One of my best friends since middle school i find out is now a conspiracy theorist. he thinks the mass shooting that just happened in florida was staged and im assuming he might think that about lots of other mass shootings. He also thinks the media is driving this and other groups. Im good with debating conspiracy theorists, but not with this stuff. How the fuck … what ???? god this is so frustrating. its sad how anti-intellectualism and the fear of the government (which is honestly usually justified) and the distrust of the media (once again justified) leads to theories such as this.
But since I put myself in others people’s shoes, you can’t blame them. The media often doesn’t report on important issues, just things that will boost their ratings. The establishment narrative that the media and the government give us is almost always sanitized and missing crucial information. We’ve found out through leaks or investigative journalism that the democratic party is corrupt, the united states tortures and kills and bombs countries around the world, we’ve toppled governments around the world, many politicians do the bidding of corporations, scientific research is sometimes suppressed by corporations etc.- yet in school we are taught that we are angelic paragons of democracy and freedom. So all these incongruities, instead of making them more skeptical of dominant narratives, throw them full force into emotionally appealing theories that are TOO skeptical, where everything is a lie and everything is a conspiracy and where everyone is against you and where nothing you see, or hear, or feel is real. This is dangerous, yet I understand why they think this way. We all have a need to organize the chaos around us. Some of us turn to these theories.
The sad thing is that most likely, one of these crazy conspiracy theories might actually have a kernel of truth (not the mass shooting ones but perhaps others that have existed) and when its found out that one actually might be partially true, it only boosts their own conviction that everything is a conspiracy.
The truth is a tricky thing to find in such an epistemically murky society. It makes me sad. It also makes me sad how it seems that every outlet for news, commentary, etc have an agenda whether via an ideological bent or financial ties or both instead of the agenda being what is actually true.