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What events generate conspiracy theories?

kevin

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Why do some events generate conspiracy theories, but others don't?

Why conspiracy theories about JFK, Lincoln, 9/11, etc... but not for Oklahoma City, Unabomber, James Garfield, shuttle disasters?
 
kevin said:
Why do some events generate conspiracy theories, but others don't?

Why conspiracy theories about JFK, Lincoln, 9/11, etc... but not for Oklahoma City, Unabomber, James Garfield, shuttle disasters?
Click to expand...
Oklahoma City: conspiracy theories abound, but they're boring.

Unabomber: can't out-manifesto him.

Garfield: No one knew him when he was elected, no one cared when he died a few months later. Anyway, the term "conspiracy theory" hadn't been invented yet, nor had "moonbat lunkhead" or "playa hater."

Shuttle disasters: because Morton Thiokol spikes our drinking water.
 
Actually, there are shuttle disaster CTs out there. I also wouldn't be surprised if the Unibomber had a CT too. However, I think CTs weren't fashionable in Garfield's era. Anyway, I'm sure there are people who will believe anything, given half a chance.
 
bob_kark said:
Actually, there are shuttle disaster CTs out there. I also wouldn't be surprised if the Unibomber had a CT too. However, I think CTs weren't fashionable in Garfield's era. Anyway, I'm sure there are people who will believe anything, given half a chance.
Click to expand...

And if you don't give them half a chance, they'll make up something to believe :)
 
Ok, granted there is a nut job for every event (there is probably a CT about my birth) but some really seem to take off.

Emotional impact might play part in it. Living in the midwest I knew a lot of people with contacts to Oklahoma City and there the true story was close enough to a conspirarcy theory already that perhaps that was good enough. And they caught and more importantly tried the guy.

New York City has way more ties to people (I had 2 brothers living in the city at the time, putting me closer to that disaster than OKC). They've never really got anyone directly accountable for it (no sense of justice plays a roll maybe? I dunno that seems giving these nutballs more credit than they really deserve.)

Same for JFK and Licoln, ties to lots of people, murderer never really caught and punished "properly", etc....

Shuttle disasters were already the fault of science and gov't incompetency so maybe the CTers couldn't top it?
 
There is a shuttle conspiracy theory and it is actually linked to the World Trade Center conspicacy. The Russians shot down Challenger with some kind of electromagnetic missile:

http://www.cheniere.org/books/analysis/history.htm#Challenger

Apparently, this technology was invovled with pretty much every disaster in the 20th century. I didn't find the World Trade Center attacks in this webpage but I couldn't stand to look at it for more than a few minutes. I did notice something about quaternions, and I know the space shuttle and many other space vehicles use quaternions in their navigation algorithms instead of the simpler X-Y-Z rotations. Don't let this maniac fool you with his big, fancy words!
 
kevin said:
Why do some events generate conspiracy theories, but others don't?

Why conspiracy theories about JFK, Lincoln, 9/11, etc... but not for Oklahoma City, Unabomber, James Garfield, shuttle disasters?
Click to expand...
only events which are the results if conspiracies generate conspiracy theories, its obvious, we've just all been educated stupid.
;)
 
bob_kark said:
Brodski's conspiring to educate us!!
Click to expand...
yeah, educate you, pinch your socks, blow up bildings- anythign just as long as it's a CONSPIRACY :p


( BTW "educated stupid" is a favorite phrase of this nutter- LINK NSFW crazy anti-Semitism ahead http://www.timecube.com/ I think he posted here for a while, TimeCube guy has all kinds of crazy, he is the Uber-woo)
 
now with the internet forums, webpages and such, almost anything can become a CT. the biggest ones typically seem to be over the biggest events. like here in the US, last year hurricane katrina was probbaly the biggest news and there were lots of CTs, including that the gov't actually blew up the levees to do something (i'm not sure what, destroy the low income housing to displace minorities or some such thing) and it just seems like "information" can travel so fast and it lands in forums or webpages where no one is really allowed to challenge it and what used to be really limited to very few people gets traction with larger crowds cause everyone is hooked up to email and they get these links that are easy to follow to see all this information that appears so well researched and organized
 
I suspect that conspiracy theories flourish where people feel powerless. That is, where the wrongdoer(s) cannot be brought to justice either because they cannot be found and caught or because they died doing what they did. Subconsciously, many people want to blame somebody for what happened, and blaming a dead guy just doesn't get their rocks off. As it were.
 
I think the events that are the most significant, the ones that actually change things irrevocably for humankind. Some people just can't deal with it.

The moon landing: some people can't believe humankind can be so great.
9/11: Some people can't handle the fact humans are capable of such madness.
 
No single factor but:

The size of the event

How well it fits with people's expected narative of world events

How complex and complete the true explantion is

these will decide whether a CT gets from stage zero (one guy with a website) to stage one (accepted by CT community and a few others)

The next stage mostly boils down to level of media exposure. Anyone who has herd The words fox and moonhoax close together will confirm this.
 
An excellent question.

I think some of the replies are missing something. A good theory should address:

Why do Princess Di car crash CTs become popular while JFK, jr airplane crash CTs do not?
Why do Kennedy-being-shot CTs become popular while Reagan-being-shot CTs do not?
Why does the face on Mars CT become popular while space shuttle disaster CTs do not?
What gave the Clinton-killed-Vince-Foster CT so much popularity?
 
kevin said:
Why do some events generate conspiracy theories, but others don't?

Why conspiracy theories about JFK, Lincoln, 9/11, etc... but not for Oklahoma City, Unabomber, James Garfield, shuttle disasters?
Click to expand...
Cognitive power dissonance.

People (mainly Americans) can't believe that the Folks In Charge can be so inept as to let something really bad happen, or to let something good stop happening.

Consider:
- There are Lincoln and JFK conspiracy theories because the government couldn't possibly let a President get shot.
- There's a 9/11 CT because the government couldn't possibly let two airplanes get hijacked and flown long enough to crash into skyscrapers, and even if they did, the government couldn't possibly let skyscrapers be built that would fall down if airplanes flew into them.
- There's a second 9/11 CT because the government couldn't possibly let a plane fly into the Pentagon.
- There's a moon landing CT because the government couldn't possibly just stop manned space travel to the Moon. (There weren't any moon landing CTs during the time of the Apollo missions, were there?)

Once you take the near-omnipotence and near-omniscience of the government as a given, the only way to reconcile events that can only be "easily" explained by government ineptitude is to come up with a "difficult" explanation. The government can't be that stupid; therefore, the government was smart enough to be controlling it from the start.

This only works for big screw-ups. There's a threshhold, or a level of humanity, that has to be crossed before a CT is even slightly plausible. That's why Oklahoma City and the shuttles didn't get CTs. They were believable oversights or mistakes.
 
Ladewig said:
An excellent question.

I think some of the replies are missing something. A good theory should address:

Why do Princess Di car crash CTs become popular while JFK, jr airplane crash CTs do not?
Why do Kennedy-being-shot CTs become popular while Reagan-being-shot CTs do not?
Click to expand...

Event size.

Why does the face on Mars CT become popular while space shuttle disaster CTs do not?
Click to expand...

People's expected narative of world events accePts space travel is dangerious. People do not expect faces on mars.

What gave the Clinton-killed-Vince-Foster CT so much popularity?
Click to expand...

Political tribalism in the US. And it wasn't that popular.
 
gfunkusarelius said:
... including that the gov't actually blew up the levees to do something (i'm not sure what, destroy the low income housing to displace minorities or some such thing)
Click to expand...

Sure. They wanted to clear them out so they could build expensive homes for rich people.....in a flood plain!!!:eek: :D

Steve S.
 
Beleth said:
Cognitive power dissonance.

People (mainly Americans) can't believe that the Folks In Charge can be so inept as to let something really bad happen,
Click to expand...

But in the movies, the government agent always manages to diffuse the bomb with just seconds to spare.

Steve S.
 
Ladewig said:
Why do Princess Di car crash CTs become popular while JFK, jr airplane crash CTs do not?
Why do Kennedy-being-shot CTs become popular while Reagan-being-shot CTs do not?
Why does the face on Mars CT become popular while space shuttle disaster CTs do not?
What gave the Clinton-killed-Vince-Foster CT so much popularity?
Click to expand...

A lot of these, imo, have no one thing or person to point at and say justice was served, plus emotional connection to the event.

Princess Di - blamed on paprizzi but not really an individual. Super high emotional connection.
JFK, jr - crashed his own plane. I have a feeling the lack of CT on this may be due the fact that he wasn't THAT famous. There is a difference between beening President JFK and magazine publisher JFK, Jr (also would account for the fewer CT's around RFK). Not as much emotional connection.

Kennedy - died, higher emotional connection because of that. Person did the shooting shot too. Ratchet up the injustice factor.
Regan - lived, shot by a nut who went to jail. Got me out of school for a day, made me happy. Jodi Foster probably has more CT's about this than Regan.

Face on mars, not sure on this one. ties into aliens and moon hoax stuff but I'm just not seeing my theory explain it.

Shuttle disasters => astronauts do dangerous things, so emotional connection is low, and simple explanations (o-ring, foam).

The Vince Foster thing makes me consider another angle. Why did the Foster CT not stick around. I think mainly because it was aimed at hatred of Clinton. Perhaps high emotional connection has to be a particular type. Not love but obsession? Hatred isn't enough to maintain a CT.

Holocaust deniers don't deny the holocaust simply because they hate jews, but because they're obsessed/love Hitler (and therefore hate jews because of that.)

Alien theories are because they're obsessed with the alien idea.

Does the CT come first or the obsession. I think after the initial event those already obsessed with the event build CT's and later believers may become obsessed because of the CT's?
 
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