It seems with increasing frequency that we the casual scrollers of the feed are subjected to a steady stream of home cooked conspiracy theories ranging from the plausible to the gratuitously absurd. The overshared viral sensation “Plandemic” is just the most recent entry in line for the Tinfoil Hat Society of America’s coveted Bug Shit award and while it wouldn’t surprise me to discover gaping holes in the fabric of consensus, there are however limits to how much quarantine grown sourdough bread I’m willing to swallow. So many tangental theories webbed insidiously across all narratives, each with just a kernel of truth at its core, lending credibility to each branch and leaving me to wonder what to make of it all. How do I process the data overflow and where does this apparent compulsion towards conspiracies come from in the first place.
Perhaps our propensity for the outrageous originates at the root of our imaginations. Man’s ability to conjure the fantastic and weave fictions from tiny threads of truth have for centuries, perhaps millennia, been interwoven into the fabric of our evolution. Primitive man developed communication as an aid to survival allowing the passing of critical information among the tribe. Information regarding locations of food, supplies and potential threats were vital in the development of a complex societal structure. There seems little doubt that in order to stress the urgency of a proposed expedition, primitive man may have taken to certain embellishment to expedite a response. Fabrication of details built off fear and speculation fueled this fire further, generating enough fanatical support to reward the most imaginative storytellers with notoriety and ultimately survival. Over time as the complexity of language further developed so too did our stories evolve. Our ancient ancestors learned to revel in the ridiculous for survival, then in diminishing degrees for tradition and eventually just for the fun of it.
Likewise the modern conspiracy theorist is faced with the impetus of amusement as they live largely prepackaged lives along the ho-hum path of predictable parables. They wake, they wash, they eat, they work, they commute, they consume, they play, they retire, they repeat. Caught in the loops of life they secretly crave storylines that elevate the mundane inscribing for their adventure starved imaginations a far more fantastic reality. A better living fiction than their banal existence can muster. Taking cues from the best fairy tale fantasy from childhood they imagine a world where they are the central protagonist in sole possession of some singular revelation and universal truth just outside the grasp of fellow followers of the feed.
It’s often the timeliness of the observation that compels them to not just share but even in amidst evidence to the contrary, defend their position voraciously. They fall victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect whereby they regard anyone who presents ostensibly superior facts as their inferior and any facts that they peddle as “fake news”. They build elaborate fortress walls around their theory, ensconcing that now withered kernel of truth deep beneath monuments of absurdity. In doing so they begin to see evil lurking in the shadows and regard each detractor, each purveyor of perceived misinformation as a threat to both the sanctity and security of their fortress of fables
In the end they succumb to cognitive bias, scarcely capable of discerning fact from fiction. That once robust kernel of truth now a mere shriveled husk of an idea buried hopelessly beneath the rubble of their once mighty fortress and the followers of feed on the outside bewilderedly looking in.
Mannino Acid 