Psychology

Conspiracy Theory As Laziness

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I am, as regular readers know, interested in Conspiracy Theories. I want to know how people work, how the world works, and honestly what to be aware of that may kill me. There’s some people out there who’ve not only gone down the rabbit hole, they turned it into a bunker, and we’re the ones on the outside.

Something that’s struck me over time – and something I want to organize my thoughts around, so you get to read them – is that Conspiracy Theorists are lazy.

This may seem strange to say as Conspiracy Theorists are pretty busy. They’re arguing online. They’re obsessed with “following the crumbs.” The joke of the Conspiracy Theorist with a corkboard of pins and strings and newspaper clippings at least credits them with some industry.

But it’s not industry.

For those who believe in the Conspiracy Theories to some extent, they’re entertainment and they’re a substitute. They’re not real effort, they’re essentially a game, a Live Action Role-Play, aka LARP. Nothing actually gets done, nothing happens, there’s no actual end game, and when one theory wears out the latest takes it’s place.

For the grifters, these efforts are easier than having an actual job. You just spew BS, and make sure to dress it up right and people believe you and spend money. Heck, most conspiracy theorist grifters are just dressing up old biases and theories in new digs and putting them out there. It’s no different – and very much the same – as the millionaire preacher who puts in a few hours of spewing quotes and then goes back to their mansion.

The grifters rely on the believers to do the work by staying occupied with trying to hunt up clues and whatever. The lying grifters put in less effort than the people who are bored or who would rather read internet posts than change the world.

And this is where Conspiracy Theories get really lazy.

Conspiracy Theories are easy. Most of them are well-worn biases with a few extra modernizations. You have someone else to blame, you’re blameless, and to fight them you don’t do anything that actually fixes things. Reaching out to your fellow humans, getting involved in politics, actually being informed is hard and requires you to confront uncomfortable truths. Just being biased and claiming you’re fighting the Deep State is a lot easier.

Of course this makes it easier on the grifters and easier on more malicious political actors. People trapped in their own made up Conspiracy LARP AND ready to blame people AND ask you to do all the work? Score for any would be dictator and money-hungry manipulator.

I thus have some sympathy for Conspiracy Theorists in this way. I get being lazy, wanting to play with ideas, and stuff is hard. It’s just in the end it’s better to deal with real issues and deal with the real world – and take on the people manipulating us. Also a lot of professional Conspiracy Theorists are utter a-holes, so screw them.

But I do get it sometimes.

However in the end, Conspiracy Theory is just lazy, but the wrong kind of lazy.

–Xenofact

You Think We’d Kind Of Be Used To It

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So as I write this in 2025, a predicted Rapture just didn’t happen. I know, failed Raptures have been predicted ever since a few people made up the idea in the 1830s. But this Rapture, it felt different, more present in the media, more widespread, more manic. I honestly think the internet part of the phenomena.

Suddenly religious and cultural commentators I followed, podcasts I listened to, and so on were talking people getting ready for the Rapture. Of course that quickly turned into people disappointed the Rapture didn’t happen. It just all happened so fast it was a crash course in crashing eschatology that was pretty widespread.

By the time you read this who knows how many other failed Raptures will have happened. Maybe we can get a Rapture of the Month club going.

I wondered just how could people fall for this again? The failed Rapture prediction is a fixture of Christian history, a long-running cautionary tale that people still need to be cautioned against. I mean the weird 2012 “prophecies” didn’t happen, assorted failed predictions have dotted the American cultural landscape for decades, and don’t we go through this every few years?

After some analysis while writing this column (which mutated from its original intent as I wrote it) is that The Rapture predictions aren’t about the Rapture – and today’s technology has hit a point that changes how and why information spread.

Once you poke around history – and watch the most recent Not-Rapture – it becomes very apparent how much psychology is involved. A person or people under crisis. A time of change or turmoil in history. Historical happenings raising questions that lead people to want simple answers. Personal issues and large-scale social and economic issues leading people to want an out.

The Rapture isn’t a coming event, it’s a sign something’s gone on, that people are troubled or seeking something. It’s the echo of a scream shouted into a world that’s not the way people wanted. There was a desperation I hadn’t seen before.

However, as I watched this spread across the Internet, it’s also a reminder of how our social media provides a vector for ideas to spread. Long gone are the days of books of prophecy and media figures preaching The Rapture. A single idea can spread from person to person, person to crowd, crowd to crowd in ways that weren’t imaginable 30 years ago.

Moreso, there are people whos goal is to be an Influencer – even if they call it something else. So many of us are taught to crave social media hits and a widespread audience, and the benefits that entails. I think for many this desire is unconscious or semi-conscious.

The Rapture is a great way to get attention, pure Influencer bait.

Combine troubled times and Influencer Brain and you’ve got a great recipe for the latest Rapture story to spread to people’s brains. Even if there are skeptical people, skepticism isn’t spreading while the latest Influencer Idea is. They network around any skeptics.

What do we do with that? I have no idea. But it’s a reminder any communications strategy we may need to address such viral ideas is going to have to take motivation into mind as well as the technology that boosts it.

Because we’ll go through this again soon enough.

–Xenofact

The Place Of Death

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In The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 50, there’s a line about people who’ve attained the Tao that translates as “they have no place of death to enter,” “they have no place of death in them” or “for them there is no place in the land of death.” I’d not thought much about this chapter or this line until recently until a mix of meditation and stressful events gave me a new understanding.

In analyzing my own fears and concerns, I saw how they would obsess me. I’d worry about things, and thus my fears, from death to petty things, were actually part of me. I’d carry my concerns with me constantly, and as you doubtlessly know that was a heavy burden.

But being isolated, worrying, etc. just cuts me off from myself. It keeps me from engaging with life – with the Tao. It keeps me from being truly alive, freezing me in place. Honestly we all know too well how fears and worries can lock us down and even lead to bad outcomes – sometimes the very ones we feared.

There in my head, is the Place of Death.

Life, I realized, is a dialogue. You’re constantly reacting and interacting with places, people, ideas, food, etc. You make judgements and evaluations, changing or maintaining your course. Being alive, really alive, really there in the Tao, is a conversation.

And you can’t really have a dialogue when you’re hiding away. Life has to be lived, engaged. You can’t freeze yourself in your head or loop with scenarios to “protect” yourself.

Before I had talked about what I call “The Escape Capsule” in psychology and psychoanatomy. We build a walled off part of ourselves, shoving our supposed “self” into a box inside of us to protect it. This produces tension, warps our concept of ourselves, creates physical discomfort, and is quite miserable.

The “Escape Capsule” and “The Place of Death” are close to or are the exact same thing. Trying to get away from a changing world means you carry the changes you fear with you.

Life is a dialogue, really embracing yourself and the universe means you’re engaging. You can’t hide away in that case, you have to be open and vulnerable – because that’s how you have the dialogue with the world. The attempts to escape just lead you to build a mausoleum in your head.

It might be hard, but we can’t run away or stew in our fears. Why have a place for Death in us? Death has its own place in the world. We might as well find our place as well.

-Xenofact