2w ago

Ex-conspiracists, what made you stop believing conspiracy theorie(s) you believed?

Let's be clear: i'm not saying conspiracies doesn't exist. By conspiracy theories, i mean the plots whose existence is at best highly unlikely, at worst totally senseless, notably if:

-They are breaking the laws of physics.

-They are too costly (logistically and/or financially) to be profitable.

-They are defended by untrustworthy sources (populist or cult leaders, random people, celebrities without expertise in the concerned domain, parodies taken seriously,...).

-They are often involving far-right's scapegoats.

-They are involving a large amount of people.

-They reject science by principle.

-The interests of the supposed conspirators are unclear or incoherent.

-Their so-called proofs are incoherent, manipulated or are proving nothing at all.

-They would be funny if they were published as parodies in The Onion.

18 comments

For me it was a call on Coast To Coast AM. I used to be suuuuuuper into all that shit. I was a regular listener to C2C and believed 70% of the crap they shoveled. The 30% I didn't believe (ghosts and the supernatural) were because I had personally tried astral projecting, recording evps, ghost hunting, etc. and none of it worked for me.
Anyway the call was in the early 2000's and Art Bell was hosting. The caller claimed to be a scientist working for a secret government lab working on portal tech and had accidentally opened a doorway to another where filled with hostile beings who took control of the facility. When the caller identified themselves as Dr. Gordon Freeman I realized anyone could just say any bullshit and these idiots would believe it.
It took like 10 years to fully flush conspiracy thinking out of my brain and I overcorrected hard by becoming one of those obnoxious skeptics for a while.
Though given the times we live in today I've seen a few theories online that have an uncomfortable amount of truth to them and have to admit I have been tempted.
- You're right, that call was ridiculous. Everyone knows he doesn't talk.
- Good old halfife... Lol
- I only heard Coast to Coast a few times. The first couple of times I thought it was some kind of radio play (like the ones they used to play late on CBC) or art project. When I realized the callers were sincere, it just seemed sad.
  
  Oh for sure, especially with the ghost and alien abduction stories, but I always got the sense a lot of the callers were either, bored, lonely, crazy, or some combination of those three.
- I also used to listen to C2C like it was from up on high.
  I've recently started listening to classic C2C episodes, and in hindsight, WOW, it was so much BS. Like, sooooo much. I'm fairly tolerant to woo, but there just so much hyped made up whole cloth.

Infowars. In fact Infowars motivated me to filter through factual articles and back stories outside of the narrative of Brawndo share holders.
- God, infowars. I swear my brother bought coffee or something from them and it dragged my mother down the far right rabbit hole with him. I wish I could go back in time and do something more than cringe when he showed me the packaging that said "wakey wakey America".

Not me, but a friend believed Obama was not American. Conversations over time (couple of months) changed them.
Not a proper conspiracy theory, but I used to be a dualist, thinking that souls exist and they’re separate from bodies. All of this changed with a long conversation with a materialist. He helped me see how my beliefs were historically determined, socially programmed, and not based on atemporal scientific principles. Overnight change to materialism.

I used to think the government was hiding evidence of alien UFO encounters to prevent widespread panic. Now I think they're using general UFO encounters as a cover for weapons testing.
- The military-industrial complex doesn’t need to cover up weapons testing with little green men conspiracy theories, because people susceptible to crackpot alien theories pose no threat or obstacle to them. I think those theories are largely self-inflicted.

I was a 9/11 truther because there were so many weird coincidences that day, but ultimately had to accept the accident theory. Shit happens.
- accident theory
  It was just a navigation error?
  
  just took a wrong turn.... Alla akbar!
  
  oh, it was an accident.

I went to college and learned that not only was pretty much everything I was raised to believe as a young conservative a lie, but they were obvious lies that didn't bear any scrutiny whatsoever. I learned everything that made me really uncomfortable when I was young was because I was surrounded by people living their entire lives in bad faith while I was genuinely curious about investigating things and learning why people thought what they did. The other cultists recognized I did not belong in the cult before I did, though my parents still emphatically try to get me to reintegrate because they are absolutely certain that their evidence-free belief system is in my best interests. I was never really integrated in the first place so I didn't lose much other than a lot of very evil shit.

I've known 2 conspiracy theorists IRL. Sad thing with both is that it was clinical paranoia.

Time really. After a while none of the conspiracies played out, or I just "researched" enough on my own using actual legitimate sources as opposed to YouTube schmucks and learned how to reason things out.

18 comments