Back in the old days, the internet was full of kooks: there was the timecube guy, and Archimedes Plutonium, and Robert McElwaine (UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
), and the Velikovskiites, and a host of other strange folk, and that was fine. The weirdos spiced things up, and besides, their followings consisted mostly of people laughing at them. The most troubling thing now is not that there are oddballs, but that there are huge mobs of people following and agreeing with them, and amplifying their message to an absurd degree. Alex Jones would have been a classic Usenet crank, for instance, ridiculed and mocked, but now? He’s raking in the dough and is advising the president.
A Buzzfeed article pins much of the blame for that on one outlet, YouTube.
The entire contemporary conspiracy-industrial complex of internet investigation and social media promulgation, which has become a defining feature of media and politics in the Trump era, would be a very small fraction of itself without YouTube. Yes, the site most people associate with “Gangnam Style,” pirated music, and compilations of dachshunds sneezing is also the central content engine of the unruliest segments of the ascendant right-wing internet, and sometimes its enabler.
To wit, the conspiracy-news internet’s biggest stars, some of whom now enjoy New Yorker profiles and presidential influence, largely live on YouTube — some of them on the site’s news channel. Infowars — whose founder and host, Alex Jones, claims Sandy Hook didn’t happen, Michelle Obama is a man, and 9/11 was an inside job — broadcasts to 2 million subscribers on YouTube. So does Michael “Gorilla Mindset” Cernovich. So too do a whole genre of lesser-known but still wildly popular YouTubers, people like Seaman and Stefan Molyneux (an Irishman closely associated with the popular “Truth About” format). As do a related breed of prolific political-correctness watchdogs like Paul Joseph Watson and Sargon of Akkad (real name: Carl Benjamin), whose videos focus on the supposed hypocrisies of modern liberal culture and the ways they leave Western democracy open to a hostile Islamic takeover. As do a related group of conspiratorial white-identity vloggers like Red Ice TV, which regularly hosts neo-Nazis in its videos.
We’ve long known how awful YouTube commenters are — in general, comment threads there are a nightmare of alt-right freaks, indignant misogynists, racists, and fanatical consumers of niche media. There is virtually no accountability in YouTube comments, and it has become another outpost of the 4chan mentality. And further, as mentioned above, flaming lunatics thrive as media personalities on it, because they gladly affirm prejudice and bigotry and often, bizarre Libertarian views. I’d heard of several of the people mentioned, but had never encountered one, Davd Seaman, who is featured in the article, so I had to look him up.
I watched one video by Seaman.
ONE.
I could take no more. Here it is:
Seaman is a prominent #pizzagate conspiracy theorist — you know, the unbelievable, batshit stupid idea that there is a secret child molestation conspiracy ring run by major Democratic figures out of a basement lair in a specific pizza parlor that has no basement. These are the kinds of guys who wax wroth at the outrage of innocent, imaginary (they can never name any of the victims) children being sexually abused, while simultaneously insisting that the Sandy Hook murders were a false flag operation, and all the innocent, named children were actors.
In the above video, Seaman also goes on and on about Bitcoin and gold-based currencies. None of what he says is backed up by reason or evidence, but only by his stridently held opinions. He has a following, though: take a look at the comments on the Buzzfeed article. They are eye-opening. There are lots of angry people who are convinced that Alex Jones and David Seaman are telling the Truth.
In a world full of clowns, Bozo is king, and it looks like YouTube is the media of choice for gullible fools.
Oh, I forgot! One thing he claimed, bizarrely, was that the recent announcement about possible habitable planets was a distraction to keep people from hammering John Podesta about his imaginary pedophilia. It wasn’t just NASA conspiring to snow us all, he said there was also the recent discovery of an alien artifact in Antarctica.
Say what? Did you hear anything about an alien artifact. I hadn’t. The only thing I could find was an unbelievable crackpot story about Visit to Antarctica Confirms Discovery of Flash Frozen Alien Civilization. No, this wasn’t news. No, it isn’t distracting anyone. Apparently, we’re at the stage where cranks are complaining about other cranks stealing their thunder.
The video was removed while i was watching it.
Of course there’s a basement. It’s a secret basement. The real problem is that the police work for the government, and the government works for the shadow government, and the shadow government works for the Illuminati, and the Illuminati work for the Majestic Council of the Twelve, and the Majestic Council of the Twelve works for the lizard people, and the lizard people work for the devil himself, and the devil himself works for Hillary Clinton. So of course they say there’s no basement. But Real True Patriot’s (TM) know the truth!
The preceding may have been intended as humor. At least, that’s what they want you to think.
This, though, is a serious puzzle to me: If the children were actors, are they, or aren’t they dead? I’ve seen the “they were actors” claim several times, but I still can’t figure out if they’re supposed to have been killed, or not. There’s no video of the massacre, so what would be the point hiring actors at all?
I guess what I’m asking is, do these fools believe children were killed, or not? I’m not willing to subject myself to several hours of Alex Jones or his fellow travelers, and I’m not asking anyone else to do so, either, but I thought someone might know the answer.
That’s interesting. All of his videos have vanished.
Hmm, this stuff looks like a job for that Skeptic Movement I remember hearing about. Reason rally, Center For Inquiry, and all that. Are they still out there?
One of the real problems for me is the question “Do these people really believe this stuff, or are they aware that, at some level, it’s batshit crazy?”. It hasn’t been that easy to tell.
randall,
If these people can convince themselves that Donald Trump should be President, then the steps necessary to believe these things are baby steps. These are seriously deluded people who, in another day and age, might be considered to be clinically insane. Now, they make you-tube videos.
Yeah, but what does that have to do with BENGHAZI!?!?
In the land of the clowns, the guy selling the face paint is king.
Please forgive me. I rarely comment because I don’t want to be a nuisance. But this thing is just so . . . I don’t even have the words . . . yet here are more words:
The strangest thing to me is that on a biology/athiest blog post I’m the 9th(?) poster and nobody’s called anyone names or tossed out some ad hominem yet. Well . . . maybe the clown thing. Benghazi was clearly a joke . . . but let’s ignore those for the moment. Typically there are trolls and nay-sayers and just people being terrible just because they can *much earlier than this*. And I admit I don’t understand why. But it upsets me.
We (Americans) have generally lost all civility. Further, the enemy (whatever-that-is) has lost all civility. Clearly, the only course forward is just burning down their houses and I don’t even care about their children, right? Terrible! This is abominable.
The Internet is what it is because we don’t have laws or civility here. That was what we all wanted, right?
Once the Fairness Doctrine fell (thanks, Ronnie!), broadcast media changed. They weren’t accountable anymore. Once the Internet (a well-designed network for data) for most people became the web (Ok, so Gopherspace was also a little weird and I don’t want to blame the web entirely but it’s not the Internet’s fault), it didn’t have fairness built-in. With the Internet we discovered eternal September over and over. That sucked. And then we invented trolls. These are all steps toward non-truth as a basis for thought, “understanding”, and now “discourse”. We started with people who didn’t know anything and then moved toward accepting non-facts from people who wanted to disseminate falsehoods. Oh, the Internet.
Our current problem is based on what we allowed politics and the Internet to become. We all thought that those weirdos were harmless. They’re not. We thought enough people would see them and intervene to sync up with the rational world. Didn’t happen. Those forces were ignored rather than dealt with so we have a problem. They’re now. They’re a bit of an existential threat to what most of us consider to be democracy. Or human.
So what can we do? I can self-police myself to death and still be overwhelmed by assholes. I can stand up and say what I just did. I could do that on some-chan and be immediately mocked and called names my mother wouldn’t recognize. I can comment on mainstream news on the web or Twitter or whatever and be trolled. Whatever I do I will be harassed.
Alternately, I can ignore the plague. But that doesn’t stop it. It still attacks.
Or I can attack it, but it is target-less. (In a way that Saul Alinsky would appreciate, I’ll add.)
Or I can only seek out closed gardens that police thought and expression. But I really hate Facebook.
So . . . what can we do? What do you do? Does that help? I honest don’t know how to make things better. I explain history but that is often met with credulity and claims that I’m “telling lies” because the actual history of this country and the world aren’t things most people seem to understand/believe.
Help?
I’m politically about as far left as one can be. I neither own guns, nor want to. I’m a busy person who doesn’t spend all day watching YouTube. I can only imagine that those of you who, for example, believe that Sandy Hook was an actual school shooting rather than a FEMA, DHS drill and that children were actually killed, have *deliberately decided *that the truth would destroy your worldview and, thus, your “white picket fence” lives. Either that or you actually work for the United States government to promote the idea that anyone and everyone who dares to question the official story deserves the Tin Foil Hat Award. It is not we who have the courage to examine and accept the truth who are “crazy”, but you who are afraid of the truth who are in a state of deliberate denial. We so called “conspiracy theorists” are not all supporters of the horrid Trump,nor are we ignorant or even stupid. We have decided to live our lives not oppressed by the government, but exposing its malevolence.
Jennifer, the one who clearly thinks the truth would destroy their life is YOU.
Children were *killed*. There were bodies. There are graves. There are grieving families.
But you cannot handle a reality in which someone goes on a rampage and kills children. This is a level of horror you can’t imagine, and therefore have decided it *can’t be real*. This is deliberate ignorance on your part, because it would destroy your world view.
@Jennifer Maxwell
Youi so called “conspiracy theorists” never present any evidence. You ARE paranoid cranks.
Jennifer Maxwell @10
Do you have any evidence that Sandy Hook was a FEMA/DHS drill?
Because my sister, who I trust in many things, has a good friend whose child was there that day. My sister is damn well sure that real children lost real lives. Real people with real grief.
You have NOT decided to live your life exposing the government’s malevolence. If you had, you would be doing real evidence gathering and real reporting. Take a few months off and go interview the Sandy Hook families. Talk to the ambulance drivers. Submit a FOIA request on the police department. When you have facts to cite, perhaps people will listen to you. But do more than just claim we don’t want our worldview destroyed.
Or go find another popular conspiracy theory windmill, because Sandy Hook was real. But note that you shouldn’t tilt at Columbine or the Aurora theater shootings. I know people who were personally involved in both of those. I am going to believe the people who were actually there. Not you.
Better yet, if you want to expose malice in government, join it. Work your way to a Congressional staffer job or inside the NSA. Gather real evidence and expose it. Not here on some blog or Facebook. Once you have real evidence present your evidence to a real newspaper who will vet it and publish it. There are real people who have exposed real malfeasance. You aren’t one of them.
Two thoughts :Strange how everyone knows someone who knows someone else who was there, isn’t it? Frankly, I don’t live in the US anymore though I was born and raised in New Orleans. Commuting from Milano every day would be a bit difficult. I’d never work for the criminal United States government anyway. Sorry, one more thought – I’m really not that interested in or invested in Sandy Hook. I said “for example” in my comment. I was speaking more about propaganda than anything else. It’s not only conservatives that can see through the bs. I’m here writing because it’s Sunday morning and I’m waiting to go out for breakfast and have nothing better to do while I wait. What is your reason for being such an egregious ass and condescending bully on a beautiful Sunday morning? You’re a real know it all, aren’t you?? I’m sorry to burst your tiny bubble, but you are being played “big league” by your murderous, vile government. At least I had the good sense to get the hell out of there many years ago. Have a lovely day!!
Youtube followed me to work recently…
My newest coworker is really into the whole conspiracy stuff it seems. He does not seem to believe in the more extreme versions (no reptoids..), but follows the basic libertarian “evil government is controlling the markets” and “global warming is a lie” stuff. It’s hard to says for sure as he has really trouble communicating coherently on any topic.
What annoys me with this guy is not so much his strange opinions, I enjoy for example arguing with my more religious or new agey friends, but his smug superiority and most importantly his way of just repeating the same soundbytes over and over again when I try to counter his position instead of actually making an argument or engaging my point.
A bit like Jennifer here.
people believe things like that because they are ignorant about many many aspects of the reality of the existence they are living. it is sad but it is more true than not. They also react to their ignorance as if it was a value judgment about their worth as humans.
They react emotionally and think they are being judged inferior. hence the hate for elites though they usually get angry at the “wrong” elites. They think mostly with their feelings and judge the world and existence with their feeling alone.
There is also that portion of people who have “turned on tuned in and dropped out” to quote a Harvard professor and fugitive. They want nothing to do with all the corruption, lies and power struggles.
It is their choice of course to do nothing to help change the prevailing ignorance. It may even be an impossible and a hopeless task they may be right giving up may be the simplest answer.
I am part of the world and will endeavor to engage with it and all who live in it to the best of my ability and understanding knowing that I am very fallible and am only one person.
Real true things not just beliefs and feelings are what I will try to uncover and try to speak.
the thing that really gets me about the belief /in these secret conspiracies and secret truths is the almost total lack of understanding of basic human nature.
The thought that secret cabal of an unknown size and scope could remain hidden for generation upon generations doing all kinds of very complicated and dangerous things involving at minimum hundreds of people if not thousands of individuals is just not credible.
if there is a conspiracy at all it is one that involves keeping the people ignorant and controllable.
there is a danger in that though it is the fact that humans can be and regularly are very violent and destructive.
the ruling classes are always riding the tiger. some times they get eaton because you can not just get off.
uncle frogy
@Brian Pansky, 4
Come on now, you’re just being silly. The skeptic movement is for Serious And Important topics like bigfoot and ghosts. Getting involved in politics, religion, interpersonal ethics, or anything that actually has an impact in the world is simply overreach.
I think a large part of the problem there is how many people identify as skeptics because it gives them a sense of intellectual superiority over others, rather than because they care about the truth. Addressing stuff like this exposes people to too much risk of being shown to be wrong. (Yes, I do see the irony of criticising people for chasing a sense of intellectual superiority while saying this.)
I happen to believe that skepticism is humanity’s only hope of surviving this era – assuming Trump and various other distressing political shifts don’t represent points of no return on that matter – but it’s not going to be from the skeptic movement swooping in to save us – it’s going to be people learning the hard, painful, miserable way, that we need to think critically about what we accept as true and who we accept as leadership material, and maintain a healthy distrust of anything that panders to our bigotries and fears.
@Jennifer Maxwell, 10 & 14
So I’m a bit confused here. Firstly, how does the idea that there are people who are willing to enter schools and murder children not destroy my “white picket fence” life? Is that supposed to be the reassuring interpretation of events? Secondly, how does accepting that there are people who are willing to enter schools and murder children imply that the government is not complicit in unspeakable evils of their own? Do you think the options are that civilians are capable of evil and the world’s governments are pure as driven snow, or that civilians are pure as driven snow and governments are evil? Because, you know, I hate when people claim that the truth is always somewhere in the middle, but sometimes it actually is.
Do we really have a Sandy Hook massacre trvther here? And a FEMA is Teh Evil conspirator? I would what else — since this person, if the above comments are not some elaborate Poe or something, appears to suffer from crank magnetism(at least) — maintains? Holocaust-denial? AGW-denial? HIV / AIDS denial? Anti-vaxxer? The Illuminati (or Trilateral commission or other usual suspects) control the world? The mildly deranged pengiun doesn’t like cheese? …?
delicious irony.
mmmm.
z
…and the Tinfoil Hat of the week award goes to…
I resisted the comments on Youtube for a long time but I was recently drawn in by Moon-landing deniers and flat-earthers. One of their less endearing traits is the tendency to present themselves as the ones who are bravely seeking or presenting the truth, while the unenlightened rest of us are just believing what we’ve been told and sheepishly supporting the status quo. Sometimes while holding onto world-models that were laughable when Ancient Greece was new.
You can draw their attention to contradictions between their theories and everyday observation, you can go do research and dig out what that astronaut or NASA engineer actually said, draw simple word-pictures of moderately complex models, or go into depth about why the Van Allen belts aren’t actually instantly lethal or an impenetrable barrier like in that episode of Star Trek — none of it matters, since they have done their own research (watched a Youtube video of someone emitting sciency-sounding word-salad) and they were convinced, so we’re the idiots for not understanding the simple, obvious Truth. Or paid shills (I wish).
I don’t know what can be done when the medium does almost nothing to throttle the nonsense, even when the True Believers get slanderous and abusive.
Me@18, I would what else → I wonder what else…
Speaking of YouTube & Internet trolls, April the pregnant giraffe: live stream attracts millions — and YouTube censors:
This is April’s webcom.
I can understand YouTube having something like a “suspend then investigate” policy (I do not know if they do), but I would hope the originators of patently false complaints would be suspended and / or acquire an increasilngly-“untrusthworthy” rating (again, no idea what, if anything, YuTube does about patently-false and repeatedly-false complaints).
Pretty soon Jones will be claiming there was a conspiracy to get people to believe he promoted Pizzagate.
At this point, I’m almost pissed at PZ for causing me to wade into the loonball swamp on YouTube. I started out looking up David Seaman. This led me to a video by a guy criticizing Seaman for shilling for a buy-gold-over-the-internet company. He seemed fine with the whole Pizzagate thing, just didn’t like the gold company.
Then I made the mistake of looking at the other videos down the right side of the page. And that led to the flat earth people and the “rockets don’t work in outer space” people and the “earth is covered by the dome of the sky” people. And I think they’re serious, most of them. It’s really scary.
I don’t understand why people don’t believe Alex Jones. It’s like saying the President of the USA would lie. Oh…
Ah, the tame ones. The dangerous raving loonies are the ones, e.g., on the Texas education board, or who comprise hair furor’s dalekocracy.
Tamed kooks can bite — e.g., defraud people (like the one in the OP) — so tame ≠ safe. They may even be rabid, like those in the dalekocracy, but unlike the dalekocracy. haven’t been let loose with their spittle covering the meters, short-circuiting the controls, and dissolving the staff.
Me@27, “defraud people (like the one in the OP) ” — Apologies, I got a bit confused which OP I was commenting-on. That bit was meant to refer the übercrank woo-woo quack in the next poppyhead post, Sorry, Australia: #DontCryWolfe…
People who believe these specious conspiracy theories hurt real people. They have sent threatening letters to the families of Sandy Hook. They place threatening phone calls in the middle of the night, claiming they will ‘get to the bottom of this and expose your family as frauds’. They tell people who lost their child they will prove they never had a child. Those are real people being forced to reopen their grief. It is despicable.
I don’t know if Jennifer Maxwell has done any of that, but she certainly aids the echo chamber which empowers those who do. She has posts at Facebook’s HoaxatSandyHook.
They may not have the reach of TBoE or the “Dalekocracy”. But they are dangerous to actual people.
Yes, tame ≠ safe. Thanks for reinforcing that point.
NelC:
I’ve long suspected that this is a large part of the motivation behind conspiracist thinking. Not only do you get to pretend to be too smart to fall for the official version of events, you also get to posture as someone fearlessly standing up to ruthless forces who might go to great lengths to silence you. I’m reminded of the scene in Capricon One where journo Elliot Gould’s car races out of control, because they have sabotaged it to kill him, so that he can’t reveal the truth about the faked Mars landing. If I were fantasy-prone, I think I’d get a kick out of pretending to be a fearless exposer of conspiracies: it’s certainly more exciting than my humdrum real life.
Contradictions don’t matter. See this paper, Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories:
https://kar.kent.ac.uk/28566/1/Wood%20et%20al%202012%20SPPS.pdf
From the abstract: In Study 1 (n = 137), the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered. In Study 2 (n = 102), the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when U.S. special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the more they believed he is still alive.
If you’re arguing with someone who is capable of simultaneously believing both that Bin Laden is dead and that he’s alive… well, you’d better be arguing for the benefit of the lurkers, because it’s pointless trying to convince the conspiracist. In the unlikely event that you do succeed in persuading them that x is true, they may simultaneously continue to believe that x is false!
The mildly deranged penguin points out there is no problem with thinking bin Laden is both dead and alive, or that Diana is also both dead and alive (@30). They are, she asserts, a quantum-entangled pair, so as soon as you know if one is alive, you also immediately know the other isn’t. To prove this, she points out there are no photographs showing both of them, ergo, they must be identical, so by the Magic Poof Pew Pew Woo Theorem (proof’s patent is pending), they must be quantum-entangled. And as a certain cat-in-a-box shows, quantum things are both alive and dead. Also quite hungry and very annoyed, so don’t go opening the box…
(Seriously, thanks for the reference to Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories in @30, that was an interesting read.)
Me@32’s two references to @30 should be references to Moggie@31. Apologies, the mildly deranged penguin gave me a glass of something which she is swearing is not teh koolaid, but proves Ronaddled Raygun is really the sentient bomb in Dark Star…
The problem with YouTube is that it’s just too easy for anyone to buy even something as simple as a phone, record a video, and share it on YouTube. If they had to write it down, that would count out a lot of people, but absolutely anyone can, and does, create a video.
@34
the amazing thing is that is also the strength of youtube
it reduces the cost of film production to such a level that cost is not a barrier anymore. it is a force for democratization of media .
the problem arises out of the ignorance of a large segment of the population.
uncle frogy