There’s a thing about lying in that, past a certain point, liars need people to actually believe them. Not just pretend to believe them, but actually believe them so they do what the liar wants. You can’t have that terrible risk of being dishonest to someone and finding out they’re as bad as you are. They might not do what you want or lie to you about it.
In the year of 2026 (how I hate to date myself, but it is necessary) I keep an eye on political pathology, conspiracy theories, and what is currently called The Right in America and Elsewhere. I say currently, again, since context and times change.
One of the things I notice as I scrape through podcasts and writings on conspiracy theorists is how many of them lie and it’s clear they’re lying together. You can watch or listen to assorted people, famous and want-to-be-famous shaping narratives as they go, taking the yes-anding to new levels as they add things together. Liars lying together.
But these are the actions of Conspiracy Theorists who, let’s be honest, are pretty much the same as what we call Influencers. They have a lifestyle of, well, saying and promoting things. Their goal is to Influence. I guess we used to call it propaganda or marketing, but now it sound almost respectable until they think about it.
Then I look at the legions of would-be Influencers. Maybe some of them want to make it a career, maybe they want social media hits. But many of them also jump onto the conspiracy train, be it to sell their courses in 5D Immune Meditation or for likes. So their job is already to at least sort-of lie to us, then they latch onto the Conspiracy crowd and just get in on the lie.
In the past I commented about how people have sounded more and more like the 3 P’s – Politicians, Pundits, and Preachers. The Conspiracy Theorist-Influencer-Political dynamic has made so many people impossible to differentiate, from the podcaster spewing crazed anti-semetic theories on aliens down to someone who just wants to be loved for their content. It’s liars all the way down.
But I wonder how far down it goes. Because if you’ve ever heard someone “normie” talk these weird theories you wonder how much they believe them. Is that friend of yours who’s getting increasingly radicalized one of the honest people being affected or are they getting in on it?
How much of our culture, our politics, is liars all the way down? Everyone is lying, from selling products to wanting to “own” their family members in a dinner table argument?
This makes me think the more conspiratorialist side of American (and world?) culture is inherently unstable. If everyone’s job is to lie, to be abstract from the truth, top to bottom, how do you function? How do you trust each other, since the person in on the lie with you has proven they will lie? For that matter how much of conspiratorial politics is even actually believed?
What if the people who are bellowing the loudest don’t believe their own bullshit and neither do most of the people who listen to them? What if everyone is lying?
Do I have an answer? No, but I invite speculation. And I will probably write more on it.
I’d promise to write more, but I’m being honest.