I miss when conspiracy theories were somewhat fun and mostly harmless. Black helicopters, CIA mind control, hidden aliens…usually the forte of those afflicted with questionable mental health.
Now? Conspiracies are nurtured and pushed with paid troll farms and wingnuts high on winning at literally any cost. Deliberately designed to harm and damage. Overwhelming the ability of reason and rebuttal to make a solid defense. Worse are those who so easily believe bullshit over decades or a century of objective proof of any kind.
The first conspiracy was Watergate.
After Watergate, Late night FM (new at the time) programming filled with a bunch of “Well what else is the government hiding from us?”
Someone eventually proclaimed that aliens were covered up at the Roswell Incident, which everyone had forgotten about after 20 years.
Kennedy assassination was before Watergate… Pretty sure there were immediate conspiracy theories with that one.
I want to believe!
I do remembrer a time when I was younger where conspiracies scratched an itch with me. It was a fun rabbit hole of stories to explore, I wish they never became more than stories
Yep. They were fun and mysterious. Now they’re in your face and sometimes violent.
The worst part is that you’re describing an actual real conspiracy that they won’t believe.
In Ireland you just go to the pub and you’ll be sure to find some asshole ready and willing to talk shite to ye the whole night. People seem to think the Net invented this kind of wankers…
No, now the village idiots connect on social networks, exchange conspiracy theories and think they are the majority.
The net elevated them from being a drunk wanker at the pub, into a multimillionaire celebrities with cult following, dictating the future of the world.
Every village had a village idiot, now they network.
I was a loser smoking pot in a room with black light posters when I was young (17/18ish) but I never believed in conspiracy theories. And Rogan is a fucking idiot.
The only motherfucker we needed to hear back then was Space Ghost. And he had his own dual-celled cohost.
Joe Rogan’s gimmick started out as a knucklehead layman who would just have casual water cooler discussions about things they didnt understand, and he was upfront about how he was an idiot who didnt know anything.
the problem was that other knuckle dragging idiots started thinking that because they agreed with him because of confirmation bias, that he was right and eventually he noticed he had a huge following of people, and started to think that his own dumb opinions must be correct
I still struggle to understand how someone like that could even get traction because every time I’ve ever looked at a joe rogan podcast he’s usually just sitting there agreeing and brownnosing whoever his guest is. “Thats crazy, thats really interesting huh I didnt know that”… 90% of the time
The other 10% of the time he’s screaming into the microphone saying shit like “Fuck you Ukraine, you’re going to cause WW3 for defending yourself from an invasion”
I can’t tell you how accurate this is.
— Millenial
James Mayans proposed the T23 shortwave transmitter that later led on to the first car based telephones largely thought to be the forerunner to modern mobile phones so he was right.
Look here younguns that guy would tell us the Mayans invented cassette tapes.
What nobody foresaw was that the internet allowed these benign isolated idiots to connect and form a super-cell, and begin coordinated recruitment.
Leave it up to humans to bastardize the greatest tool for liberation ever invented.
Remember that one time Twitter facilitated the Arab Spring?
Maybe it’s not done yet. The Arab Spring demonstrated that Twitter was a threat. The powers that be have effectively destroyed Twitter as an organizing tool. Now we have Mastodon.
It might take more than a few decades for humans to fully adapt to the internet hazards we were warned about in the 1990s and forgot by the 2020s.
The internet allows every village idiot to say to the other idiots “No you’re not the idiot.”
Back when I lived in Austin, Texas, Alex Jones was just our funny cable access lunatic. He was like a funny wrestling match interview during a UFO convention. Then we built the modern internet. Sorry.
The ones I ever met, none were malicious or stupid.
It’s after the popularisation of the internet that it’s become a dangerous tool for misinformation.
The nerds are alright. The normos are not. The nerds like tights and Star Trek. The normos like extravagant vehicles and Trump.
Once it became profitable the assholes took over for the mostly harmless loons.
I knew a guy when I was a freshman in high school in the year 2000 and he would not stop talking about how Japan already had PlayStation 7 and that the US was not allowing it to be sold in America.
I was in elementary school in the mid 90s and had a friend whose mom owned an independent movie rental store. He claimed that because of this he was able to get all kinds of insider info in the movie industry. My favorite was that George Lucas originally planned 9 Star Wars movies, and that three of them, taking place before the original trilogy, were already in the works. What nonsense.
Next you’ll tell me that they planned several Matrix sequels… Imagine that…
I knew a guy who claimed his grandad shot Hitler. Hitler was not his grandfather.
Man, that rumor may have spread nationwide, or else I think I knew that guy.
These are the kind of adolescent, batshit insane takes that I miss from my teen years
See, now we’re starting to say “when I was your age” and “back in my day…”
bruh we have kids now. we’re old, and busted. my wife was trying to calculate what years our BTTF shit would happen, it’s over.
I paid a couple kids to shovel my sidewalk. That’s when I knew I reached the “back in my day” milestone.
>Be me, 27 with enough money to afford pot and cool posters
>Enjoy conspiracy theories
>Little brothers friends come over
>am high af
>Little bros friends awkwardly come into my room to smoke uninvited
>themorethemerrieriguess.pcx
>dont know what to talk about, figure I’ll tell them some dumb shit I read to make them laugh
>they leave
>later go downstairs to make a sandwich
>overhear them calling me a loser
>mfwMine was my uncle who bought me a set of Time Life conspiracy theory books.
A different kind of funny uncle.
Nice name change. At first I thought someone was copying your shtick but then I realized you were the authentic product
Are you that person I recognize from the Internet?
I hope so. I love recognizing people on Lemmy. It’s so much easier and less stressful to interact when you know what to expect from certain usernames. Like for instance I know OP (St*mets) can get irritable at times, but they ultimately mean well and post a lot of good memes.
SemiHemiDemigod is just an elite Lemmy commenter in all facets. No notes.
Actively resisting the urge to follow southsamurai all over Lemmy to tell him he’s a cool dude
LOL I literally typed up a comment once saying how cool I thought he was. But then I deleted it without posting because it felt weird.
Though he did drop a pretty dark joke recently that got very bad reviews and had to be removed. Never meet your heroes 😭
I didn’t see the joke but I did see the follow up comments to it and I’m not too bothered. Seems he knows it was a bad joke and wasn’t offended that it got removed. We’ve all told a bad taste joke once or twice in the past. Guy has such a pattern of genuine wisdom (and accepted the bad comments with grace) that I’m totally willing to let one slide.
But now I’m wondering if it’s even weirder to be gassing him up in a conversation he’s not even in. Part of me hopes he sees this and part hopes he doesn’t 😅
Yea you’re probably right. But fuck it, if anybody should be gassing him up it’s other SJW users
That’s the only thing hexbear users get right, they always got their homies backs.
He makes me feel concise at times, which is absurd. But the extra thought and effort he puts into every single comment is exemplary, along with the fact that he’s not afraid to speak his mind even if it goes against the circlejerk. You’re a real one @southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
You want me to tell him? I’m going to dinner at his house tonight.
I never saw the appeal of Joe Rogan
His stand-up was terrible
He can’t even fight back against science. He has no idea what that is. He just likes talking.
Edit: Mean but fair, if you got this far, check yourselves out for personality disorders.
I will always have a place in my heart for News Radio and Rogan was an important part of the show.
Such a great cast, love me some Stephen Root and Dave Foley.
Definitely a mega cast
I miss Phil
I understand the reason. He is basicaly how your dad would imagine himself talking with a rich/famous dude. The problem is that the pepole that are there probably shouldnt be taken as seriously as they seem to be taken.
so is his sit-down
I saw one stand up of him and he had a bit where he was ranting against books. That bit says so much about him.
You had cell phones when you were a kid?
My parents got a cutting edge bag phone when I was a teenager
They’re obviously Mayan, so yeah.
Maybe you just set the wrong language during the last update.
Yeah. I think the first one was a GSM phone; the NMT ones were too expensive to be handed to kids. But it was before Nokia became dominant.
