Skeptic Project

We've had this one thrown at us a couple of times lately. Casey, Danny, and Joe Lowes on the FB page have all made statements to the effect of, "I really wish I could believe the official story" or "I wish I could go back to my life before I knew all this stuff," as if they would bend over backwards to find a reason not to believe in conspiracy theories. Yet we give them plenty of reasons why their CTs are bullshit, and they still won't abandon them, and in fact actively try to dissuade anyone else from abandoning conspiracy theories that have been totally discredited years ago.

I know that conspiracy theorizing is basically a religious belief system, and it's difficult for people to give up their religion. And those who have gone down the Alex Jones rabbit hole are pretty far gone. But strange as it may seem, I hear a disturbing ring of truth in some conspiradroids' protestations that they wish they could believe something other than CTs. Conspiracy paranoia is a dark, miserable, and ultimately nihilistic view of the world. I couldn't imagine living that way, and I feel sorry for kids like Danny and even Joe Lowes (who I assume is a kid, he certainly spells like one) growing up with such a bleak world view.

Has anyone else noticed "I really wish I didn't believe" statements coming out of conspiracy theorists, and what are your thoughts? Are they sincere, or is it bullshit like everything else they say?

Oh certainly you're right, Edward, people who say they're "on the fence" about conspiracy theories are invariably hard-core conspiracy theorists.

I'm getting at a subtler point. They realize they are conspiracy theorists and perhaps even on a subconscious level that it's ruining their lives, but they feel powerless to NOT believe in them to one degree or another? This is sort of what I hear between the lines from time to time.

Maybe I'm too much of a humanist. Fuck that shit. *loads shotgun*

It's all part of the complex. Saying they want to believe moves the responsibility from the person's emotional center and into the realm of supposed objective reality. "I don't want to believe, but I can't help but open my eyes to reality!"

Its what I believe is manic depression, it rears its head quite prominently in CT's. Their anxiety and panic attacks are due to their inherent lack of ability to see the world in its neutral context. Instead of seeing any positives in the world, they focus predominantly on the negatives and mull over them obsessively.

This in turn leads to them creating/inventing/believing/following all manner of gloomy topics. This is all part and parcel of the CT ideology, take a look at most CT people, they tend to be quite fixated on negatives, notice how many if not the majority of hardcore CT people are rarely happy and bouyant almost always depressed looking/angry, this is not only due to the material. It is due to their inherant predisposition towards negative thinking, IE their manic depression.