Are conspiracy theories more popular now than ever?

[Randy]

Pedophiles claim their mental condition is a sexual orientation. That's hard to accept, but I wonder if they are right. I don't believe having sex or a relationship with a child is right under any circumstances but obviously children is what attracts them. Is that a mental disorder or an orientation? Can't it still be an orientation and still be illegal to pursue a relationship/sex with a child simultaneiously? God, just talking about it feels wrong. I'm playing devils advocate atm. I guess what I'm saying is how can they prove this is a mental disorder? Isn't it all just opinion in reality? If I ever meet a pedophile I wil certainly discriminate against them. I just won't accept it.

Unpopular opinion but you can't outlaw what people think. So I mean, there's really nothing to chase after there. The illegality is having sexual contact with a child, because they can't consent to it. I'll repeat, nothing about legalizing gay marriage or gay sex or anything else has the faintest connection to legalizing sexual contact with someone who can't consent.

If you're talking about legalizing or making it illegal for people to think whatever they want to think, that's not a thing. You could think about kid dicks all day long, you're not going to jail unless you pursue one. Not now, not 10 years ago, not 100 years ago.

 

[c7spheres]

Unpopular opinion but you can't outlaw what people think. So I mean, there's really nothing to chase after there. The illegality is having sexual contact with a child, because they can't consent to it. I'll repeat, nothing about legalizing gay marriage or gay sex or anything else has the faintest connection to legalizing sexual contact with someone who can't consent.

If you're talking about legalizing or making it illegal for people to think whatever they want to think, that's not a thing. You could think about kid dicks all day long, you're not going to jail unless you pursue one. Not now, not 10 years ago, not 100 years ago.

I guess what I'm getting at is that if by some disaster it actually gets removed form the DSM and is saw as an orientation then that would be a step closer to what they want and a small victory for them. Over time it would be come more accepted as an orientation and people will start to sympathize with them. Eventually they might get their way.
- Just because something is illegal doesn't mean it's right/wrong. I'm just saying it's a similar path of how gay's were in the DSM, then got removed, then made progress. Even after gay marriage passed, many states still currently have sodomy (and even oral sex by straight people) still illegal. It's strange because what those states are essentialy dictating is that you can be gay be not have common forms of gay sex (which also applies to straight people. I wonder if people ever actually get charged with it or not.
- Obviously many more people are against pedophilia, but the less it's seen as a mental disorder the more on board people will be with it, over time. It's a conditioning process to get people to accept it. What's scary is with all this pedo-preist and pedo boyscout leader stuff it seems to be way more rampant than anyone use to think.
- I'm confused why if literally everyone but pedo and beasty are considered an orientation now, and pedo and beasty fits the liiteral definition of sexual orientation, then wouldn't it seem they are being singled out just as LGBT were so many years ago? What specifically is it that makes it a mental disorder? Again, playing devils advocate. I don't support this stuff.

 

[Randy]

All of this just sounds like arbitrary moral outrage tbh

 

[StevenC]

I guess what I'm getting at is that if by some disaster it actually gets removed form the DSM and is saw as an orientation then that would be a step closer to what they want and a small victory for them. Over time it would be come more accepted as an orientation and people will start to sympathize with them. Eventually they might get their way.
- Just because something is illegal doesn't mean it's right/wrong. I'm just saying it's a similar path of how gay's were in the DSM, then got removed, then made progress. Even after gay marriage passed, many states still currently have sodomy (and even oral sex by straight people) still illegal. It's strange because what those states are essentialy dictating is that you can be gay be not have common forms of gay sex (which also applies to straight people. I wonder if people ever actually get charged with it or not.
- Obviously many more people are against pedophilia, but the less it's seen as a mental disorder the more on board people will be with it, over time. It's a conditioning process to get people to accept it. What's scary is with all this pedo-preist and pedo boyscout leader stuff it seems to be way more rampant than anyone use to think.
- I'm confused why if literally everyone but pedo and beasty are considered an orientation now, and pedo and beasty fits the liiteral definition of sexual orientation, then wouldn't it seem they are being singled out just as LGBT were so many years ago? What specifically is it that makes it a mental disorder? Again, playing devils advocate. I don't support this stuff.

Being attracted to kids isn't an orientation. Being attracted to specifically male children or specifically female children is a subset of an orientation. Being attracted to kids is at best a fetish. And there is a nuanced difference there.

You have to remember that it's going to be incredibly difficult to argue that people should be protected based on their desire to harm someone else. Or that specifically harming people should be decriminalised or legalised. Like legalising paedophilia requires changing the definition of rape. There's no comparison.

 

[xzyryabx]

Not only are the number of dummies increasing (for a multitude of reasons), they now have numerous venues to congregate and share/reinforce their dumminess, they are being used by powerfully entities (both internal.and external) to sow misinformation and disninformation, and there are no laws protecting the public interest from these campaigns.
We reap what we sow, and we have sown (is that even the right word?!) A shitload of stupid in this world.
Can you fix stupid? Not easily. Good luck us.

 

[SpaceDock]

What’s wrong with being a Satanist?

 

[zappatton2]

I remember the constant moral panics of the 80's; of heavy metal and rap music, of horror films, of pornography, of marijuana, of homosexuality, of Dungeons & Dragons, of Garbage Pail Kids, and the ensuing belief that it was all leading to the broader advance of Satanism in society. Hell, the stories of Satanic rituals were legendary, and little if any of them had a spot of real evidence to back them up.

It always seemed to start with American preachers and the politicians close to them, but it certainly made a home here. My own parents truly believed gay rights were the next step in an orchestrated effort to bring about the coming of the antichrist (a belief they currently insist they never had). There will always be conspiracies, and they will always appeal to folks who fear social change.

But I will concede that it seems the internet really streamlined it all. Like every conspiracist can now virtually gather to get their stories straight.

 

[c7spheres]

All of this just sounds like arbitrary moral outrage tbh

It totally is. You'd think they'd have cleaned all these old law's up by now. It's crazy. Reading up on this Nambla thing apparently they were part of the ilga until 1993. Even only 30 years ago apparently they were included and many thought differently, until one day something happened I guess. Anyways, Fuck that. I hope someone comes along with a better conspiracy to talk about . Happy new year : )

Being attracted to kids isn't an orientation. Being attracted to specifically male children or specifically female children is a subset of an orientation. Being attracted to kids is at best a fetish. And there is a nuanced difference there.

You have to remember that it's going to be incredibly difficult to argue that people should be protected based on their desire to harm someone else. Or that specifically harming people should be decriminalised or legalised. Like legalising paedophilia requires changing the definition of rape. There's no comparison.

I wasn't talking about or arguing that at all. But I see that it's a subset fetish now from what you said. I thought being a pedo wasn't illegal but acting upon it was.Let's talk about something else. Pedo talk sucks. Happy new year : )

What’s wrong with being a Satanist?

Nothing, imo. Happy new year ; )

 

[spudmunkey]

The internet and social media has taken down barriers that didn't exist before, and given all ideas seemingly equal footing. Two people with blue checkmarks next to their name are seen as "equals" on Twitter no matter the context, even when one of them is an actor/musician/athlete and the other has 4 medical degrees and published dozens of peer-reviewed studies.

 

[BenjaminW]

Sorry for randomly inserting my thoughts here, but I have kind of a weird relationship with conspiracy theories: They can seem really interesting mainly because they're outlandish, but I also have to remind myself that not everything I read, see, or hear about is true and that I have better things to do than read stuff about conspiracy theories all day.

 

[Randy]

Sorry for randomly inserting my thoughts here, but I have kind of a weird relationship with conspiracy theories: They can seem really interesting mainly because they're outlandish, but I also have to remind myself that not everything I read, see, or hear about is true and that I have better things to do than read stuff about conspiracy theories all day.

Thanks for getting this back on track.

I grew up in the X-Files era and my dad was also a big fan of JFK conspiracies.

So I've always found them interesting, stuff like Rosewell, Bohemian Grove, etc. I mean, totally tongue in cheek as most of them are hilarious stupid or inconsequential. But they're fun "outside the box" kinda thought experiments.

It's a shame the last decade or so conspiracies are lopsided basically just wielded as political defamation. The pedophile stuff especially. Accuse everyone you don't like as being a pedophile since it's an almost impossible stain to get off of you. Bring back the lizard people stuff.

 

[mastapimp]

Is misinformation on the rise? Yes. With it, certain people are attracted to the way of thinking that they're one step ahead or they're "in" on some secret agenda. I think as there's more crazy stories circulating and shared amongst peers/friends, that more people are biting on these outlandish conspiracies than would have in the past.

Before social media, this kinda stuff was mostly attached to chain letter emails or talking to some "pseudo intellectual" at a bar. My dad's vietnam war buddies would send bullshit (mostly political) all the time in emails back in the early to mid 90s.

What I've come to realize is that people that share these conspiracies have no clue how anything actually works behind the scenes, and with that comes distrust. Understanding how certain things work, especially in the scientific field, is not something you can easily explain to someone that doesn't have the same technical language and experience. I went to school for engineering and have been working in the biomedical electronics field for over 10 years with some other guys that have had top secret clearances, sent shit into outer space, pioneered the first WiFi chips, etc. When you talk to these guys about "how stuff works" it takes a lot of the mystery out of things and you can easily dismiss related conspiracies as people not understanding a lick of how science and physics are applied.

Personally, I work on an ingested electronics application for intrabody communication using radio devices. When I discuss what I do with other engineers, I can easily explain the safety regulations we've adhered to through FCC and FDA as well as other IEEE standards and SAR testing. When I discuss this to guys I play basketball with that are anti-vaxxers and have little to no understanding of physics/electronics, they think it's a "Big Brother" style mind control device that the government will force upon them. I hear the same bullshit about 5G towers. The general population has no idea how a cell phone works, and they shouldn't have to. But there's a certain level of trust they must have that using it is safe, and the government will make sure these devices are held to a safety standard. Unfortunately, some people see the word "government" and equate it with mistrust....and those people are often hopeless when it comes to breaking through.

 

[Dumple Stilzkin]

Thanks for all the good replies.

 

[Ralyks]

I'll tell ya what, a good chunk of people I know (friends and people I don't talk to as much but still have on social media for reasons) that were neo-hippie namaste types suddenly became borderline, if not totally, QAnoners and right wing conspirators, and sudden anyone remotely left was a pedophile. Then I did some research and found out hippies and conspiracy theories go hand in hand. Then though about it for a few minutes and realized I probably didn't need to research that to come to that conclusion. I consider myself a little hippie-esque but holy shit...

 

[tedtan]

I don’t want to derail the thread again, but I think this clarification needs to be made, so I’ll respond here and then drop the topic.

- I think it's only a matter of time before the pedofiles and groups like NAMBLA get their way. LGBT paved the way for them socially and in the courts so it's only a matter of time for the processes to work themselves out (in a general way).
- And no I'm not comparing LGBT to pedofiles in any way. What I'm saying is groups like NAMBLA can use all the court battles and tactics that LGBT had to go through to it's own advantage. For example right now NAMBLA has been trying to get itself removed from the DSM manual which is something LGBT took years to achieve. Now that they've achieved that it will be much easier for NAMBLA to do the same, just because a lot of the same arguments and ground/leg work won't have to be made again. If they keep filing lawsuits, appealing decisions etc they will eventually get their way, and that likeliehood goes up the more time that passes. Most people said it could never happen with LGBT and it did after several decades of slowly changing people views and filing lawsuits. It also is happening with medical and recreational marijuana etc.

I don’t see that playing out for one simple reason - someone who is LGBTQ+ isn’t hurting anyone, neither themself nor anyone else by being LGBTQ+. That’s a big part of why we are seeing LGBTQ+ becoming accepted now. (Keep in mind that LGB has been acceptable in many societies goin way back, e.g., Ancient Rome, Japan, multiply genders in Thailand, etc. It’s only been an issue in western culture because of the Judeo Christian religions).

In contrast, pedofiles are predators that prey on those weaker than them. This is not similar to LGBTQ+, it’s much closer to serial killers, serial rapists, and other sociopaths. So no matter how open we become to various sexual orientations, it’s never acceptable to prey on others, especially those who cannot defend themselves, such as children.

 

[TedEH]

We're essentially facing a moral/ethical epidemic.

[Citation needed]....? It seems to me that people are generally more moral/ethical now than they have been before. I suppose it depends on what you think of as "ethical" and how ethical you think people are or have been. I've got no real basis for this, but I have doubts that people were more ethical before we had widespread internet access. You just couldn't generally see what everyone was doing/saying.

I disagree. The internet may be a symptom of the problem, but it's not the problem.

I find it a bit ironic that the system that gives us widespread access to information is pointed at as a tool for ignorance.

I mean, I don't know what the value of the distinction between classifying it as a disorder or not is.

Classification is a step in the getting something accepted. Something that is "officially" a "mental disorder" is "bad", so removing that classification can be pointed at as an argument for socially accepting something.

What’s wrong with being a Satanist?

Depends, do you mean LaVeyan or the Temple, religious people calling anything they don't like "satanic", or actual demon worship?

The general population has no idea how a cell phone works, and they shouldn't have to

Except that when presented with a question for which you have no answer - the internet gives us a reasonably reliable way to get that answer without relying on just making up whatever random BS we can think of, or guessing. Sure, nobody needs to know how a cell phone works - but there's also not really any excuse to falsely claim to know how a cell phone works when the information is available. So many people are perfectly comfortable answering a question with BS, be it knowingly or not.

I feel like we forget that all this stuff existed long before the internet did. There's an AM station here that hosts random conspiracy nuts in the middle of the night and it's sort of fascinating and sad at the same time - 'cause you can tell that nobody has any idea what they're talking about, but they just want to believe so badly. It's clearly being made up on the spot as they go sometimes.

One of my exes a long time ago was into ghost hunting - by which I mean she believed they were real and spoke to her, and they would get together with random pieced together radio equipment they found (I know they don't have any idea what any of it is or does) and search for "orbs" and stuff like that. When I met them I thought they were kidding or just kinda going with it for fun - role playing or something. But no. They believe it. DEEPLY. They made a point of calling me out for being closed minded and "skeptical", because to them skepticism is derogatory.

IMO:

All that to say that people.... want to believe things. They don't like gaps in understanding, they don't like uncertainty. Some people are comfortable with "I don't know", but many are not and will fill that gap with whatever. I think we assume people want the truth, but they don't: they want the answer. The answer is not necessarily the truth, but to admit this would be to acknowledge not knowing something. I mean, why do people believe in religion? Why is it entirely normal to believe any number of spiritual or supernatural things? Why do we believe in souls? Ghosts? Aliens? 5G Nanobots in our vaccines? I don't see a distinction between these things.

 

[StevenC]

I find it a bit ironic that the system that gives us widespread access to information is pointed at as a tool for ignorance.

The internet doesn't have any inherent way to give widespread access to truth, just information. People have been basing their beliefs on op-eds for way longer than the internet, just now there are way more op-eds.

They're all the same "anyone can edit Wikipedia" crowd because none of them have ever tried to edit Wikipedia. Incurious people know it's better to seem curious.

 

[TedEH]

The internet doesn't have any inherent way to give widespread access to truth, just information.

Sure - note I didn't say truth, I said information. It's in the quote you quoted. Some information is still better than no information though, generally speaking. I mean, for as knowledgeable and smart as we'd like to call ourselves, so much of "common knowledge" comes from the internet now. It's not like books or newspapers or radio or whatever else were infallible sources of information either - but those things didn't connect you any source you wanted access to in an instant. The need to judge the quality of information or try to back it up with something is not new, but being able to access it anywhere and anytime certainly is - as well as the ability to broadcast new information just as easily.

Imagine you're in a conversation, and suddenly you wonder what the rough population of Finland is.

Before internet:
You basically just either make an entirely unrealistic/uneducated guess, or resign to not knowing. I mean, does Finland even exist? If you REALLY need to know, you can make a trip out to the library or something. Maybe it's mentioned in an encyclopedia you have on-hand for some reason, but that information could be out of date or just wrong. Or you can ask someone, maybe they're a teacher, or just particularly knowledgeable about it for some reason, but you're still getting unreliable information, if any at all. You could maybe make some phone calls, to like a tourism place, and they would have a bunch of factoids you could use, but they could also be wrong.

Now, with Internet:
You reach for you phone and can say with ~90% confidence that there's about 5.5 million people in Finland, up from about 5.3 a decade ago. Or better yet, shout it at your smart speaker without even expending the effort to lift your phone off the table.

Access to information is now ubiquitous. The ability to process that information however has not changed.

 

[MFB]

As Pete Holmes says, "there was a time where if you didnt know where Tom Petty was from? You just. didn't. know."

 

[drgamble]

The internet has changed a lot about our culture. I don't know that conspiracy theories are any more prevalent now than they were 20 or 30 years ago. There have always been conspiracy theories about a whole range of topics. The internet has made the information a lot easier to convey than before, that is for sure. It also facilitates the use of a disinformation campaign by linking a whole bunch of semi related things together to try to "prove" whatever conspiracy is being claimed.

I think there is a big problem with what people consider evidence. I don't know that I can just go along and say it is a lack of critical thinking. The problem is that people don't pay as much attention to the sources of information as much as the message. There is a lot of confirmation bias when it comes to just about any topic out there these days. People will believe just about any source as long as it fits along with whatever it is that they believe now. I have my base in math and science, where the scientific method has always been the standard for evidence. I find that these days a lot of people get frustrated by something like the scientific method because beliefs can shift quite significantly over time. I see this being the case with Covid. People will still quote stuff from February and March and say "the scientists said this back in March, and now they are saying the opposite now, I thought they were experts."

The internet has allowed people a means to make money off of content, and this is a pretty new thing. There is a certain element of profiteering going on with the disinformation crowd now that didn't really exist 20 years ago. I have seen videos out there where a doctor or group of doctors will go out and make videos, some of them viral, that will promote some of the alternative opinions that people have regarding some of the conspiracy theories. Many people will latch onto some of these theories as truth because they want to hear that the government is purposefully trying to misinform and control people. At the same time, some of these doctors are making money off of the content that they create or have some other therapy or product that they are pushing as the answer to the problem. Somehow, it is hard for some to see through this. What makes this part of the internet worse is when sites take down said videos because of disinformation. In recent times, this has only exacerbated the issue by making it seem like a strike against free speech. It is viewed as censorship and the motive behind the removal is viewed as something "they don't want you to see".

I guess to some all of this up, I think the internet has facilitated the spread of conspiracy theories and has encouraged it at the same time. Not only is it easier to spread information, it is easier to make money off of the information. Unfortunately, most of the money being made on the internet is advertisement based. This has also caused the general decline in the quality of news that is available online. The major players now report the things that will get clicks to generate income. Advertisers do not care about the content of news articles, they actually reward headlines, better known as clickbait. The internet has made a lot of information available to everyone, sadly, I'm not sure that it has made it any easier to find good information.