Researchers investigating the conspiracy scene were surprised by what they found.
 | By Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
Remember when the term "conspiracy theorist" primarily conjured up people who believed the moon landing was faked, or that Sept. 11 was an inside job, or even — so quaint! — that Elvis is still alive? |
It's not that those theories were necessarily kinder or gentler than some of the newer conspiracy theories that have arisen on dark corners of the internet — most still allege sinister cover-ups at the highest levels of government, sometimes with an undercurrent of antisemitism for good measure (OK, maybe not the Elvis one). |
But, compared to something like QAnon and its visions of sex trafficking cabals, don't they seem a little more self-contained, less inclined to inexplicably sprawl and glom on to other subjects? Don't they seem, frankly, markedly less unhinged? |
If you think so, it turns out that many of the people who believe in what might be called "old-school conspiracies" agree. In her latest piece for Times Opinion, Annie Kelly, a postdoctoral researcher and the U.K. correspondent for the podcast QAnon Anonymous, writes about a series of interviews that her research team has done with conspiracy theorists and others connected to the scene from the pre-social-media era. |
The project began because the team was interested in how classic conspiracy theorists thought social media changed their world. But what the researchers discovered surprised them: Their subjects thought conspiracies like QAnon and the Great Reset were disturbing, too, even alarming. One of my favorite quotes from the essay: |
When I asked Mr. Lewis when he first heard of QAnon, he told me a story about a family member who'd sent him a video that began with what he saw as a fairly unobjectionable narrative of government abuses of power. "I'm nodding my head, I'm agreeing," he said. Then it got to the satanic pedophile networks. |
There's lots more of that sort of color — these guys are nothing if not colorful. But I came away from working on the essay with a new way of thinking about why social media has made modern conspiracy theories so bonkers. It's not just that various algorithms prioritize outrageous content; social media has created an environment in which a given conspiracy theory must stay relevant to current news events or risk fading away, and an ecosystem of "conspiracy entrepreneurs" — part lifestyle influencers, part culture warriors — incentivized to keep pace. |
You'd be hard-pressed to find a better guide to modern conspiratorial thinking than Annie, who has steeped herself in conspiracy culture for years, and has somehow emerged both clear-eyed about its dangers and sympathetic to the individuals who are drawn in. As a result, her piece also offers an unexpectedly poignant picture of a group of people who have felt politically and culturally homeless in recent years — a bit like Never Trumpers, only with more illuminati references. |
"The paranormal and the parapolitical had been their passion and their home for their entire adult lives," Annie writes. "Now they found themselves living with one foot in and one foot out of the current conspiracy scene … As they saw it, it wasn't that they had rejected conspiracy culture; conspiracy culture was leaving them behind." |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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