PSA: Conspiracy Theories Are Everywhere

On December 21st, 2012, I was in line for a ride at Epcot in Florida when my friend asked me, “Did you know the world is going to end today?”

I don’t remember how my nine-year-old self dealt with this information. I was probably a bit worried after hearing it. I went about the rest of my day at Epcot and woke up the next morning, very much alive.

I had forgotten about the 2012 apocalypse predictions until years later, when @NickHintonn posted a Twitter thread suggesting that the world did end in 2012, without us realizing it, and we have been living in a black hole since. I guess we’ll never know!

Look, it's us! Source: UChicago News

How do people come up with this stuff??

In his book, New Dark Age, James Bridle discusses how seemingly foolish conspiracy theories are able to take hold of so many people. Bridle suggests that conspiracy theories “literalise the horror we feel lurking unspoken in the world” - they’re like coping mechanisms for the crappy world we live in. An article by Jan-Willem van Prooijen and Karen Douglas further supports this idea. Evidence showed that conspiracy theories throughout history have tended to appear around times of social crisis. Think of all of the COVID-19 bioweapon and vaccine conspiracy theories that have emerged these past few years.

Bridle mentions Douglas Hofstader, who argued that conspiracy theories result in “the casting of an invisible enemy as ‘a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman”. When we construct these theories or choose to believe them, it seems like we are attempting to remove our own responsibility to take action. People who think climate change is a hoax must live so peacefully! I guess it’s easy to believe that people are lying to you if you don’t see the immediate negative effects. I enjoyed the high temperatures in Toronto this winter until I thought too hard about global warming.

How to know what to believe

A 2021 study found that “Beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation tend to be negatively associated with exposure to traditional media and positively associated with digital media and personal contacts.” There’s a running joke among us kids with Asian immigrant parents that they’ll believe any crazy story they see circulating in their WhatsApp group chats. The truth is, talking with friends is mainly how my mom stays up-to-date with news. She doesn’t know how to tell what a trustworthy source looks like. It might be good to be more empathetic to those that don’t have as high a level of media literacy; Bridle quotes a woman from an article by journalist Carey Dunne, who says, “When you’re just a standard person, you can really be led to believe anything… How do I know if it’s the truth or not?”

Instead of dismissing conspiracy theories and condemning conspiracy theory believers, we should try and understand their points of view by doing our own investigation. This way, we will be able to articulate the facts rather than just saying “that sounds stupid” - and maybe we’ll learn something new along the way, too. Maybe we’ll find out that what sounded stupid actually had some truth to it (which happens pretty often)!

Bridle encourages us to live in the “gray zone” of information instead of seeing the world as black-and-white. This means accepting that there will always be “half-truths” floating around, most of them unprovable and clashing. I’m not saying that I believe Hinton’s claim that we’ve been in a black hole since 2012, but some of his points did pique my interest for further research. Learning to be curious and open-minded, with a bit of skepticism for any information we come across, is the most productive way to navigate this information dump that we’re buried in.