Remember when conspiracy talk was just between friends at a diner?

Last week I was scrolling a forum and saw 50 replies on a flat earth thread from people who actually believe it. Three years ago at Lou's Diner in Cleveland, my buddy Mike and I would debate JFK theories over coffee, but it never got this wild. Has anyone else noticed how the tone of these discussions shifted since 2020?

3 comments

3 Comments

max4154d ago

it never got this wild" - thats the key right there man. What I wanna know is when did people stop treating conspiracy stuff like a fun maybe and start treating it like their whole identity? Like I remember back in 2012 you could joke about lizard people and nobody got mad. Now people get legitimately angry if you question their specific rabbit hole. Is it the algorithims feeding people nonstop content or did covid just break something in how we talk to each other?

jana1193d ago

Honestly I think there's something nobody is talking about - the collapse of trust in local institutions. You used to be able to ask your neighbor or your pastor or your local news guy a question and get a straight answer. Now nobody trusts anything local either. So people go online and find someone who sounds confident and just glom onto them. When that happens the conspiracy stops being a theory and starts being your tribe. And tribes fight back when you question them.

charles_kelly433d ago

People were definitely deeper into this stuff way before covid, just quieter about it.