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Most conspiracy theorists don't even have a coherent idea as much as they assume. They just know the official story is wrong and will look for anything to prove that fact. If the brand of conspiracy they don't believe in turns out to be bogus, they'll look for another. They'll even believe contradictory theories. Just anything that goes against "the official story".
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Sep 22, 2013 02:52
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gradenko_2000 posted:Anyone have any good sources to share about birther-ism? I think it pretty much also qualifies as a conspiracy theory considering the massive amount of mental gymnastics one has to go through to convince oneself that they're after Obama's birth records because there's legit shadowy stuff about that guy and nope, it's not about anything else, honest. This is probably straying off the topic a bit but to answer shortly is he has shown his birth certificate, multiple times and in multiple forms. Anyone who still doesn't buy it is looking for an excuse and will never be happy.
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Sep 22, 2013 17:55
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Questioning is fine. Questioning is good, even. What isn't good is continuing to believe demonstrably false theories just because you desperately want to believe the truth is a lie.
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Sep 23, 2013 02:31
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Gorilla Salad posted:One thing that people always seem to miss about the birthers, is that it's not just racist, it's also sexist. No matter where Obama was born, his mother was a US citizen, therefore he is a US citizen. But birthers always focus on his father's nationality because, in their twisted view, it's the man who determines nationality and the woman is simply irrelevant. Eh I think this is reaching. I realize people can be blind to their own -isms but if their roles were switched (Obama's mother being the foreigner and his father being the citizen) I don't think they would feel any less strongly about it. I feel like that only works if the parents roles only work one way. RagnarokAngel fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Sep 23, 2013 |
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Sep 23, 2013 13:23
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I'm not labeling all skeptics with that brush, just like it wouldn't be fair to name all of a political or religious group with one brush, but any subset of people who share a common belief that they're passionate about are bound to form some sort of community around it. And to be fair there's a lot of legitimate causes for atheists/skeptics to fight for, mostly the same sort of discrimination non-Christians face in the US (although how much will vary from region to region and field to field). And like all communities some of those people do and say very dumb things.
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Sep 24, 2013 08:18
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The problem is the CIA does a lot of monstrous stuff. I don't think any one in this thread will deny that, whether they are a truther or not. However, going "well it seems like something they could do" does not in fact, bolster your argument. It makes it look like you're chasing shadows and using an agenda to just blame anything you can on them.
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Oct 6, 2013 02:31
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Pook Good Mook posted:I love that particular line of bull because it's so frigin easy to disprove. If you take 30 seconds to google you can see pictures of them finding the more "solid" parts like engines and landing gear of the plane in the wreckage. When thousands of photographs are taken of something, its pretty easy to find a handful that fit what you want.
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Nov 5, 2013 19:50
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Popular Thug Drink posted:As I recall, the images that were released of the plane striking the Pentagon came from a gas station across the street which was far enough away to capture a couple hundred feet of vertical dimension. Which, of course, failed to satisfy the missile/hologram contingent. Well it's been too long, obviously they doctored it by this point 
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Nov 6, 2013 00:34
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truther posted:Therefore nothing. All I asked was why haven't we seen the photos the FBI used to identify the bombers? You realize "Just asking questions" is never that, right?
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Nov 27, 2013 14:56
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Pook Good Mook posted:If nothing else we have them in the crowd with bulky backpacks and them leaving without said backpacks. Combined with everything else that happened and we know I'm willing to bet they got the right guys. Patriots too  Seriously though a lot of conspiracy nutjobs say it was a "test run" for martial law, and since Watertown so eagerly accepted the jackbooted police rolling in on tanks and SWAT gear with assault rifles, it means the American people are becoming too complacent. RagnarokAngel fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Nov 27, 2013 |
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Nov 27, 2013 17:19
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The governments editing the footage to make them look ridiculous, obviously.
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Dec 29, 2013 07:39
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Yeah liberal media is less about "Reptilian Zionist Masons are trying to pull the strings of world governments" and more of a generic Conservative view point of "anyone who isn't a total neo-con is in bed with Joseph Stalin, known Liberal"
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Jan 1, 2014 15:40
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A virus that kills people?  Why that's just too insane to believe.
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Jan 2, 2014 18:13
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Grouchy Smurf posted:This is what actually makes me mad. Why the gently caress does a Neo-Nazi says "holocaust never happened"? I mean, they already state that non-aryans should be removed from the genre pool. If it was me, I would be saying "Holocaust happened, and we have to repeat it". It's an attempt to give people more reason to distrust the Jews. "They're pulling the wool over your eyes! It's all a zionist plot! That's how deep they'll go!" It's a lot harder to garner sympathy when youre saying "Yeah we killed em, and I'd kill em again!"
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Jan 3, 2014 05:33
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Because it's been contained and what would they have to gain by hiding it? I'm not saying there isn't a potential problem but this particular issue affects a specific breed of starfish, and seemingly very little else around it.
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Jan 3, 2014 15:59
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Larry_Mullet posted:So running any kind of scientific analysis of the effects of Fukushima radiation on any pacific sea-life is a waste of time, in your opinion? Does being concerned about the health effects of millions of gallons of irradiated water flowing into the ocean for a few years make you a loon? No? But why is it affecting only california and not an entire ocean between them?
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Jan 3, 2014 16:38
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I'm seriously loving this martyr bullshit you're pulling.
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Jan 3, 2014 17:15
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computer parts posted:It's not even starfish in general, it's a particular species of starfish. Well to be fair, a few species of starfish, which is unusual for this sort of thing. But to jump to the conclusion that it's caused by radiation on the other side of the goddamn ocean (and somehow leapfrogged over everywhere else) is more than a bit insane.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:13
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My favorite is people who unironically stick to the mantra of "I don't eat it if it had ingredients I can't pronounce". How is that even a philosophy?
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Jan 4, 2014 05:32
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Shbobdb posted:"Whiteness" is pretty flexible, but Stonehenge would be an obvious counter-example. I'm not disagreeing with the overarching thesis. Moderns think that pre-moderns were dumb mud-people and couldn't have built those structures, therefore aliens. But it extends to white people as well. Nazis spent a lot of time dealing with the obvious deficiencies of Northern Europe vs. Southern Europe. It's an old discussion with many arms. Like an octopus. An octopus wrapping itself around all of history with its many arms. The major reason it seems like they talk about "non white" cultures more is because the line of reasoning is lumping "White" and then "non white" into just 2 groups. If you're only seeing those 2 groups of course you're going to see non whites mentioned more, theres way, way more of them.
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Jan 7, 2014 06:49
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What would they gain by killing MLK? If it was to stop the civil rights act (and I'm not denying in the 1960s the government wouldn't want this) they didn't exactly do a stellar job at that, and I figure if the FBI is as powerful as you claim they would know making a martyr out of the guy would have backfired horribly.
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Jan 10, 2014 09:11
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Well Chinese structures don't get as much conspiracy nonsense because records exist. The ancient Chinese were ridiculously meticulous in their recordkeeping and although its gone through some dramatic shifts over time, there's a still a recognizably "Chinese" culture that can explain these things.
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Jan 13, 2014 03:49
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You seem to believe all 9/11 truthers are racist rednecks though. How does a leftist (of which many truthers are of that variety) justify that? There's a lot of factors that draw people to a conspiracy theory, some do it for the reasons you mentioned, others want to be part of a "secret club" where they know the truth above others.
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Jan 17, 2014 07:40
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Zachack posted:Er, I think if they saw two planes out of place after the WTC had been hit that would actually be quite the story, unless you're talking about everyday NYC having a lot of people running around screaming and poo poo in the air, which may be accurate. Well, also BEFORE 9/11 you generally were not looking at the skies in fear every waking minute. There was only a few seconds before it hit the tower so in those scant few seconds you had to be looking up, in that narrow time window, in a place that you could actually see it, all by coincidence.
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Jan 20, 2014 15:25
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I don't think anyone is denying the warren commision was rather hastily thrown together (and if it hadn't been we wouldn't still be arguing about it) it's just that the final point remains the same despite that: Oswald shot Kennedy alone.
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Jan 20, 2014 21:30
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If Ruby had been given some kind of pass like "mysteriously" found not guilty and got to disappear to Bermuda I might be a little more suspicious. But he spent 2 years in jail before he finally got a retrial (and the Cancer killed him before they could). He had 2 years to spill his guts, what could they possibly have been promising him to keep his mouth shut? Or threatening him with? If he blew the lid off the entire conspiracy of who killed JFK he would probably get a medal.
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Jan 21, 2014 21:19
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Morphix posted:An assassinated President's death is so poorly investigated that proper ballistic tests can be thrown out the window because gently caress it. So hold up. Whoever did this (CIA, Mafia, Aliens) was clever enough to pull off a totally perfect assassination whilst framing another guy, but couldn't put up a report that wasn't riddled with errors? What did they think people wouldn't fall for it because it was "too good"?
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Jan 22, 2014 02:48
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Morphix posted:Why would they have needed to produce a report that wasn't riddled with errors? When you have people on here still using the same riddled report to base their case on. And that same crappy report is probably the sole reason there even is a conspiracy in the first place. If they proposed a logical one that was bulletproof (no pun intended) you wouldn't be discussing this. Morphix posted:This seems more like a case of let's believe what's spoon fed to us without questioning any of it, because once you start questioning it, you might not be too happy with the power structure of these United States. Gotta keep the myth alive, people aren't ready for the truth, etc etc. That is not even close to what's happening.
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Jan 22, 2014 03:36
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MizPiz posted:Most educated people I know have other poo poo they need to worry about and/or aren't interested in the slightest about conspiracies except for maybe the "woah, dude" effect of them. Just because you're oh so much smarter than the general public doesn't mean you're immune from manipulation or deception. You really think the public (educated or otherwise) isn't interested in any attempt to make the government look bad or incompetent?
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Jan 22, 2014 13:38
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Most conspiracy theorists are harmless. That's what makes it funny and not scary.
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Jan 22, 2014 19:42
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Many assassinations are performed by people with mental illness. Doesn't mean I'm going to be afraid to be in a room with any random someone with a mental illness (Especially as a therapist that would probably make my job difficult). You can't take the most drastic examples as signs of all of them. Most conspiracy nuts are harmless and aren't going to do a thing.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:14
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 It reads like satire.
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Jan 23, 2014 01:39
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By that logic any one here is at risk of going off and gunning down conservatives at any moment because of their belief that they want to keep the poor down (one that I share, mind you).
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Jan 23, 2014 03:04
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Armani posted:I have a conspiracy theorist in my life who straight up admitted he would pillage and kill anyone he had to survive if revolution comes to America. Yeah that's pretty standard tough guy chat for conservatives though. He wouldn't do a thing and would probably cower in his home.
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Jan 23, 2014 08:05
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twistedmentat posted:It's like the GOP getting rid of voter protection because black people can vote now. This prevents bad things happening so well they don't happen before, so lets get rid of it. Or even better, unions. "Sure they were great during the time of Rockefeller but now? They're just corrupt. The laws will protect the worker."
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Jan 26, 2014 22:51
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My favorite is when you bother to check the snopes article on anything that says verified by snopes, it probably says the exact opposite.
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Jan 31, 2014 05:51
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duck monster posted:The irony though is , these theories also serve as a (very poor) attempt at resolving contradiction as well. At least in the marxist/structuralist sense, but often in the more literal sense of contradiction. Unfortunately by creating more questions than they answer, it just opens doors for more and more and more conspiracy theories until peoples thinking seem to be completely colored by them. At a certain point, once you believe anything, you'll start to believe everything. There was actually a study on that, I'll see if I can find it, but people will often believe totally contradicting theories. In a study where they asked various different questions about the circumstances of Princess Diana's death, they would agree with mutually incompatible beliefs. The same person might simultaneously agree that MI-6 was in on it, terrorists were in on it, and that she intentionally faked her death and is still alive. Essentially after a time you believe just that SOMETHING must be wrong so you'll believe ANYTHING that backs up that assertion. http://www.livescience.com/18171-contradicting-conspiracy-theories-mistrust.html There's an article on it but I know I had the original paper. Edit: Original paper: http://www.academia.edu/1207098/Dead_and_alive_Beliefs_in_contradictory_conspiracy_theories RagnarokAngel fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Feb 8, 2014 |
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Feb 8, 2014 00:08
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Star Man posted:Something I've heard said on a skepticism podcast (I believe it was SGU) by Derek of Jenny McCarthy Body Count is that the anti-vax movement is in a way a eugenics movement. Not one that's consciously trying to eradicate a group of people, but in a way of believing that because they, their children, or ancestors survived a preventable disease by fighting it off or never contracting it, they are stronger than those that died of those diseases. Yeah I don't think it's eugenics. It's more underestimating how badly nature can murder (or cripple) the poo poo out of you if she wants to, and an overestimation of the side effects of taking the vaccine. Most anti-vaxers have never seen stuff like Polio in person so they don't know the gravity of getting it.
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Feb 12, 2014 16:42
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I think the point is that people who are "in" on the conspiracy would be able to decode the hidden messages and act accordingly. You'd think those symbols would be more hidden so some schmuck couldn't pick up on them but hey I'm not in the illuminati.
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Feb 25, 2014 05:22
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Republican Vampire posted:The standard explanation these days seems to be Predictive Programming, which is based on the proposition that THE ILLUMINATI are seeding the discourse and pop culture and history with their symbols and slogans in order to prime us to accept their commands/atrocities/etc. It's supposed to be subliminal messaging that's designed to make us accept the unacceptable. That justification's only really become prominent recently though, while people have freaked out over images and symbols for ages. I'm sure, but subliminal messaging has been proven to be at best ineffective (Course maybe they published those studies to make us think that  )
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Feb 28, 2014 06:41
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