​Conspiracy theories are seemingly harmless ideas that sound like they were simply made-up by someone with too much time on their hands. Which is technically true, the people who come up with these wild ideas do have too much time and "nothing to do". To an individual who has never saturated themselves within the conspiracy theorist community or even spent any decent amount of time observing the theories and the theorists there is an auto-response. You hear about these tidbits of "secret knowledge" and cast them aside-for good reason mostly due to the fact that they are not real.  If they were, perhaps more people would know about it.

 Examples would be bermuda triangle, mandela effect, or more commonly associated with conspiracy theories; reptilian humanoids behind the scenes. You immediately brush them off as crazy ideas that get shared around circles that also tend to pass certain kinds of pipes around along with these stories of how the pyramids of Egypt contain a Stargate technology that allows us to jump dimensions or time. That one got it's own movie, tv series, and video game.

To be fair, usually these kooky theories are intriguing in the same way that science fiction is. Science fiction has led certain people to push technology in new directions leading to real, altruistic consequences for humanity at large. But this isn't what we are here to talk about today. No we are here to talk about the dark underbelly of your imagination and how deeply it can affect your life and your relationships if left unmonitored.

Brief background on me for it will become relevant to this topic at hand. I promise. I used to think I believed all the conspiracy theories ranging from ufos to flat earth to Kennedy's assasination speculation. Not for long and not always, but I did and I had danced among these wolves quite a bit.

Let's go back a little further though to really get an idea of what it is I'm trying to convey to you, oh curious reader. I grew up going to a christian private school in the 90s before the internet was in everyone's pocket. I had a friend (naming him R here for censorship sake) who didn't go to this same school.  R had told me then that his dad told him that our government is full of goat skull worshipping satanists that drink blood. He was dead serious, we were nine years old, and didn't know anything about the world yet.

That was the first time I personally ever heard anything "fringe". This being the mid-90s I couldn't google his claims and find out that the people who believe this are typically unemployed, were screwed over in some impersonal way by "the system", and/or did a copious amount of drugs which help blur the lines of reality enough to absorb conspiracy theories as fact. His dad was none of these. He was your average American man trying to carry his family over on the way to his grave. Which is even more alarming now that I think about it. What else can stress lead one to believe? That cheesy puffs make good presidents? I digress.

Fast forward into y2k panic, then months later the twin towers were hit with planes. People are using programs like Napster still and chatting in actual chatrooms over AOL/AIM. Facebook didn't exist, and wasn't the direct-to-brain-sometimes-psuedo-journalism newstube it has become these days. Speculation ran high and many people had many varying degrees of opinion. Then the conspiracy theories started to come along mostly thanks to the air of suspicions surrounding the terrible events of 9/11. If there is some sort of quantifiable collective human conciousness it would have been lashing out from insanity at that point.

From my personal observations I conclude that while 9/11 isn't the mother of all conspiracy theories, it spread a lot of bad ideas around and has been the platform for many other bad ideas. Here we introduce Alex Jones. Proliferating conspiracy theories proudly. Why? Because he knows you'll trust him and buy his sponsored items eventually, which in turn will provide this whackjob a steady income whereas I have to work hard at a real job for my own (as many of his listeners do, I'm sure). He made himself King Conspiraderp using 9/11, Sandy Hook, drone technology, survivalism against the NWO, etc...

The Alex Jones Show is hosted by Genesis Communications Network which was founded to promote Midas Resources. GCN hosted a cavalcade of radio shows generally revolving around conspiratorial material.

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Another King Derp from this network is Jeff Rense. He promoted alternative medicines, ufology, creation of diseases, chemtrails, and other fringey topics that have no evidence to back them up in a time before websites like rationalwiki or other fact checking online databases. Making insane claims about how the world works without being challenged was easier then, I suppose. Hmm, I'm beginning to see a link here but that could just be a coincidence right?

Fast forward a little more into 2008. I had come across a peculiar advertisement. It looked different than your average penis growth pill ads, it featured buzzwords like truth, freedom, and Rockefeller. It was for a website owned by a guy who sold silver and silver certificates. His platform: the globalist elite are tearing apart our economy so do the smart thing and buy my silver before all of your paper money becomes useless fire kindling!

Again, another precious metal salesman?  Still a coincidence based on synonymous factors such as people who trade these metals need a flashy new reason to sell them to a new crowd of suckers, however.  Not innocent, but not truly guilty of anything outside of taking advantage of people's fear and uncertainty.  Underhanded sure, but we haven't reached the roots of the problems yet.

It can't just be solely financially oriented.  People like Rense and Jones and that other person who sells silver I mentioned previously didn't make these theories up out of thin air.  They already existed.  They just used the bad ideas and slapped new faces on them to give their viewers a punching bag to hate on while simultaneously making them cower in fear.  The psychology of it all is astounding, really.

Speaking of psychology, an observation of note is religious and supernatural explanations as opposed to the skeptical, science-based approach is a real problem.  Religion can't come close to explaining the worlds problems today.  As a species I believe we have made religion obsolete by advancing so far forward from the days of "sacred" printed word.  Yet there are people that continue to fall for this divine plan idea which only exists in bleeding heart extremists.  People need more than "magic sky daddy did it because reasons we can never comprehend but let's all just sit around and guess with our thumbs up our asses anyway".

To put it metaphorically, humanity as a singular entity can act like a child in the grand scheme of life, the universe, and everything.  Our species takes a lot of time to learn from its mistakes thanks to random factors like untimely death before passing on all of your important knowledge or skills to the right people, or people choosing ignorance over enlightenment (academic not spiritual) because a book and a charismatic fear-mongering asshat said so.  Only to be supported even further by people looking to make an easy income through their own varying at home businesses using conspiracies as a hook to reel in a potential customer.  Many are still are ignorant of the true potential the internet holds for us as a society.  Or it is just abused outright similar to the case of these derp money trollers.

Do you see where this is going?  Hopefully you aren't calling me a government shill quite yet.  I haven't even gotten to the flat earth theory, or touched on chemtrails.

Let's review for clarification:

Conspiracy theories are bad because they water down your decision making process and narrow your opinions and perception of reality.  Religion locks the cage tighter than that, even though belief in conspiracies is a religion in and of itself.

Author's Note: I'm not here to bash religion in it's natural state.  If you want to believe in any god be my guest.  It's the control and the fearmongering that is more of a concern than the followers choosing to follow a blind man.  Again, I digress.  Religion is a gateway drug into conspiracy theories and lifestyles that are absolutely not synonymous with the rise of the global networking trend that is bound to happen whether anyone likes it or not.   Greater good and everything, right?

Come back for the next installment soon, and remember to bookmark Echoplex Media in your browser!