The Conspiracy Theory Conspiracy Theory

A passing observation … many of you are not going to like it, so make of it what you will.

Once upon a time, when gatekeepers controlled information flow, it was the burden of people with critical thinking skills and the will to investigate beyond the apparent surface for data and facts that would reveal the reality of the people behind said surface and their machinations. It actually didn’t take that much of an effort, just some time, caring, an inquisitive mind, and the authenticity to follow the rabbit hole wherever it led, and not the presumption of the conspiracy and tracing back to squeeze random facts, or inventions, to make it work. Back then, the greatest conspiracy theorists were also the greatest skeptics.

With the proliferation of the internet, and the gatekeepers realizing that they could no longer control information through narrow channels, they realized that information overflow and over saturation are much more useful tools for manipulation. In fact it made their life easier as the feeble minded and intellectually lazy did their own self manipulation cherry picking from the infinite information buffet to be in a permanent state of loss, fear, and confusion, and as a result defaulting to their own flawed biases, inventing theories to make them plausible.

This is nothing new, it has been well documented before and is obvious to anyone with meager discernment skills.

What is interesting to observe, and as always by interesting I mean absurd and sad if one is invested in the system, is that as a result conspiracy theorists are now as or more mainstream than those who accept what is in plain sight at face value. So many people out there have made it their default mechanism. Getting people to that point where they are so fearful and so mistrustful of their reality that they almost never trust it when it conflicts with their personal preferences and beliefs, so much so that they’ll believe almost anything from those who manipulate them as long as it’s somewhat consistent with their own beliefs, is the ultimate conspiracy and the natural evolution of the dilution of information ... when they got you to believe in nothing but your own nonsense, so much so that many will readily fight and be willing harm others to preserve it, never occurring to you that what you're fighting for doesn't actually serve you, only serving those who are using you, or more accurately, those who you're willingly handing yourself over to in servitude.

It was a nice little subculture we had there for a while, these days most people who think they have a grasp of a conspiracy are the manipulated victims of the greatest running one.

I agree with all this. Minus the part where you omit the blatant censorship of real occurrences in lieu of saturating the system with info.... gatekeepers “don’t gotta burn the books they just remove ‘Em”

a reply to: slatesteam

Ending net neutrality will go a long way with helping remove them.

a reply to: scraedtosleep
And private corporate ownership?

a reply to: schrodingers dog

That is too simplistic of a view on what people know and don’t know. Which is exactly what you are describing is happening to others is what you are saying!

People believe all kinds of stupid sh#. Most we can laugh at (and if they are well adjusted, they can too). Some people are willing to admit that they were wrong in believing stupid sh# but that is very few of all the different ideas out there. And there are others who ask legitimate questions about reality and what a person can know.

These distinctions can not be honestly lumped into a binary this/that type of characterization.

As Lil’ Gideon says, “I rebuke thee!”



Try a bit harder to refine your idea and either be specific (and willing to be wrong) or give a better account of what different thoughts may be like beyond your grossly simplified characterization!

It is a topic worth discussion but walk into it naked and be prepared to be wrong! And ask about your idea instead of “talking for everyone else”.

Then we can have a discussion on a more even footing!

a reply to: schrodingers dog

Of course, one could ignore section 230 and how it irrevocably changed the journalistic landscape not only in the US but how it filtered down to the rest of the world.

The media thrives on petty opinion pieces that are poorly disguised character assassination jobs.

Trump, Nicholas Sandmann and Kyle Rittenhouse to name but a few.

Journalists bursting into tears in 2016 afraid for how life would change under Trump on account of him being a "nazi" and a "racist".

These are the same people that had no bad word to say about Donald Trump until he decided to go and shake things up in Washington.

No. You are absolutely right there is nothing to see here people are imagining things.

Video evidence of Joe Biden admitting quid pro quo at a gathering of the Council on foreign relations gets ignored in favor of Trump eating two scoops of ice-cream.

How lucky are we to be in the presence of an overeducated, undervalued, fence sitting edge-lord who just happen to be willing to guide us back to acceptance of the mainstream narrative in between sips of port.

Schrodingers dog...

What a pretentious little attempt at what sanity is supposed to look like.

a reply to: schrodingers dog

The fundamental conspiracy is the idea that there's one particular model of how the world works, that if understood, can sweep aside confusion and make everything clear and predictable. That by searching for that model, we eliminate ambiguity and decrease our ignorance.

It's a very powerful idea, and infinitely leveragable. But it's the exact opposite of how reality actually works.

The truth is, there's no light in rabbit holes. It's rabbit holes all the way down, I'm afraid. And they're all "true", or have truth to them. Pick one, any one. When you go down it far enough, you'll find the Secret Underground Base, all right -- but then, when you're struggling to adapt to what it means that it Really Is True, you'll notice, there in the corner, another rabbit hole leading intriguingly downwards, inviting you to explore further. And this process repeats, and repeats, and repeats...

The thing is, the search for truth does not decrease ambiguity. It, in fact, creates it. It's where ambiguity comes from -- our attempts to "draw a box" around the truth and label our models of it as complete and sufficient. Like a finger pressing on a blob of mercury, our search for the truth itself squeezes it outward, expanding the boundaries of our explored possibilities of understanding, but also in the process inevitably expanding the scope of our ignorance.

And it really doesn't matter what you believe, as far as how society is affected, so much as how you predicate the basis of your ignorance. That's where the real power lays -- not in convincing people what is true, but convincing them of what is important in their search for truth, because that's what determines the scope of their actions and attention.

So you're absolutely correct, of course, but consider this: what do the purported "controllers" you hypothesize and those they would control have in common? It's that they both seek to "draw a box" around the truth. The controllers, for benefit of their own power by manipulating what others believe, and the 'truth-seekers', for purposes of their own understanding and to escape the prison of ignorance, to create their own models of understanding and inform effective autonomy.

They're sides of the same coin. This reality is much more living and active than their models allow. There is no static truth, no One True Way that can be either sold as snake oil or held up as our deliverance. If you think you've found one, don't think to hard about it, because if you do the cracks will soon appear and it will be revealed as yet another facade. Inevitably. Because (ssh now) we're all creating the very game we're playing.

Glad to hear from you friend and I hope you're doing well.

Are there conspiracies? Of course. They have existed since the first prehistoric couple found a dark corner of the cave to whisper to each other quietly away from the others.

Is there a single massive conspiracy where a select group of "TPTB" sit in a smoke-filled back room and punch up every detail of our lives on the global control panel? Of course not. There are multiple power blocks jockeying for intersecting lines of influence on many levels near the top. The elite are too paranoid, sociopathic, and mutually hating of one another's guts to ever "cap the pyramid."

a reply to: schrodingers dog


I’m pretty sure that "counter conspiracies", (basically absurd theories) have been deliberately put out there, to make most other rational thinking “genuine conspiracy theories/theorists” look like “nut jobs" in the eyes of the un-woke populous.

This has helped to enable the brush stroke attack of "you’re a conspiracy theorist" used often by the mainstream media to shut people down. And to the un-initiated, (un-woke) it’s easy to go along with it... thinking “Yeah that guy must be crazy, he believes in that or those “crazy conspiracy theories”...

- JC

originally posted by: Joecroft
a reply to: schrodingers dog


I’m pretty sure that "counter conspiracies", (basically absurd theories) have been deliberately put out there, to make most other rational thinking “genuine conspiracy theories/theorists” look like “nut jobs" in the eyes of the un-woke populous.

This has helped to enable the brush stroke attack of "you’re a conspiracy theorist" used often by the mainstream media to shut people down. And to the un-initiated, (un-woke) it’s easy to go along with it... thinking “Yeah that guy must be crazy, he believes in that or those “crazy conspiracy theories”...

- JC

There is also the "purple pill" strategy: mix some truth in with deliberate falsehood in the hope either a) the falsehood will "taint" the true parts and cast doubts on them; or b) the true parts will encourage people to swallow the false bits too.

originally posted by: Never Despise


Is there a single massive conspiracy where a select group of "TPTB" sit in a smoke-filled back room and punch up every detail of our lives on the global control panel? Of course not. There are multiple power blocks jockeying for intersecting lines of influence on many levels near the top. The elite are too paranoid, sociopathic, and mutually hating of one another's guts to ever "cap the pyramid."

Yes, yes there is. And they are represented by the World Economic Forum to include all the big players not limited to data collection, telecommunications, weapons manufacturing, finance, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and the food industry.
This self imposed global governance works lockstep with UN Agenda 2030 all for your own good.

Their plan has left smoke filled back rooms and is out in the open

originally posted by: scraedtosleep
Ending net neutrality will go a long way with helping remove them.

Speaking of...
I'd say it's high time for this topic to rear it's ugly head once again, especially with all of the control and censorship we've witnessed during this summer's events and the election cycle

a reply to: schrodingers dog

I agree with you and Joecroft on the oversaturation of information making people fool themselves with their own biased theories.

Imagine if ATS, years earlier, had its fingers on the pulse of conspiracy theories. Now the inundation of the mudpit has put us in a mini dark age of conspiracies.

It's almost as if, they KNEW we were getting close to them so they infiltrated the site with posters like how TEOTWAWKAIFF and 19bones attacks your unique outlook, in order to put you down and stop you from posting.

I wonder how many users of ATS have been targeted by other users of ATS for getting too close to figuring out the agenda.

Keep up the critical thinking dog.

There are spies about trying to undermine us.

a reply to: Ian McLean

Agreed … fundamentally there is no external rabbit hole that leads to any truth other than that realization.

The only conspiracy is to keep everyone looking for it outside themselves. It’s not that hard, they’re predisposed to do it.

So much so that now there’s nothing more mainstream than being a conspiracist.

It’s funny.

a reply to: schrodingers dog

Psssttt… read Watership Down to see [eta: that] rabbit holes [sp] are “targeted” to be taken over by other rabbit holes!!



BTW, I was not trying to be condescending or rude (or mean), just providing a suggestion to get a good idea to a better position so it can be addressed by the big brains wandering around this place!!

S+F, and will bump this thread as long as it moves forward with some of the reasons it seems to have been posted (as far as I can tell!)

originally posted by: schrodingers dog
A passing observation … many of you are not going to like it, so make of it what you will.

Once upon a time, when gatekeepers controlled information flow, it was the burden of people with critical thinking skills and the will to investigate beyond the apparent surface for data and facts that would reveal the reality of the people behind said surface and their machinations. It actually didn’t take that much of an effort, just some time, caring, an inquisitive mind, and the authenticity to follow the rabbit hole wherever it led, and not the presumption of the conspiracy and tracing back to squeeze random facts, or inventions, to make it work. Back then, the greatest conspiracy theorists were also the greatest skeptics.

With the proliferation of the internet, and the gatekeepers realizing that they could no longer control information through narrow channels, they realized that information overflow and over saturation are much more useful tools for manipulation. In fact it made their life easier as the feeble minded and intellectually lazy did their own self manipulation cherry picking from the infinite information buffet to be in a permanent state of loss, fear, and confusion, and as a result defaulting to their own flawed biases, inventing theories to make them plausible.

This is nothing new, it has been well documented before and is obvious to anyone with meager discernment skills.

What is interesting to observe, and as always by interesting I mean absurd and sad if one is invested in the system, is that as a result conspiracy theorists are now as or more mainstream than those who accept what is in plain sight at face value. So many people out there have made it their default mechanism. Getting people to that point where they are so fearful and so mistrustful of their reality that they almost never trust it when it conflicts with their personal preferences and beliefs, so much so that they’ll believe almost anything from those who manipulate them as long as it’s somewhat consistent with their own beliefs, is the ultimate conspiracy and the natural evolution of the dilution of information ... when they got you to believe in nothing but your own nonsense, so much so that many will readily fight and be willing harm others to preserve it, never occurring to you that what you're fighting for doesn't actually serve you, only serving those who are using you, or more accurately, those who you're willingly handing yourself over to in servitude.

It was a nice little subculture we had there for a while, these days most people who think they have a grasp of a conspiracy are the manipulated victims of the greatest running one.

Words of Wisdom,
It took me From the age of 19 to 30 to really master my ability to Discern truth from lie. A more embarrassing version of myself, of the past, Was subject to much woo and misinformation. Sources like Rational Wiki and Sabine Hossenfelder (YouTube) greatly helped me fortify my understanding of physics and to understanding and avoiding lies. I highly suggest familiarizing yourself with them if you have the time.

originally posted by: Psilocyborg
a reply to: schrodingers dog

I agree with you and Joecroft on the oversaturation of information making people fool themselves with their own biased theories.

Imagine if ATS, years earlier, had its fingers on the pulse of conspiracy theories. Now the inundation of the mudpit has put us in a mini dark age of conspiracies.

It's almost as if, they KNEW we were getting close to them so they infiltrated the site with posters like how TEOTWAWKAIFF and 19bones attacks your unique outlook, in order to put you down and stop you from posting.

I wonder how many users of ATS have been targeted by other users of ATS for getting too close to figuring out the agenda.

Keep up the critical thinking dog.

There are spies about trying to undermine us.

Smartphones and the advent of the "Pocket Warrior" on forums and other places, have also played their part in mudding the waters.

originally posted by: CideSources like Rational Wiki and Sabine Hossenfelder (YouTube) greatly helped me fortify my understanding of physics and to understanding and avoiding lies. I highly suggest familiarizing yourself with them if you have the time.

At the quantum level, physics tells you that the determinant variable in the resolution of reality is the observer. At the most material level, when deconstructed to its end, it resolves into consciousness dictates reality.

There’s usefulness in taking every path of deconstruction to its natural end … be it physics, spirituality, psychology, philosophy, or whatever other road, they all point to their own existential impasse, and hopefully at some incarnation this realization will shift one’s desire inwardly as opposed to outwardly.

In the pursuit of that deconstruction, taking away the vails of hidden manipulation was and still is a worthy pursuit to get to that impasse as quickly as possible. What’s happened however is the flooding of everyone with infinite information to follow their ego rather than authenticity, hence further immersing them in external distractions and taking them further away from themselves … hence the conspiracy conspiracy.

It’s always been about shadow puppets keeping humans busy. They used to think that gatekeeping was the way to do it, then they realized that humans will do it to themselves, all the while thinking themselves conspiracy theorists and getting the associated ego boost that they are privy to info no one else has. But there’s not much ego currency when everyone is a mainstream conspiracy theorist … they just have to go further off the reservation without any evidence just to feel a little different from others. Further and further extreme just to feel alive. Further and further ..

originally posted by: schrodingers dog

all the while thinking themselves conspiracy theorists and getting the associated ego boost that they are privy to info no one else has. But there’s not much ego currency when everyone is a mainstream conspiracy theorist … they just have to go further off the reservation without any evidence just to feel a little different from others. Further and further extreme just to feel alive. Further and further ..

Is this truly what you think conspiracy theorists are here for?? I agreed heartily to the rest of your post but this
saddens me...

a reply to: Smokeygurl

It’s not really about what i think, and I dropped all beliefs a long time ago.

I’m just observing and popping my head up every few years to note something mildly interesting.

Go to YouTube and search the series ‘Robert Anton Wilson Politics and Conspiracy’.

See the difference between what was once a pursuit based on impartial critical thinking as a vital part of the deconstruction of one’s conditioned reality to what conspiracy theory has become today … a cherry picking of nonsense to validate tribal beliefs more disconnected from authenticity than any hidden hand could have ever aspired to put upon us.



I’m not endorsing him, but he is relevant to this specific topic and I would seek his work out for there’s some merit to his approach … none more than when asked what is the greatest threat to our freedom and his answer was ‘the stupidity of the population’ … no prophecy has even been more accurate than that one from decades ago, and those who used to spend time and energy trying to control us realized as much, gave us the internet and let us run armed with that stupidity, doing more of their bidding in the process to take away our own freedoms than they ever could through their own hand … all the while everyone thinks they know the conspiracy, when they are the conspiracy.