world arises as a result of a recursively self-propagating memetic function, one that could be characterized in its earliest phases as a conspiracy: namely that one, two, and then a handful of people settle on a common notion about something universal that needs to change, whether it's for the good or the bad of everyone else, and when successful that idea fans out memetically to others so that it accumulates the necessary physical mass and force required to cause real change. By the time the impact of this force hits people who have no connection or even awareness of the original initiating group, it feels entirely exogenous and a search for the conspirators, those who triggered the initiation of this wave, is an understandable response especially if the change is unwanted. As a recent example, one of the cleverest bits of social engineering in the Bitcoin project was the possibly intentional disappearance of its pseudonymous founder, conveniently removing the ability of those so exogenously impacted to identify the origin of the change with any particular individual, greatly complicating accusations of conspiracy. A much earlier example, curiously similar in form, is the origin story of the traditional founder of alchemy, Hermes Trismegistus, to whom was even ascribed authorship of that movements own founding "white paper," called the Emerald Tablet.

b33j0r 2y ago
We can’t even call news that is literally “fake news,” anything short of a mini-speech anymore. That’s the power of language as a very tangible example within your lifetime of a pretty straightforward concept becoming impossible to name in a culture.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago

Lack of trust in institutions due to economic hardship imo