Conspiracy Theories

We Can Be Heroes and Probably Shouldn’t

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We’re awash in heroes today. Funny, it doesn’t seem like we’re any better off.

I’ve had an interest in conspiracy theories and their impact since the late 80s, at first in extremist groups, then the further out beliefs. I came to realize over time that many figures in the Conspiracy Sphere were so-called heroes. The radio personalities, the pamphleteers, the shaky-handed writers of only-vaguely concealed bigotries declared themselves Heroes. They were always being attacked by The Conspiracy, they were anointed by God, or whatever. Every Big Name was also The Big Good Guy.

That’s not surprising. When you make it to the top, people want a story. When you manage to publish a book, you better have a story of why you have to read it. A lot of Conspiracy Stuff is grift, and grifters gotta market, and no one is going to trust Divorced Guy WIth A Medium Sized Library of Bullshit to explain the world.

As I contemplated this and was jotting down thoughts of heroism, I realized how the idea of the Heroic Conspiracist had evolved in the Internet Age. It had become democratized – everyone was a hero.

People regularly posted to message boards, supposedly giving insider information – which is indeed how we got the “Q” debacle. They could be heroes, even if they made it up – and maybe in time they believed it. You’re only a few posts from being declared a Crusader for Truth.

The social disaster of “Q” created many personalities decoding “Q drops” and lending their own theories to a burgeoning katamari of dangerous nonsense. If you worked at it, social media would let you build a following and yes-and your way to fame, if not fortune. Also sometimes there was fortune.

I detected an uptick in the UFO community of heroic stories, often around the Secret Space Programs where people were mindjacked into other lives by aliens. There were plenty of stories of space heroism, echoing tales of past lives from previous New Age communities. You no longer had to be yet another reincarnation of a famous occultist, you could be your own Spiritial Cosmic Fighter!

Anyone could invent themselves as a hero and ride the conspiracy theories to fame and recognition and feeling special. I’ve seen it called Main Character Syndrome, Protagonist Syndrome, etc. We certainly need a name for it.

Now this isn’t exactly new. Our media is awash in “heroes” you can pretend to be like. American Christianity tells people they’re in a great Crusade – and is also media fueled – but other religious trends have declared people part of some Great Heroic Effort as well. It’s just I think this got amped up in the Internet age to the point where we’re all supposedly heroes.

Social media would be glad to reinforce it for you if you had a good pitch and persistence. Believers didn’t just believe, they backed each other up, creating a web of confirming the heroism of each other. You could always find an audience to confirm your stories of heroism against aliens or the Illuminati or whatever. You can even make money at it.


It’s heroes all the way down. Sure some people jockey to be the Big Names, but you can get a little reinforcement here and there.

Of course it’s not heroism. It’s grifting. It’s loneliness. It’s people who need therapy not social media. But everyone gets to be a hero, even though none of them are heroic. Heroism has been hollowed out, lined with mirrors, and turned into a self-reflective room for personal aggrandizement.

Now I wonder how a world deals with so many false heroes – and how the would be heroes themselves cope. How do you step back from a lie and accept humanity? How do you deal with the problems of the world that need more of us just getting their hands dirty?

I don’t have an answer to that, except maybe some kind of psychological or spiritual or media trend at self-reflecting. A simpler, more involved, life. I don’t have any answers beyond vague speculation

I’m not hero I’m just a guy and I’m not sure yet what a world of fallen heroes will mean.

(Special thanks to the podcast Knowledge Fight, who’s further examination of Bill Cooper’s insanely plagiarized work helped me solidify this idea).

-Xenofact

The Talent of Delusion

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I’ve been thinking about Conspiracy theories a lot. I mean as my regular readers I know I do that anyway, but as 2025 is the age Conspiracy Theories and reality collide at lightspeed, I’m thinking more. Mostly I’m asking how did we get here – not in the exact causal sense, but how the Conspiracy Theorist mind works.

Lately among my readings, viewings, and podcast-listening I realized that Conspiracy Theory Believing requires skill.

If you’ve ever listened to someone go on about Conspiracy Theories, you realize they are retaining a complex alternate world inside their head. They have a skill to retaining and organizing that information about things that are, let us be honest, not true, sometimes bonkers, and often very bigoted under the skin. Yet these folks can recall it.

More than that, they are constantly resolving conflicts in their theories. Conspiracy Theorists are having the world collide with their beliefs all the time. New facts come in, the apocalypse doesn’t come, the hated (often female and/or PoC) politician resigns, the space lasers don’t fire. Conspiracy Theorists have to re-spin their tales all the time or else they have to question them, and if they questioned them they wouldn’t be Conspiracy Theorists. They’re maintenance experts on believing an illusion.

But Conspiracy Theorists also collide, believers who believe vaguely different things come together – and they display a talent for taking new input and combining them. This is the infamous “yes, and” discussions you can see among True Believers, where a person states one belief, and a slightly different believer agrees, then adds onto it. If you’ve witnessed a Conspiracy Theorist get on a good rant going at an event or in a conversation, you can see this happen at amazing speed as people ask questions.

(The Knowledge Fight podcast focuses on Alex Jones, but has covered other subjects, and in almost all cases you can see their subjects build mythology in real time.)

Conspiracy Theory is a skill, skill is similar to if not exactly the same as the worldbuilding done by writers, gamers, game designers, and artists. They have an ability to create on the fly, to recall vast information, and to adsorb and polish information. The jaw-dropping connections of a Tonspiracy Theorist are all too close to the clever ideas of a good writer to act like they’re not two branches of the same tree.

Conspiracy Theorists are easier to understand if you realize they had a skill at such creations (that they misused) or that they have developed it. It also means the evil grifters are even worse because they have some skill here and use it to screw up the world.

This gives me pause to other ways we might use such an insight to help those lost in these conspiracy worlds to get out.

  • We can recognize this “talent at fabulation” by asking “does this person sound like they’re worldbuilding?” It’s a key to detection. Also if the theorist in question is some evil grifter, we can help people avoid them.
  • If we’re trying to help the Conspiracy Theorist, realizing a skill is being deployed will allow us to help them find their way back with the various oft-discussed techniques.
  • This skill they developed might be channeled elsewhere. As facetious as it sounds, I wonder how many people who have developed this creative skill might find outlets elsewhere. I’m not saying they should write fiction, but who knows?

It’s strange as I think over this insight. I realize some people I’ve seen, some I despise, really do have a skill. It’s just been used or developed in ways making the world worse.

-Xenofact

Tyrants for Freedom

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I often talk about conspiracy theories and the like when I write about spiritual issues since conspiracy theories and spirituality tend to intersect – what is often called Conspirituality. Also there’s plenty of spiritually grifty conspiracy peddlers and those people and what they sell fascinate me. They infuriate me too, but in a kind of fascinating way.

One thing that fascinates me is how Conspiracy Theorists seem to want to build the very world they claim they warn against.

I’ll watch Conspiracy Theorists predict violent uprisings and secret attacks. The solution is usually “more guns and also maybe shoot non-white people” which quickly sounds like they are the very thing they hate. Usually this goes unnoticed as we’re used to it or focus on other weird stuff they say.

I’ve also watched how Conspiracy Theorists quickly become bang alongside police states. Oh they may not feel threatened as it’s their police (or milita, or army) but it’s absolutely the same thing they fear others are doing to them. Funny how the jackboot ends up on the other foot.

But this is all the standard violent crap humanity has plagued itself with for years. The revolution’s evolution ends in devolution and destruction too often.

However one thing that really stood out to me the last few years is watching Conspiracy Theorists who were afraid of secret billionaires and tyrants . . . go and seek out tyrants. I’m sure you can guess who they usually chose to worship, but it’s weird when you look at the breadth of history, especially in the 20th century and onward.

It’s unsettling to see people who scream about freedom lick the boots of some hack businessman or creepy politician or weird media figure. People acting so worshipful towards a transparent grifter that you suddenly really understand things like Jonestown. There are people bang alongside freedom so much they want to follow a dictator to get their freedom.

Read that again. They want to follow a dictator to get their freedom and they don’t immediately die of embarrassment.

Lately, I’ve come to realize the difference between a Conspiracy Theorists and a person who believes in conspiracy is in part “do they want a dictator?”

Conspiracy Theorists, addicted to conspiracy theories, besotted by clear personal issues, often a bit gifty at heart, seem to easily fall into wanting a dictator. The Conspiracy Theorists have issues of power and control that the Theory helps address. If power and control are your issues and integrity of belief aren’t as important, a dictator is an easy solution.

But people who just believe there are conspiracies? Accurate or not they’ll seek solutions and try to build them. They might not be the best solutions or rational one, but as the solution matters there’s hope. They see a threat and want to correct it, so there’s some potential dialogue and growth It may not always end well, but there’s an attempt to fix things.

Of course I can see these two being interchangeable. I have dark suspicions some famous Conspiracy Theory figures started off with concerns that at least involved practical solutions, but then went more and more off the edge. Or they found they could make money in the Conspiracy Theory space.

So beware people espousing conspiracies, yes. But check for a desire for tyranny and you may save yourself a lot of time, words, sanity, and maybe just safety. Those who easily want tyrants aren’t trying to solve anything for anyone else.

-Xenofact