After the Key Bridge Disaster and the April 8th 2024 eclipse, I listened to several podcasts on conspiracy theories. A strange consistency emerged that I had also witnessed – it seemed people weren’t really trying to craft conspiracy theories.
Oh there was the usual stuff. The rapture and chemtrails, cyberattacks and secret plots. But it was all things we’d heard before. Some of it, especially the eclipse conspiracy theories seemed laughable like some extremely predictable astronomical event was a magical/occult/divine arrangement that was important for some reason. It was lukewarm and recycled.
There was bigotry and biases, of course, especially in the Key Bridge Disaster. Plenty of racist crap was spewed online about various people and the city of Baltimore. It was no different than any of the racism and bigotry the day before, just shifted around a bit. It was racists being racists because of racism.
Finally, there was a lack of coherence to the conspiracy theories. There wasn’t any grand overarching plan or narrative – even “God” apparently didn’t have one. There was no chart with red string, no colorful complex graphic explaining it all circulating online. It was so low effort.
A lot of what I saw, and what the podcasts I followed saw, seemed to be people essentially tossing out old ideas and biases and calling it a day – or mentioning disconnected points and saying, essentially, “suspicious?” Maybe both if you got some really ambitious person with an online handle like “EagleFlightPatriotAlpha1776” and AN AI avatar with ten-pack abs and thirteen total fingers.
But man, the usual suspects and newcomers to stringing together bullshit weren’t trying. Maybe they were tired, maybe it was just the confluence of events and non-events, but I mean I had expectations. However I wonder.
Is conspiracy theory culture tapped out in America? I mean we’ve done it all, from space super-soldiers fighting reptoids (which are just anti-semetic tropes) to gigantic financial and political conspiracies (which are just anti-semetic tropes). Maybe people are out of ideas, maybe we’ve hit a kind of saturation.
Perhaps people are ALL trying to do the old trick of spewing random things and seeing what audiences want. Maybe everyone wants to get hits by low effort, give in to audience capture, and do whatever. Maybe we’re hitting even more widespread, but lazy grift.
Could it be that current news (Trump, Israel, and Ukraine as of this writing) has sucked all the oxygen out of the room? Has reality occupied too much time of people’s minds?
Were these events just too reality-based to get a good theory going?
Or maybe we’re all just worn out from continuous crap and it’s even hit people who are Too Online.
I mean I’d be glad if Conspiracy Culture is somehow worn out, winding down, and maybe falling apart. Maybe we can get some reality in there But I suppose I have to know what’s going on, just in case.
Which I guess makes me a bit like a Conspiracy Theorist.
– Xenofact