THE CONSPIRASPHERE

In most mainstream systems of thought, the craziest outliers do not represent the whole; so why, asks NOEL ROONEY, is conspiracy theory treated so differently?

NUTS, NEWS AND NORMS The majority of conspiracy theory stories that make the mainstream concern nutty claims by nutty people; they tend to the tabloid and are often sensational (or sensationalist) in nature. A man with a gun goes into a pizza parlour looking for the basement where ‘they’ eat the babies; King Charles is a shapeshifting lizard, like the rest of his family; the planet is a flat disc and ‘they’ are lying to us about it being spherical. If this is what you see, it is no surprise if you characterise conspiracy theorists as nutters; perennial claimants of absurd notions that fly in the face of mundane reality. After all, these claims are hard to defend from a rational standpoint. All well and good, but in the Conspirasphere, these…

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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 452

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