Introduction
Let me tell you a funny story. Around August 2019, a friend of mine met a distant cousin. He is the famous “rich cousin,” the one that our parents always pressured us to become. He was always well dressed, first in his class with the perfect grades in an elite school, well, you get the message already. They lost contact when my friend was eight years old, and after more than twenty years without talking to each other, they decided to meet again for a nice cup of coffee, and… oh boy.
It took a while for my friend to cope with the fact that the person he was talking to was the same person always praised by his parents for being very rational and intelligent. After five minutes of talking, he learned that his cousin decided to drop out of college because it was a “waste of time” since the teachers were trying to turn the students into communists instead of teaching. After one hour, he heard how this cousin also stopped taking vaccines because of the risk of Autism—of course—and after one hour and a half, tried to convince my friend that the Earth was actually flat.
My friend left the meeting with several beliefs shaken, but not the ones his cousin wished for. How, he wondered, could a person with such good grades from a top school, become such a strong believer in conspiracy theories? Well, this is not an isolated case. A lot of people, who seemed pretty reasonable some years ago, suddenly started to become very eager consumers of this type of theory. Since the Internet started to become accessible and popular in society, a lot of these theories started to come around—again—attracting people and putting them together in their specific groups, where they could freely share their old beliefs and create new ones. A rabbit hole, in summary.
But it’s easy—and unfair—to put all the blame on the Internet. Conspiracy theories have always existed and were always exchanged between their foes, like Nero and the fire of Rome, for example. Most of what we call folklore today possibly started as a conspiracy theory, such as the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. But, what’s a conspiracy theory? How can you differentiate them from any other theory and why, despite the facts and proof, do your relatives still believe the Lizard People control the world?
Conspiracy Theories have some appeal, after all. It’s intriguing to think that we can unveil something important and mysterious, or that we hold a long unknown knowledge. Like Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, we like to believe we are the only smart person in a room full of ordinary people.
Dr. Karen Douglas (2021) is a professor with a Ph.D. in Psychology and a researcher of conspiracy theories. In the podcast “Speaking of Psychology,” she said:
Some psychological evidence suggests that people are drawn to conspiracy theories when they do feel uncertain either in specific situations or more generally. And there are other epistemic reasons why people believe in conspiracy theories as well in relation to this sort of need for knowledge and certainty. So, people with lower levels of education tend to be drawn to conspiracy theories. And we don't argue that because people are not intelligent. It's simply that they haven't been allowed to have or haven't been given access to the tools to allow them to differentiate between good sources and bad sources or credible sources and non-credible sources. So, they're looking for that knowledge and certainty, but not necessarily looking in the right places (10:16).
It’s not wrong to assume that these people are curious and want to know the truth. Like questioning scientists, but a little misguided. The sources they were looking at made them doubt what they already learned in school, and in exchange, gave them a whole world filled with mysteries and intrigue, all wrapped in a complex story where good and evil are very well determined. In this situation, it is a lot easier to pick a side and stick to it, especially if this side is an underdog (everyone makes fun of the Flat Earthers after all, they need some empathy). Much more interesting and appealing than our ordinary— and usually boring—history classes.
Conspiracy Theories are indeed fun, and some of them are very creative and provide great stories, Hollywood knows that more than anyone. We love this kind of movie, where a scapegoat character is able to uncover all the government mysteries by himself, fighting alone against a corrupted world. It’s an amazing and interesting story, and we may even feel avenged when the status-quo system is broken at some point. The difficult part is convincing people that they are just that: a fun and fictional story, and even if that carries some points in reality, it’s still fiction. It’s always okay to enjoy, and there’s no harm done when you don’t truly believe in them.
Comments