Starting off with the short answer - reverse trolling.
Reverse trolling is the process where somebody is having a more or less legitimate conversation about any topic, it can be a truly debatable important topic (death penalty, sending money to the Ukraine) or a trivial yet common talking point (Tom Brady is the GOAT) or any random conversation that is interrupted. It is an invitation to fight back.
Whether the interrupter is a true believer or not is not important. The goal, whether knowingly done by a grifter or someone who just enjoys spreading memes with no idea what’s going on is to spread the message around as much as possible. The grifter leaders are looking for reactions. A intelligent and angry retaliator armed with facts will unwittingly become a target for trolls pulled in by the reverse trolling messages. And there are the people with the genuine replies, “I’m new to this. Tell me more.” The ones with the bright neon sign proclaiming, “I have cognitive biases, please take my money.
Empathy in internet is being diluted, it could be moral decline or even simply that since the internet doesn’t forget the old messages are still there. Even on this recent 9/11 anniversary there were multiple revivals of the same old wrong information. For the grifter, it’s not about being right or wrong, it’s about engagement. More views = more reactions = more content = never ending feedback loop. Some stories make more sense and might not go fully viral, but will at least get enough attention to spread around more than they deserve to be based on the quality of the content.
The choice to use conspiracy theories instead of other content has some great benefits. Starting up a brand new religion, Scientology style cult stuff, is a lot of work. The major religions are well entrenched. And within that entrenchment is an ancient framework of BE A GOOD PERSON = ETERNAL REWARD. BAD PERSON = ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. The modern conspiracist bypasses the need to demonstrate any kind of empathy consistently. I’M A GOOD PERSON BECAUSE I’M NOT A MEMBER OF THE BAD PEOPLE. The modern conspiracist is excused from the awkward, time consuming and exhausting need to operate in life like a person that gives a fuck about anyone else.
The people who are deciding who the bad people are do not care how or why somebody is picked as a member of the bad people are. The drive for engagement by people arguing is the marketing. And it simply does not matter how arbitrary, not factual and even outright mind boggling stupid the engagement is. People who have life experiences of being wrong a lot get positive reinforcement. People who are correct get negative reinforcement. And people in positions of political influence mostly don’t care to call out even the mind boggling stupid content for fear of impact on their paychecks.
Since the targets are often selected arbitrarily (use of gematria that can be anything about anybody, hand signals, colors of clothing, so and so didn’t actually die, where the natural disaster hits crisis actors, etc…) the topics are arbitrary based on current events. There are a couple things that are ongoing topics and I’ll get to them in a bit. But starting off early in the rabbit hole an experience of being fed a constant supply of wrong information changes the I’M A GOOD PERSON message into I AM RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING. Because there’s always an arbitrary reason to find anybody else, including your new found friends, to be wrong.
There’s no effective central leadership in the conspiracy world. The closest that we’ve had to that is Alex Jones. An effective conspiracy grifter will play both sides of that coin. Copying whatever talking points he is blathering about for the day (Sandy Hook is a Hoax) while simultaneously scrabbling for market share of the grifting pie (Alex Jones is a shill!). There’s never been anyone to step in as a true leader who leads by ideas instead of leading by being better at fundraising. Maybe one day someone will organize the loosely associated cliques to one time on one topic admit that they’ve gone too far. But don’t hold your breath.
In the U.S., the big topics are the constitutional rights of free speech and guns. One day people are arguing about their sports decode being better than someone else’s, and unchecked they find themselves arguing that Ivermectin works curing Covid because Facebook made their friend delete a post based on it being vaccine misinformation. And that friend is a fan of a grifter who is making good money on constantly creating fundraisers for you to combat a nonexistent evil empire. Don’t you dare take my gun away from me, you nonexistent evil empire. I can tell you’re evil because you made an 👌🏾 hand sign once on this video that Zach put up yesterday. We all know what that means! Loved that message Zach, here’s a $10 PayPal donation in case my bright neon sign declaring my cognitive biases wasn’t enough!
A rule for thee but not for me
The misininformed social media public loves themselves a good argument about guns and free speech. Gun violence is elevated from a tragic rarity to daily occurrences. Positive reinforcement, to the point where people willingly divest themselves of their hard earned cash, is elevated to conflating aggressively marketed bad information with facts. If everyone has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, why do they love to tread on other’s right to happily live in a society where they don’t have to worry about dying from Covid or going to Walmart and getting shot because somebody else took getting cut off on the highway badly by somebody with “the wrong bumper sticker”?
My standard of leadership is somebody that behaves like a leader with thoughts, ideas and solid facts behind them. Somebody that recognizes that this arbitrary target selection process involves a lot of treading on personal rights. Somebody that recognizes that being elected to a position of political power means more than a platform to fundraise for the next election cycle.
I’m not holding my breath.
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