Conspiracy Theories

What If They’re All In On The Lie?

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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.

–Xenofact

Community Or Conspiracy

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Conspiracy Theorists fascinate me, as regular readers know and as any new reader is about to unfortunately find out. One thing that really intrigues me is how Conspiracy Theorists somehow turn out to be power-hungry, bigoted, and all too ready to serve existing power structures. No matter what “Conspiracy” they’re fighting to save the world, the end result is just creating an oppressive system, or serving a new one, and going after whatever minorities are convenient to hate.

If you’ve ever followed any serious Conspiracy Theorists, they often seem to veer into a kind of monarchism and outright racism. “We need a leader for the Ultimate Awakening, we’re genetically descended from the Super Aliens. Also buy my supplements/book.”

Now this is not to say, as often noted, I do believe in conspiracies. It’s just that people don’t want to deal with real conspiracies, because ultimately they may not be aware of them, want to be aware, and benefit from them. It’s easy to ignore mass financial fraud when, say, you work in finance or are in an overhyped industry driven by stock price . . .

I’ve wondered how we deal with and prevent Conspiracy Theorists from arising and inflicting their damage to sell books and boner pills. Something that keeps coming back to me is one word – community.

Having connections to people, having roles, having relations gives one a sense of the world. You have to understand and work with people. You have to be something and someone. You’re maintaining the community and understand a bit of how the world works as you have to.

I’m not talking just one community, I’m talking networks. Clans of interrelated and interacting people. Being in a professional association and working in your city library. Real community isn’t just one community, but it’s having community including a community of communities.

It’s community all the way down – and up.

This also means that Conspiracy Theorists have a harder time causing destruction. When people are connected to others they’re less likely to turn on them. They care about people. They know they’re not evil, even if they’re a-holes. They also have people giving them feedback that they might be under the spell of a Conspiracy Theorist.

When I think of my own past, I was not always the most social person. Working with zine groups, fan groups, RPG games, etc. gave me a surprising amount of social connection. I’m used to a matrix of connections, so much so I’ve missed that I have it. I’m used to it – and it’s also helped me keep a perspective on How Stuff Works and a sense of connection.

(And perhaps, explains more on why I’m a Project Manager).

Conspiracy Theorists are driven by The Theory and whatever opportunities it provides. They may have a community or communities, but that’s not the point of the communities to them. The goal is to fight The Thing or sell things about The Thing, or whatever. Real community would mean you fight for real things for real people because they are right there in part of your life.

I think this is one reason that Conspiracy Theorists so often attack communities – especially minorities and outgroups. They’re not just easy targets, but such people are often networked and have community because they have to. The Conspiracy Theorists may instinctively know Community is the enemy – and they view everything Not Them as Conspiracy anyway.

Hell, maybe the Conspiracy Theorists are jealous. Seeing people happy? Seeing people fulfilled? Without a giant complex flowchart explaining why you’re right? Imagine the seething jealousy they feel at people who can be happy without selling seminars on alien conspiracies?

This is where I can say we need more community – that works for us. The Conspiracy Theorists are a continuing danger to humanity, every technical innovation is one they may turn to their twisted fantasies and psychological needs. The Conspiracy Theorists can’t fight that because they don’t really get how community works.

No wonder they’re afraid of it. How do you turn people to your cultish behavior when they don’t need you and they have something real and someone will warn you?

It also means we need to remember our roles in our community – that protects others from being co-opted.

–Xenofact

Confucians and Conspiracy Theorists

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When I first encountered Taoism, I became aware of their conflicts with Confucians. Later when I took a deeper interest, this “awareness” turned into “wow for a while they really mocked the crap out of them.” Later still, I realized this mockery of Confucians really helped me better understand Conspiracy Theorists.

Strap in for this one.

The history of Confucianism, and the period it was in conflict with Taoists, is complicated, but a few trends stood out in my studies. Political philosophy Taoism (embodied in the Tao Te Ching) were more about psychology, frugality, not seeking complexity, and leaving people the heck alone. Confucianism was seen as ritualistic, rote, and about memorization of trivial bits and bobs of culture. The conflict was simple – “real life” and pointless trivialities.

But something began to tickle at the back of the mind in my recent readings and re-readings. The Taoist documents that mocked Confucians mocked them for pretention, ritualism, trivialities, and over-complicated ideas. Even later Taoist/Taoist inspired documents that felt they had commonalities with other philosophies warned against such things. Be it mocking the Confucians or warning against pointless ritualism, something seemed familiar.

Then it struck me. The Confucians that Taoists mocked – and the people that later Taoists critiqued – reminded me of conspiracy theorists.

Conspiracy theorists have huge, complex beliefs they spin into webs, ensaring them – and if possible, others. Conspiracy theorists are often repetitive – in ritual ways – reinforcing their conspiracies (which often need it). Finally Conspiracy theorists are often deep in trivialities, to the point it’s hard to understand what the hell they’re talking about – the cultic conspiracy elements that wall people off others.

Plus, Conspiracy theorists often seem very brittle and ready to use force to control you, something Taoists also mocked in general and specific.

Suddenly I got the earlier Taoist mockery. I’ve watched puffed-up Conspiracy theorists, confidently spewing nonsense, spinning elaborate incoherence, and arguing they get to decide right and wrong, life and death. Be it some earlier Confucian wonk or the latest maniac analyzed by the near-endless podcasts on Conspiracy theorists, they’re the same.

Thus, I get why some people 3000 years ago said “look at those pretentious motherfuckers.”

Now that I have this unusual insight, maybe there’s really some kind of human archetype at work here. The obsessive, trivia-infused, control freak who builds elaborate plans to make the world work – or explain how it works. A warning sign throughout the ages.

And of course, a useful insight on how some things never change, and maybe we need to be ready to warn against the same problem again and again – or just take a page from the Taoists and mock the hell out of it.

-Xenofact