View from the Cheap Seats is an extension of the newsroom, which is frequently a site of heated debate on topics ranging from the extremely serious to the utterly ridiculous. This web edition features the views of print edition columnists Thom Barker (Wednesday) and Calvin Daniels (Friday), as well as web exclusive content by Devin Wilger (Thursday).
This week: What is your favourite conspiracy theory.
Moon dreams
Picking a favourite conspiracy theory is like picking a method of torture to die by.
The fundamental flaw of all conspiracy theories, of course, is that two people sitting in a room are virtually incapable of keeping a secret, yet the popular conspiracy theories would require hundreds to thousands of people to keep the secret.
Of course, when your brain is so damaged that you believe in nonsense, lack of evidence for a claim becomes evidence of the claim, so a sane person really can’t win.
One theory I find really amusing, though, is one I just recently heard about. You know those tin-hat wearing nuts who believe NASA faked the moon landing? They are sane compared to this new group.
What if I told you the moon actually does not exist? It is true according to observances by perfectly reliable whackos. Apparently there is a glitch in the inconceivably advanced holographic technology that periodically causes a perturbence the conspiracy theorists call a “lunar wave.”
Oh, did I mention the wave is only visible when observing the moon (sorry, holographic image) through a digital camera. That couldn’t cause any weird sort of distortion or pixilation of the signal could it?
And never mind the fact the moon has been in the sky from the earliest documented human history and that it elaborately moves about and has phases. That’s just how advanced the perpetrators of this hoax are.
Then there is the perennial question: why? What disturbing reality is it intended to distract us from?
You know what, forget it, this one is so outrageous, it does not even deserve debunking.
-Thom Barker
Conspiracy about conspiracies
I don’t generally believe conspiracy theories, but there is one I definitely enjoy. It’s a bit of a nesting doll of conspiracy theories, containing layers of conspiracy that try to explain other conspiracy theories. Like many such theories in the west, we start at Area 51, where according to declassified documents the US Government spent a great deal of time testing airplanes and according to conspiracy theorists they spent even more time dissecting aliens and covering up their existence. The theory I’m thinking of is one layer on top of that, it’s the theory that the CIA made up the stories about dissecting aliens at Area 51 so anyone talking about Area 51 sounds crazy.
Unlike a large number of such theories, it doesn’t rely on an increasingly large number of people to keep quiet about anything, in fact it relies on spreading as much information as possible, just that all of the information it spreads is inherently unreliable. It is a way to hide top secret information in plain sight. If Area 51 is going to be used to test experimental aircraft, there will be a ton of sightings of unidentified flying objects, that’s a given. These UFOs are decidedly terrestrial in origin, but they’re experimental planes, they’re likely going to appear a bit alien. So in order to be able to dismiss people reporting on those UFOs, having the entire area associated with aliens and outlandish conspiracy theories, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate the real stories of actual aircraft flying in and out of the base from the tales of ancient alien flying saucers. If you’re trying to piece together what is happening at the base, it’s impossible, because there is so much nonsense connected with it.
It’s a theory that also never ends, because if you came out as they guy who created this plan, you also sound crazy, because it involves Area 51. Since so many conspiracy theories are centered around Area 51, even anything real that happens there will be shrouded with doubt. Plus, if true, it means a lot of the people raging against the government are secretly a part of their dastardly plan.
-Devin Wilger
UFOs
Conspiracy theories are just so much fun.
By nature they are basically conjecture that for the most part can never be completely proven, and for that reason they are not easily disproven either.
The saddest of the popular theories is certainly easy. There are those who maintain the Holocaust of WWII was a hoax.
Six million Jews died, most tortured, starved and murdered, and the evidence is overwhelming. To deny that it happened is a disservice to decency and basic humanity.
Others are just scary, if there was a grain of truth to them; possible government involvement in the assignation of JFK, fore-knowledge of the 9/11 terrorist attack, coming to mind.
We increasingly do not trust government, or the shadowy intelligence bodies they spawn, so conspiracies are quick to take root. But if they were true, where would that leave us in terms of liberties, truth and democracy?
Perhaps the one I find most fun among popular conspiracy theories is the supposed cover-up of a crashed alien ship in New Mexico.
While I am a believer that somewhere out there among the stars other life exists, I am less sure that life has any greater capability to escape their particular mud ball than we are. So the likelihood of a crash is remote.
But if a true UFO crashed in 1947, so close on the heels of the Great War, and just as the Cold War was heating up, you bet the U.S. government would have buried the wreckage in a military silo and mind it for tech.
Wouldn’t that be a great mystery to reveal?
-Calvin Daniels
