2 ms·

You're more than welcome to call your conspiracies other things, doesn't make them any less conspiratorial though.

MangoToupe 11mo ago
taps the sign to read Capital requires no conspiracy to drive the world. It's the liberals who think that individual agency plays a major role.
DANmode 11mo ago
Best part about your comment: the reader has no way to know if you’re talking about “conspiracies”, or “conspiracy theories”, due to colloquial (ignorant) interchangeable use.
- mikkupikku 11mo ago
  The colloquial muddying of language concerning "conspiracy theory" was probably a government psyop in response to the JFK assassination. There, the officially endorsed theory was a lone wolf theory, that one guy did it by himself without any help or encouragement, and virtually all other theories were theories that involved one or more people conspiring in some way. From there, "conspiracy theory" morphed in media to mean any theory running counter to the official theory, even when the official theory was itself a theory about a conspiracy.
immibis 11mo ago
So, right-wing conspiracy theories tend to be more like: these three people secretly own everything through a hidden system of written contracts. Like "there's a secret room beneath Comet Pizza, specifically, where they buy and sell a chemical extract from the blood of scared babies" And left-wing conspiracy theories tend to be more like: all the people who share a certain set of characteristics have similar incentives and therefore act in similar ways that aren't good for the rest of us. Like "billionaires are fucking us over. Since media companies are owned by billionaires a large part of what they broadcast is just pro-billionaire propaganda."
- potato3732842 11mo ago
  I think the filter bubble might be confining your observations a bit.
- krapp 11mo ago
  Conspiracy theories involve "people who share a certain set of characteristics have similar incentives and therefore act in similar ways that aren't good for the rest of us" by definition, that's what a "conspiracy" is. And the right definitely believes that people who share a certain set of characteristics have similar incentives and therefore act in similar ways that aren't good for the rest of us. The "they" behind Pizzagate was "the Democratic Party." And then there's "Cultural Marxism" (a conspiracy theory about the nefarious communist influence of Jews in academia), the "groomer" panic (a conspiracy theory that transgender identity is a cover for organized pedophile rings) white replacement theory, DEI, China anything and countless other conspiracies the right believes in that are based on some kind of racial or gender essentialism or prejudice. The left has its share of that too, but the distinction you're trying to draw here makes no sense.
  - DANmode 11mo ago
    > The "they" behind Pizzagate was "the Democratic Party." For some.
  - mikkupikku 11mo ago
    > "Conspiracy theories involve "people who share a certain set of characteristics have similar incentives and therefore act in similar ways that aren't good for the rest of us" by definition, that's what a "conspiracy" is." No, that's not conspiracy. Conspiracy requires deliberate collusion between members of the conspiracy, it requires conspiring. If you have several people behaving in a way that appears coordinated because those people have aligned values and incentives, then it might be possible that those people have talked to each other and come up with some sort of a plan, which would make it a conspiracy, but it's also possible that no such organization exists and they're each independently doing whatever they think is correct in their circumstance. In that case, the emergent group behavior looks like a conspiracy but literally isn't a conspiracy. This is what Manufacturing Consent talks about. I wish people would read it.

taps the sign to read Capital requires no conspiracy to drive the world. It's the liberals who think that individual agency plays a major role.

DANmode 11mo ago

Best part about your comment: the reader has no way to know if you’re talking about “conspiracies”, or “conspiracy theories”, due to colloquial (ignorant) interchangeable use.

mikkupikku 11mo ago
The colloquial muddying of language concerning "conspiracy theory" was probably a government psyop in response to the JFK assassination. There, the officially endorsed theory was a lone wolf theory, that one guy did it by himself without any help or encouragement, and virtually all other theories were theories that involved one or more people conspiring in some way. From there, "conspiracy theory" morphed in media to mean any theory running counter to the official theory, even when the official theory was itself a theory about a conspiracy.

immibis 11mo ago

So, right-wing conspiracy theories tend to be more like: these three people secretly own everything through a hidden system of written contracts. Like "there's a secret room beneath Comet Pizza, specifically, where they buy and sell a chemical extract from the blood of scared babies" And left-wing conspiracy theories tend to be more like: all the people who share a certain set of characteristics have similar incentives and therefore act in similar ways that aren't good for the rest of us. Like "billionaires are fucking us over. Since media companies are owned by billionaires a large part of what they broadcast is just pro-billionaire propaganda."

potato3732842 11mo ago
I think the filter bubble might be confining your observations a bit.
krapp 11mo ago
Conspiracy theories involve "people who share a certain set of characteristics have similar incentives and therefore act in similar ways that aren't good for the rest of us" by definition, that's what a "conspiracy" is. And the right definitely believes that people who share a certain set of characteristics have similar incentives and therefore act in similar ways that aren't good for the rest of us. The "they" behind Pizzagate was "the Democratic Party." And then there's "Cultural Marxism" (a conspiracy theory about the nefarious communist influence of Jews in academia), the "groomer" panic (a conspiracy theory that transgender identity is a cover for organized pedophile rings) white replacement theory, DEI, China anything and countless other conspiracies the right believes in that are based on some kind of racial or gender essentialism or prejudice. The left has its share of that too, but the distinction you're trying to draw here makes no sense.
- DANmode 11mo ago
  > The "they" behind Pizzagate was "the Democratic Party." For some.
- mikkupikku 11mo ago
  > "Conspiracy theories involve "people who share a certain set of characteristics have similar incentives and therefore act in similar ways that aren't good for the rest of us" by definition, that's what a "conspiracy" is." No, that's not conspiracy. Conspiracy requires deliberate collusion between members of the conspiracy, it requires conspiring. If you have several people behaving in a way that appears coordinated because those people have aligned values and incentives, then it might be possible that those people have talked to each other and come up with some sort of a plan, which would make it a conspiracy, but it's also possible that no such organization exists and they're each independently doing whatever they think is correct in their circumstance. In that case, the emergent group behavior looks like a conspiracy but literally isn't a conspiracy. This is what Manufacturing Consent talks about. I wish people would read it.