Having spent a large portion of my life debating both formally and informally, Internet discussion forums and comment sections can be a bit of a trap. It’s easy for me to fall into a discussion with Internet trolls and rapidly debate myself to frustration.
While the Internet is full of trolls (and that is the proper term, trolls), it is rather unsettling when you realize how many people out there are not just trolls, but in actuality are true tin-hat crazies. Tin hat? Yes, tin hat. As in people who use folded tinfoil to protect their brains from all the weird radiation emanating from aliens or other controlling influences.
Like the annual M&M Christmas TV commercial, where Santa and the M&Ms meet each other and promptly faint, I had a similar realization with the tin hat crowd the other day. “They do exist!”
I don’t even remember what the discussion was about the other day, but it ended up with someone talking about how the mainstream media brainwashes us, instructing us what to think. In exasperation, I finally typed, “I AM THE MEDIA!”
I had finally asked the person who I was debating with if they truly thought that September 11 was an inside job, and that the World Trade Centre was rigged to blow. “Of course it was,” was their response. They promptly directed me to several webpages explaining how all this happened.
They went on and on about how the government tells us what to think.
I noted that after seven years of being a reporter and six as newspaper editor, 22 years of writing opinion columns, you would think that at some point, someone, anyone, would’ve told me what I was supposed to write to take part in this supposed brainwash conspiracy. Surely someone, somewhere, would have told me how I am supposed to influence everyone to the proper way of thinking. Some apparatchik of some illuminati would have in some manner influenced me in my writing so that I in turn can influence you, the public, to think the official way we are all supposed to think.
And yet as I sit here talking to my computer, there is no one telling me what to say. No one is telling me what to think. How can this be?
The question here is how on Earth do people become so truly, utterly idiotic and unreasonable in their thinking? How is it that in the 13 years after 9/11, conspiracy theorists have risen to such an extent that its accepted way of thinking? Did they not see this happen with their own eyes on live television?
I see more and more of this sort of thinking every day. You see it on the discussion boards on CBC. You see it in almost every comment section of anything that’s out there. If there is a debate to be had, there’s a tinfoil crazy ready to spout off.
Is it too much television? Too many movies? Have people become so gullible they truly cannot believe that reality is, in fact, reality? Have we become so escapist that we can no longer discern what is in fact a reasonable explanation, what is fantasy?
Apparently not.
If there was some sort of grand conspiracy, why haven’t I received a call yet? I know I wasn’t a cool kid in high school, but do I have to get left out of everything? I want to be part of conspiracy, too. At least that way I wouldn’t have to struggle with coming up with an idea prior to my deadline each week. Someone would have already told me what to write.
Hasn’t happened yet.
But then again, that’s what THEY would want you to believe …
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
