BBC Trending articles

[essentialsaltes]

 The Beeb is having a look at American conspiracies just as we're heading into our month on the War on Reason

 The people who think mass shootings are staged.

Alex Jones: "Vegas is as phony as a three dollar bill or as Obama's birth certificate"

There are two earlier articles in the series:

9/11 truthers

Chemtrails

All these things feel to me similar to a cult. The age of the internet has made it so much easier for people to find each other and fall into a shared delusion that locks out independent information and keeps them safely ensconced within the 'safety' of the group that is in on The Truth. Once upon a time, you needed a charismatic nut and a locked compound. Now, it's much easier.

Comments

[dewline]

Sadly true.

[jazzyjj]

Thanks for bringing this to light. I am in no way trying to say these things never happened because they clearly did. But I for one haven't seen all this stuff before about these conspiracy theories. I suppose it really makes one stop and think though about what kind of nation we're living in.

[garote]

When I was a kid, our community was abuzz - at least at the kid level - with urban legends like needles in Halloween candy, rapists in vans waiting in the school parking lot, vengeful teens deliberately giving each other HIV, heavy metal music subliminally compelling kids to murder their families (for Satan!), and a whole parade of insipid ghost stories and cautionary tales (involving teenage sex and/or alcohol) about the abandoned areas scattered around Santa Cruz county.

Taking that into account, I think the only thing that’s different today is, the naïve but thrilling local rumors just have added long-range competition, among credulous people looking to have their feelings of fear validated!