Is There a Conspiracy Economy?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Social media driven economy is really shaping the way conspiracy theories look. People want to be influencers as well, so i think there it's a business motive. You make a lot of money if you have a popular account. And you also get that dopemined of new followers and people looking up to you. So i think there is a very pervert incentive for people to get in these spats write people, to assert their dominance over this other channel or to build alliances with a channel. I think that's a hugely motivating factor within this ecosystem of people putting out their beliefs and feding.

Since 2015, there has been a spectacular boom in a nearly 200-year-old delusion — the idea that we all live on a flat plane, under a solid dome, ringed by an impossible wall of ice. It is the ultimate in conspiracy theories, a wholesale rejection of everything we know to be true about the world in which we live. Where did this idea come from

Michael Shermer speaks with journalist Kelly Weill whose work covers extremism, disinformation, and online conspiracy theories in current affairs. The conversation is based on her book Off the Edgewhich tells a powerful story about belief, polarized realities, and what needs to happen so that we might all return to the same spinning globe.

Shermer and Weill discuss: the binary/black-and-white thinking of conspiracy theorists; how Flat-Earthism is ultimately a conspiracy theory about how NASA and the government are covering up the biggest secret in history; how Flat-Earthism is a proxy for other conspiracy theories (i.e., 9/11 truth, QAnon, and anti-Semitic beliefs about nefarious Jewish organizations conspiring to achieve world domination); and the role of social media in propagating conspiracy theories.