On Conspiracy Theories and Contagion

Once you go down the rabbit hole, good luck clawing your way out.

I was not a conspiracy theorist before COVID. Way back in the twenty-teens, I’d have sworn under oath that I believed FDA approval was a bulletproof stamp of safety, Alex Jones was a delusional lunatic, and 9/11 was an unexpected attack on our country by a malicious Islamic extremist group. And even though a “deadly virus” seems wildly unrelated to, for example, the shape of the spinning landmass we inhabit or a convicted sex offender’s alleged suicide, conspiracy theories appear to be in a way contagious.

I call it The Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome.

In case you’ve forgotten the fable, here’s a quick recap: Tasked with watching over a flock of do-nothing sheep, a boy grows weary of this insanely boring chore and decides to make a little mischief.

“Help! Come quick! A wolf is attacking the sheep!” he shouts. In a flash, the entire village comes running, ready to open a collective can of whoop-ass on the nonexistent wolf.  

“Psyche!” the kid cries when they arrive, proud that he’s pulled off his little hoax. The breathless villagers are plenty peeved, but the boy doesn’t care. It’s the highlight of his day, and he’s drunk on power. (“I shout, they run. This is amazing!”) So naturally, he does it again. And again. And possibly again. It’s like live TikTok on a loop and in the kid’s defense, he probably wouldn’t be bothering with silly pranks if his parents had gotten him that iPhone he’d been begging for.  

And then.

“Help! Come quick! A wolf is attacking the sheep for real this time, you guys!”

Crickets.

“I mean it! It’s a wolf! A big one with razor-sharp teeth and oh my God he’s got Roquefort by the neck! Hurry! Please! Somebody! ANYBODY! Helllllllllllllllllp!”

The boy hollers until he’s hoarse, but nobody comes, and that wolf proceeds to unleash some Quentin Tarantino-level carnage on the flock. The moral of the story, of course, is that nobody believes a liar, even when he is telling the truth.

In an interview with Alex Stein on Blaze Media, Tucker Carlson perfectly summed up my own feelings about conspiracy theories. “I’m open to anything,” Carlson admitted when asked if the earth was round. “How could I not be open to anything at this point? There’s been so much deception that you can’t trust your preconceptions. Once you understand the most basic stories we’ve been told about history, about the physical earth itself… then it’s like, I don’t know. What is true?”

Like many, I credit COVID with waking up my sleeping suspicions. “If they’re lying about this,” I mused (and from the plandemic’s very beginning, I had no doubt they were lying about this), “how many other steaming horseshit sandwiches have I been fed?”

Nearly four years later, I have come to the following conclusion: A LOT.  

I’m not saying I take every outlandish claim I hear as fact.
But I don’t automatically discount something simply for sounding “too farfetched” anymore, either.

“How do you not believe in any conspiracy theories?” comedian Ron Funches asked. “I understand not all of them, not most of them, but you don’t believe in any conspiracy theories? You just think the government’s batting 1,000 and telling us the whole truth?”

A beat. “That’s a strong stance to take.”

Funches’ punchline is priceless: “I don’t like talking about politics on stage or offstage because I don’t like talking about things I don’t feel like I’m truly knowledgeable in, but I do know this: A government is placed in charge of all its people. I’m a father who’s been placed in charge of just one son. And I lie to that [kid] all the time.”

On that note, I thought it might be fun to round up a list of supposed urban myths and share my take on them and then ask you, my amazing and always opinionated readers, to share yours. (If you recall, I had a super dysfunctional childhood, so no worries if opening yourself up to brutal mockery isn’t your idea of a good time.)

Here goes nothing:

COVID-19: Coordinated global depopulation campaign.

9/11: Inside job.

The Clintons: May have killed more people than cigarettes and Stalin combined.   

Kennedy assassination: Inside job.

Moon landing: The fluttering flag. The spurious footprints. The tapes that got erased. (I included in one of my earlier books the story of a woman whose husband accidentally taped Dead Man’s Channel over their wedding video so, you know, it happens.) “Of course we went there, but it was fifty years ago and we lost the technology to go back.” Goddammit Frank, what do you MEAN you can’t find the get-to-the-moon technology? Did you look over by the mimeograph machine? What about under the time clock? (Seriously though. It’s complex science-y stuff. You wouldn’t understand it.) And sadly, little old NASA just can’t find the budget to rebuild it. (Maybe they could check under Zelenskyy’s pillow?) My take: It’s sus at best. Prove me wrong.

quote credit: RHCP

Pizzagate: 100000% a thing.

Obama: Not born in Hawaii. Also super into dudes.

Big Mike: I mean. Do I need to say it?

Chemtrails: 100% a thing.

Joe Biden: Actor in a bad mask.

Climate change: Pure BS designed to usher in social credit scores, carbon credits, electric vehicles, 15 minute cities, bug burgers, and complete and endless control.

The New World Order: 100% a thing.

Vaccination: Useless at best and deadly at worst. All of them.   

Maui “wildfire:” Direct energy weapons (DEWs) attack.

Weather manipulation: 100% a thing.

Pro sports: Probably at least somewhat scripted. [My husband may in fact leave me over this one, but I said what I said.]

Damar Hamlin: RIP.

Epstein: Zero percent chance he committed suicide.

Shape of the earth: Undecided. *Typed with sincere apologies to my fellow foil-hatter and dear friend Mark, a brilliant pilot, who gets all fired up when I send him flat-earth stuff (which naturally I forward to him constantly because I’m a card-carrying bear-poker). But seriously, it makes sense that the illuminati would want to hide vast stretches of resource-rich land from us, right?

Tiffany Dover: RIP.

Aliens and UFOs: Previously pretty sure they existed; now that the government is insisting they do, I’m leaning toward PSYOP.

Shape-shifting lizard people: This one requires the most mental gymnastics for me but if it turns out to be true, I won’t be shook.

Did I miss anything? Let me know how you feel about these “conspiracies”
and any other fun rabbit holes you’ve gone spelunking in.

The War on Ivermectin makes a memorable holiday gift
and is available on Amazon and anywhere else kickass books are sold.