[jonex]

The problem with the typical CT isn't that they call out bad things. The problem is that they tend to use the rumours of bad stuff and build complex narratives around it that ends up much further than the original events would ever warrant.

It starts off with something like "CIA was behind the coup in country X". Which might have been true, but lacking concrete evidence it opens the door for other things without concrete evidence. Next claim will be something like media is intentionally not reporting about this. Then this is explained by "globalists" controlling the media and working with the CIA. Then it's "the Jews" are actually the ones working with the globalists here. Or it's the globalists trying to push vaccines even though they are apparently unsafe. Why, because they make mind control easier? Or maybe it's a way to reduce population.

This kind path into insanity is sadly not that rare. And while there's certainly people at the top of the funnel that has some reasonable skepticism while reporting somewhat unsubstantiated facts. There are also plenty who will start off relatively reasonable, but then take their followers through a journey down into conspiracy land.

A notable harm this had was indeed the covid vaccines. Some influencers in the health space, used to light weight CT content like, "the sugar industry is behind todays health recommendations" and "big pharma tries to push dangerous blood pressure medicine even though it doesn't help". So when vaccines came, they were primed towards looking for stuff like that and decided that vaccines were bad and presented this idea using biased statistics and CT ideas.

A lot of people are dead or were unnecessary Covid complications due to this movement. And arguably, the CT culture was a big contributor to this.

It's important to call out the actual bad stuff that's being done in various contexts, wether it's in the name of national security, medicine or even just industry causing pollution. It's also natural that people build up a sense of distrust and skepticism against unsubstantiated claims in this area given the potentially severe consequences downstream.

[saiya-jin]

Wonderful summary, if smarter part of cranks realized this then we as society could have a serious conversation.

As things stand thought, there is no point, who has the time to defute lies within half truths within other lies, based maybe on some truth. While other side thinks you are a manipulated idiot anyway.

[mistermann]

How many hours over how many years have you spent in which conspiracy communities to establish how the "typical" conspiracy theorist thinks?

And, how many hours have you devoted to performing a similar analysis of Normies? Did you know, they also have some "interesting" thinking styles, though perhaps these attract less attention because they're normal.