The preface: I am somehow able to communicate well enough with cats that I can walk them off leash in the woods in the middle of a two-day car trip of 12 hour days, but I cannot seem to convey the point to people that the impression they give the world is almost certainly not the one they intend give. The importance of word choice (which is often incorrectly termed “political correctness”) could take up volumes in a library, but the root of it is this- the words you choose to use represent you as a person. When you use poorly chosen words, you give other people an indelible impression of who “you” are, and it’s a near certainty those two entities are very little alike. Then there is the third you- the you that you are in your own head, an image that often in no way resembles the public you. Sociopaths carefully craft their image by using word choice to convey a particular impression they’ve cultivated, whereas the average person just seems to shit words out of their mouths with no fucking regard for either the impression or the words’ effect on others.

This article is not directed at any political group, as both sides have their fucking idiots and both sides have their insipid conspiracy theories. From the “TRUMP IZ THE DEBBIL” crew to the “I CAN SCREAM WORDS FROM HALF OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT THAT I DON’T UNDERSTAND” bunch, they are a weak, stupid, fearful bunch foisting your insecurities and weaknesses on the world at large with no regard for the impression you leave. And make no mistake- by announcing your belief in a conspiracy theory, be it a government coverup of aliens or an attempt by the evil liberals to steal an election by voting legally, you are announcing that you are weak, afraid, and stupid. Moreover, sharing your weakness can have a negative impact on your own actions and the actions of those around you, which can lead to annoying shit like a bunch of fat illiterates raiding the Capitol building because they believe a conspiracy theory that lacks even an atomic framework for tangible evidence.

Before I launch into why posting your idiotic partisan politics (or even *gasp* believing that simple shit) identifies you to the world as an unthinking and spiritually weak person, I’ll explain why these descriptions I’m providing are scientific theory bordering on hard fact rather than the baseless and ignorant opinions you’ve likely been foisting upon your “friends” on social media. About half of Americans believe in one idiotic, weaksauce conspiracy theory or another, whether it’s Young Earth, Flat Earth, climate change, the evils of vaccinations, or however they like to tell the world they’re bitchmade, and from your collective Facebook posts I know there are somehow plenty of you in my readership. Hell, I have a significant manosphere audience who cannot understand how disgusting and weak I find them, so don’t be shocked to discover I find your particular stupidity equally repellent.

“Conspiracy theories are commonly defined as explanatory beliefs about a group of actors that collude in secret to reach malevolent goals” (Prooijen).

Psychologists have been studying the everloving shit out of belief in conspiracy theories, because the persistent belief in the idiotic by idiots never ceases to fascinate those of us who actually have enough factual context by which we can understand the world around us. Where people who believe conspiracy theories have heads filled with celebrity gossip, YouTube videos, opiods, cellulite, and failure, people who disbelieve them have heads full of knowledge gleaned from actual books written by real academics, and we synthesize and analyze all of that information to understand shit like the fact that there was almost certainly no JFK conspiracy- just a bunch of drunk cops who hated JFK anyway, so they did lackluster police work. It wasn’t 2020- life was quite a bit different then, and the level of professionalism required out of your average modern McDonalds employee is so far above and beyond the average level of professionalism displayed in the daily lives of people who were just inventing professionalism in the workplace in 1964 that it’s hard to understand how we got where we are today. Except that we got here by making a shitload more mistakes than correct actions.

What the scientists have found, is that

A meta-analysis of studies conducted on belief in conspiracy theories concluded that conspiracy theories as a whole have no factual basis. They are an emotional and intuitive response to a perceived threat that arise out of a combination of poor education and a strong association with a group. (van Prooijen).

Those theories spread because they are shared with a group that perceives outside threats, and that threat (which is usually imagined rather than real) response combines with two other truly distasteful yet widespread phenomena:

• belief perseverance– “maintaining your original opinions in the face of overwhelming data that contradicts your beliefs” (Arnold).
  • “A 2008 study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that people are more likely to continue believing incorrect information if it makes them look good (enhances self-image). For example, if an individual has become known in her community for purporting that vaccines cause autism, she might build her self-identity as someone who helps prevent autism by helping other parents avoid vaccination. Admitting that the original study linking autism to the MMR (measles–mumps–rubella) vaccine was ultimately deemed fraudulent would make her look bad (diminish her self-concept)” (Ibid).
• confirmation bias– “we are more likely to believe a statement if it confirms our preexisting beliefs” (Ibid).

As you can see, debunking a conspiracy theory is going to be nigh on impossible, because herd animals panic easily and then reaffirm their own idiotic beliefs in an effort to strengthen their bond with the group, regardless of how blatantly offensive their intellectual disingenuousness might be to every thinking person on planet Earth. Case in point is the goof in the comments on my last article, who ignored the entirety of the statistical basis of my thesis and simply reasserted that conservatives are the “real men” who are gonna save the world from the cabal of hyperverts who’ve apparently overtaken society. His thesis is that I am a liberal because the Republicans won’t put up with buggery, which is evidently sound logic and detective work as far as he is concerned (and it seems to be the consensus among the manosphere/incel crowd).

People Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories Are

The two main factors that play into this insanely frustrating anti-intellectual disaster are

1. a strong ingroup identity
2. a sense of outgroup threat

The groups in question are typically political or religious ideologies and span every inch of the edges of the political compass. I say edges because it is typically the extremists within a political group that will generate conspiracy theories, and it is because of the aforementioned strong group identity and sense of outgroup threat. It’s not the moderates cooking up this hairbrained shit- it’s the fucking goofs on the edges, and it then seems inward as the combined effects of peoples’ various personal failings leave them susceptible to conspiracy belief.

Next, a person must test high on “schizotypy” which is not a diagnosis of schizophrenia so much as the display of a schizophrenic behavior- belief in nonsensical statements. They are “more likely than nonbelievers to judge nonsensical statements as profound (a tendency known as ‘BS receptivity’),” which is a real problem when you’re trying to disabuse these simple motherfuckers of the dumb shit they believe.

A List of Personal Failings That Lead to Belief in Conspiracy Theories

People who believe conspiracy theories exhibit some or all of the following traints. They:

• have a negative outlook for the future (Science Daily)
• have great esteem for democratic ideals (Swami)
• lack interpersonal trust, which is a bizarre counterpoint to their alleged love of democracy (Goertzel, Science Daily). My theory is that they pick a friend group rather than individual friends, but I can’t imagine why you’d associate with people you distrust except that they’re dullards with no interests who huddle together for protection.
• are anti-authority (Swami)
• are at the very least uneducated, but likely stupid to boot (Van Prooijen)
  • “Consistently, higher education predicts lower conspiracy beliefs, a finding that is partly mediated by a tendency among the less educated to attribute agency and intentionality where it does not exist (Douglas et al., 2016), and stronger analytic thinking skills among the higher educated (Van Prooijen, 2017). Furthermore, the combination of analytic thinking and the motivation to be rational predicts skepticism of conspiracy theories” (Ibid).
  • belief in conspiracies has been correlated with lower crystallized intelligence, which is he accumulation of knowledge, facts, and skills that are acquired throughout life (Swami)
• are more suspicious (Science Daily)
• have low self-esteem (Swami)
• have a very limited vocabulary (Goertzel). The clinical term for this is anomia, and I’ve recently realized it’s one of the reasons the underprivileged seem never to understand what the fuck I am saying. Frankly, I place this character failing among the worst one could find- I’d rather hang out in a morgue with a vicious necrophiliac than a person with anomia- I might not join in, but at least I could have fun filming. There’s nothing fun about a conversation with a person who couldn’t fill a toddler’s sandbox pail with the words they know- it’s literal anti-Viagra.
• utilize intuitive rather than analytic thinking. People who “go with their gut” rather than obtaining knowledge, synthesizing and analyzing that information, and arriving at a conclusion after weighing the evidence.
  • “Conspiracy beliefs therefore do not appear to be grounded in controlled, analytic mental processes. Instead, we argue that they are grounded in emotional and intuitive mental (System 1) processes. This insight is based on the argument that aversive emotional experiences increase people’s sense‐making motivations” (Ibid).
• are religious or superstitious. Researchers use the exceptionally fancy phrase “attribute agency to inanimate objects,” but it basically boils down to being religious or superstitious. Whether you think god makes earthquakes, there are ghosts in your house, the reason your phone is slow is that it’s possessed, or whatever other nonsense you use to caulk the massive gaps in your knowledge rather than facts (Van Prooijen).
• are eccentric (Science Daily)
• are insecure about their employment (Goertzel)
• have a need to feel special (Science Daily)
• have a tendency to regard the world as an inherently dangerous place (Science Daily)
• are more likely to detect meaningful patterns where they might not exist (Science Daily)

I could continue listing character failings for the remainder of the year, but that list should suffice to paint a picture of the low-wattage bulbs burning in the brains of people who believe conspiracy theories. Frankly, I have never belonged to any kind of group, so none of this has ever applied. This shit all went from what was basically the adult comedy section of Barnes and Noble with David Icke’s dumbass books to people actually believing that there are cabals of rich people pulling their strings. You know what rich people do? Make money and eat tomahawk steaks. They could give a fuck less about you beyond the fact that you are a necessary evil they must endure to make more money, and no one on Earth has the time, money, or inclination to micromanage you life. Big Brother is not watching you, because you’re boring, uneducated, and useless, by and large. Most people are- it’s just statistics.

Also, it doesn’t fucking matter if there was a second gunman, because some fat shit covered in Cheetos dust screaming about a 55 year old conspiracy is about as useful in the modern world as THE SLIDE RULES THEY USED FOR CALCULATIONS WHEN JFK WAS KILLED. If there is a conspiracy, it’s that a bunch of dumbshits never heard the story of the boy who cried wolf or chicken little, or that they somehow missed the point of those stories. The point, if you’re among them, of those ubiquitous is that if you make false claims and/or constantly scream about non-existent danger, you destroy your credibility to the point hat no one helps you, and you die. Put another way, it could be said that the noisy cattle take a dirt nap long before their more affable cohorts- they might be dumb, but they at least know enough to be dumb, polite, and out of the fucking way.

BE BETTER THAN THAT SHIT.

With that, I have hopefully vomited enough vitriol that I can resume writing about lifting and nutrition. I busted out a great new recipe for a Stewroids article over the weekend, so that’s likely up next- if you have your panties in a bunch over the non-lifting articles I just dropped, you can rest easy knowing that I’m so disgusted with humanity at this point I don’t think I could honestly stand absorbing any more reasons to spit on just about everyone I pass on the street. And this was the last of the articles I’ve left in various states of completion as I watched everyone collectively get even more dogshit day after day for a year, so again- you are now free from learning the true horror with which we all find ourselves surrounded.

I am one man fighting an entire universe of sloth and stupidity, and I’m not above asking for a bit of help. This is DIY as fuck, so if you can throw me some loot to aid in my efforts, I’ll definitely put it to vitriolic good use.

Sources:

Arnold, Carrie.  How confirmation bias turns theories into facts.  Scientific American.  5 Oct 2012.  Web. 16 Jan 2021.  https://www.businessinsider.com/how-confirmation-bias-turns-conspiracy-theories-into-facts-2012-10

Goertzel T.  Belief in conspiracy theories. Pol Psych. Dec 1994, 15(4):731-742.

Swami V, Coles R, Stieger S, Pietschnig J, Furnham A, Rehim S, Voracek M. Conspiracist ideation in Britain and Austria: evidence of a monological belief system and associations between individual psychological differences and real-world and fictitious conspiracy theories.  Br J Psychol. 2011 Aug;102(3):443-63.

Van Prooijen JW, Douglas KM. Belief in conspiracy theories: Basic principles of an emerging research domain. Eur J Soc Psychol. 2018 Dec; 48(7): 897–908.

Who believes in conspiracies? New research offers a theory.  Science Daily.  25 Sep 2018.  Web.  18 Jan 2021.  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180925075108.htm

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