Skeptic Project

I was flipping through the Hate Mail page and I saw a line Muertos saying the following;

"I used to believe in toxic shit like this. This garbage corrodes people's minds and destroys their lives."

At first, I thought this was a bit extreme, but when I see the nature of some CTs I have to wonder if there is some accuracy to this statement.

What do you guys think? Do conspiracy theories ruin people's lives? If so, how?

Yes, they do.

Someone on this board (I forget who...Kaiser Falkner, Kepp, somebody) knows a guy who got so into CT's that he took his kids out of school and started home-schooling them because he was afraid that they were being indoctrinated with "Illuminati" propaganda at school. This guy is also stockpiling weapons because he believes Obama is trying to take over everything.

VTV, the spokesman for the Zeitgeist Movement, has a similarly awful family relationship. VTV has drifted back and forth between Zeitgeist conspiracism, Ron Paul radicalism and similar doctrines.

I am personally acquainted with a very bright kid who had a great future, got good grades and would have done well in school. He got taken in by UFO and alien conspiracies as well as NESARA. He decided not to go to college because he was a junkie on a CT website that kept telling him benevolent aliens were going to invade Earth any day now and institute a total utopia. He now works a dead-end job and has cut himself off from anyone in his life who doesn't share his belief in CTs (including me). He believes David Icke is a prophet and anyone who disagrees with him is "disinformation."

We've had our own share of trolls on this site. One very notorious person who always trolled the Facebook group has serious mental health issues that he won't get treatment for. (You old timers on this site know who I mean...He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named). He literally believes in every single conspiracy theory on the Internet. His life has got to be a f*cking wasteland because of all these CT's.

Then you have people like Abe Rodriguez (Pooztka) who are so far down the 9/11 Twoof space-beam rabbit hole that they are destroying their own future job prospects by spamming the entire Internet with their ludicrous theories. Pooztka, who claims to be in medical school (which I doubt, frankly), will never get a job. Anyone who Googles him will bring up gigabytes of his CT bullshit and realize he's a raving lunatic. What's going to happen to this guy? You and I, the taxpayers, are going to end up paying for him, because he's going to be on the public dole.

I even feel sorry for Peter Merola, who by all accounts is an intelligent and talented guy. (There, Zeitgeisters--I said something positive about your leader!) He'll never have a real career, be able to raise kids or have a normal life because for the rest of his life he'll be tarred and feathered as the Zeitgeist guy and a cult leader. What's going to happen to him? Someday I do believe he'll snap to his senses and realize that CT's are bullshit, but it will be too late for him. He'll still be the Zeitgeist guy, with no way to separate himself from that tar baby, and when the Zeitgeist Movement fades into obscurity he'll probably end up driving a bus or working at Office Depot. Not a pretty fate for someone who's of above average intelligence and obviously possesses superior communication skills.

So yes, conspiracy theories do ruin peoples' lives. This is not just idle chatter on the Internet. This stuff has real world consequences, most of them very bad.

Beside wasting your time and probably alienating some of your friends, it's hard to make strategically valuable decisions about your life and career when you believe a lot of paranoid nonsense. An acquaintance of mine spends close to 10 grand on secure servers for his business, because he thinks "the Chinaman" has built his own Echelon and tries to steal his secrets. Just imagine what he could invest that money in, or imagine he'd get into financial trouble and had to close the company - just because of own stupid belief.

I get the impression that the libertarian party founder and crank David Nolan, who recently died, wasted his life pursuing a similar mirage. The stories about him imply a comfortable middle-class upbringing and the opportunity to study at an elite university (MIT), not to mention the freedom to read crappy pulp novels by Robert Heinlein and Ayn Rand. So he really had no trauma or victimization in his background to account for his political radicalization, unlike, say, Ayn Rand, who saw her family in Russia get screwed over by the Bolsheviks.

Yet from what I've read, Nolan. previously a Republican activist, decided to found the Libertarian Party and work towards the overthrow of the American political system because - get this - President Nixon imposed temporary wage and price controls. Oh, what devastation that inflicted on the American people! I remember it vividly, the unburied bodies on the streets eaten by dogs and everything.

In other words, Nolan fit the profile of the American libertarian as a privileged, spoiled white guy with weak, contrived or just preposterous grievances against the U.S. government.

The part about Nolan's and other libertarians' youthful indoctrinations by Heinlein and Rand also shows what can happen to men when they become ideologically obsessed before the judgment faculty in the brain matures in the mid 20's. Auto insurance companies discovered this stage of development empirically when they noticed that the rate of accidents declines dramatically around the age of 25, hence the lower premiums they charge after your 25th birthday. Yet we let teens haphazardly absorb odd beliefs like the Heinlein/Rand world view before they've developed good cognitive filters to protect themselves.

I had a year of my life ruined by CTs. They certainly do ruin lives, and the people who espouse them should be ashamed of their reckless support of these theories. What upsets me most about Zeitgeist, Alex Jones, et al, is that they do not see (or do not want to see) how they are gaining by instilling fear upon others. They are the lowest of all opportunists.

Snipes’ lawyers argued that he was a victim of crooked advisers, and the jury seemed to believe it. Co-defendants Eddie Ray Kahn, the founder of a tax protest group, and Douglas P. Rosile, an accountant who lost his licenses, were convicted Friday by the same panel of tax fraud and conspiracy. Both face up to 10 years in prison.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/22955757/ns/today-entertainment/</p>

Yes, CTs ruin lives. Is Snipes completely innocent? No, but I doubt he would have come up with this fantasy about not having to pay taxes unless someone had convinced him of it.

/thread

"He won't work because he believes working is part of "the matrix", but he makes his wife work double shifts at minimum wage. As for his kids, he is making them watch CT videos instead of the recommended curriculum. Also they are his step kids, which explains why he is "experimenting" on them."

What a scumbag. You should report him to child services.

Ok, I have to call bullshit on this one. While I don't agree with Conspiracy Theories like everyone here, I think this is nothing more then shallow generalizations that completely undermine accountability.

CT's don't ruin people's lives, people do. Especially the ignorant and the stupid.

CT's are nothing more then stories, created, fabricated, bought and sold just like all other stories and ideology. It's free will and human culture. It's who we are and what we do.

Dumb people will always make up dumb shit, and spread/sell it to other dumb people. Especially when you have freedom of speech like here in the US.

I too had a friend(actually a few) who followed the rabbit down the hole to wonderland. But I don't blame the rabbit, I blame HIM for being a moron. I'm sorry, but as much as we'd all love to protect stupid people from believing and doing stupid things, it's just impossible. And if you want to point it toward the kids, well then blame the parents for not either educating them, or being bat-shit themselves.

Honestly the best thing for people like us to do, is to just continue with sites like this and other educational tools. But if some 20something who's living in his mother's basement still wants to believe the moon is made of cheese, and that half of the planet are reptoids, well that's his own problem. We did our best.

I agree with you to a point, but not on the 'Guns don't kill people" argument. There's a significant difference between ideology/stories and a weapon. You can accidentally shoot yourself or stab yourself or many other scenarios at play with something that exists in the physical world. You can't just fall on a Jim Marrs book and have your mind magically transformed into a conspiracy theorist. I'm sorry, but at some point you have to hold people accountable. And if you don't, what do you suggest? Taking away freedom of speech?

You're right, there is a definite difference between a gun and ideologies/theories and freedom of speech offers many positive aspects compared to the relatively few negative ones.

I just have a problem when it comes to holding people responsible for a propensity to paranoid thinking and/or gullability (especially for younger people).

CT's in combination with ignorance do ruin lives though, I'm convinced of that. Purely for the fact that many of the people mentioned would be better adjusted members of society if they had not been introduced with the drivvle.

"Honestly the best thing for people like us to do, is to just continue with sites like this and other educational tools." << Spot on.

Genogza overlooks conspiracy theorists killing other people because of the conspiracy theories they subscribe to.

I don't, Matt.

I just think if you murder someone over a conspiracy theory, then chances are very high you might be insane, or on that path. Or maybe, just maybe, you grew up around some shitty people.

Well then like most of the time, we both disagree. I'm quite sure conspiracy theories have been around since man learned to communicate with language.

We're destructive by nature. Both self and socially. If you want to point it to CT's, then by all means.