When I first read this story I started running through a mental list of celebrity endorsements of conspiracy theories. I didn’t really have any luck, so I turned to Ye Olde Google search and found this:
My own brain turned up Terrence Howard’s divide by zero nonsense. That doesn’t count. It wasn’t an endorsement of a preexisting conspiracy, but a creation of a brand new one. Russell Brand going off the deep end, that doesn’t count. Switching sides and going through a phase of spiritual supposed self enlightenment. Nope, clearly just in it for the views (attention) and grift. And supposedly Zach still chats with Jeff Young, but it never seems to be about gematria. As detailed in the linked article about Ronda’s apology, celebrities don’t do much generating of new conspiracy content. But with millions of adoring fans looking up to them for inspiration they sure do help spread it.
Celebrity = Success = Wealth = Intelligence
That is, in the minds of the cognitively biased. The conflation of intelligence with wealth is highly overrated, especially when the wealth is attained by fraudulent means. Granted it takes some intellect and creativity to develop a new grift, but when was the last time there was a new and genuinely different grift that took the world by storm? In the meantime celebrity endorsements will continue to be a thing for advertising, both legitimately good and colossally bad ideas.
People really do a remarkably crappy job of finding inspiration from the wrong sources, and politics and that associated grift really doesn’t help. My home maintenance skills suck. Anything beyond changing a light bulb or a simple duct tape job sends me running to a contractor. But people who fall for celebrity endorsement advertising just assume that the celebrity is brilliant about *everything* which is never the case. Talking about being smart doesn’t make you smart. Being smart makes you smart. Understanding where you need to turn to for help is smart. Asking your cult leader for tips on what it means that your personal gematria matches with the Jesuits - that’s just plain stupid. So let me highlight something in Ronda’s apology to bring it into focus:
Deep down a lot of these people, even the ones that have fallen for the financial bait, know they are not destined for the mega wealth of a Paltrow or Ruffalo that have endorsed conspiracies. So they are left to admire and dream of getting a little bit of attention. A little slice of the attention pie where not the money but the being an edgy and cool intellectual dynamo because you believe in something most people don’t it makes you the superstar
Celebrity = Success = Attention = Intelligence ??
Hogwash. You can legitimately look at years old material here where I’ve used the word “edgy” to describe the self labeled mindset of the conspiracist. You’re not edgy and cool. You’re ignorant. And when you really go too far you’re ignorant AND hypocritical and arrogant about it, which not so strangely millions and millions of people don’t like.
I can accept the apology even though I haven’t been directly hurt. I’m still a victim as every believer in bullshit conspiracies has managed to make my personal pursuit of life, liberty and happiness a bit more difficult. And I can accept it for the apparent sincerity. A hallmark of a fake apology is it is self serving and makes the apology more about the person than the topic.
You don’t need to apologize, Mr./Ms. Average Conspiracist. Escaping the black hole of bullshit and simply stopping the black hole getting bigger is good enough for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment