We’re going to dig into three conspiracy theories that genuinely has me baffled. We’ll try to understand the logic behind them and maybe draw some conclusions on why conspiracy theories are so popular.
1. The Earth is Flat.
I keep seeing this subject comes up time and time again on Facebook. Basically there are groups of people that think the earth is not a sphere. Instead, it is either a disc or an infinite plane. As baffling as this may seem to the vast majority of people of logical sound mind, the flat earth movement has been on the rise.
Through the years, the arguments and proofs for the pro-flat earth span from simple observations (the horizon is flat therefore the earth is flat) to full blown NASA is part of the government that is out to get us because Isaac Newton, Galileo, and Neil Armstrong are all Freemasons.
What’s for certain is that flat earthers are also prone to believing other conspiracy theories. So that’s the first takeaway – conspiracy theories do not live in a vacuum.
2. Bill Gates is Evil.
This one took me by surprise as I was aware of both Bill Gate’s philanthropy as well as his global mission of healthcare and education. Not much digging on the internet was required to show that anti-vaxxors claim that the Gates Foundation forces vaccines upon third world countries leaving kids paralyzed or dead. Obviously none of these reports and claims have any validity.
After citing studies that people generally have less children when both infant mortality decreases and healthcare is more accessible, the conspiracy theorists had a field day. They interpreted Gate’s comment as “proof” that Gates is involved in a population control on the scale of eugenics and genocide.
And the theories get crazier. Bill Gates is implanting chips in his vaccines to mind control the population. I feel stupid just writing that sentence out. The second takeaway is that conspiracy theories feed off of fear. Common conspiracy fears stems from the distrust of big Pharma-science-media-government.
To be continued…