Any Conspiracy-Busters here?

[Axxman300]

I have two questions to the veterans who’ve been doing this since the beginning. 1. Why did it take until 2005/2006 for 9/11 Conspiracy Theories to start spreading rapidly on the internet, instead of let’s say... right after 9/11. 2.

The theories began on 9/12/2001 but they were "Spaghetti Against the Wall" and mostly spread on AOL chatrooms.

2005 saw the launch of Youtube and Facebook which answers the bulk of this question. By 2005/2006 it had become clear we (the US) weren't going to be riding out of Afghanistan or Iraq like we had in Desert Storm, and had somehow managed to jump into two Vietnam-type scenarios. This fed the crazies who think everything is under control into the wilds of the internet looking to explain this colossal lack of judgement by the Bush Administration and the US Military. Idea that Bush was not too bright, and his NSC had a childish view of America and how to"spread liberty" was not a satisfactory answer for the Truthers (because it was the truth).

Why did it only take until about three years ago for 9/11 theories to almost completely die off. Most of us assumed they’d fade away after Loose Change stopped being popular in 2006. Nope they kept spreading online. We thought Bush leaving office would be their demise. Nope, they kept spreading in 2009 and the years that followed. We hoped the death of OBL in 2011 and the 10th anniversary of 9/11 would cause the theories to fade away. Nope, they were still popular online. The 15th anniversary? Still around. Yet the years 2017/2018 showed a rapid decline in support for the theories, as evidenced even here in this sub-forum, where 9/11 CT threads declined to only once a month or less.

A&E Truth began in 2007, and by 2008 9-11 Truth was a money-maker. 2008 saw the NIST release their WTC7 report which now had a paid opposition to deride it. After 2012 we saw the Johhny Comelatleys spewing long debunked claimed. These people were mostly looking for a fight on the internet.

The thing most people now realize is between Wikileaks with Manning and Snowden's info-dumps that it is impossible to keep secrets, and the idea that 2000 to 3000 people could keep a secret about the murder of 3000 Americans secret is a pathetic joke.

 

[beachnut]

The Internet helped spread the woo - and the Internet helped spread debunking the idiotic lies and BS that 9/11 truth nuts quote mined and cherry picked to make up the lies.

Flashback Friday?


rise of social media... https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media

Wonder if this "skeptic" has figured out he was spewing woo after all these years.

I could copy and paste the whole thing, but I think you might find this version easier to read:

...

One of the first Gish Gallops from way back when...

 

[bknight]

The Internet helped spread the woo - and the Internet helped spread debunking the idiotic lies and BS that 9/11 truth nuts quote mined and cherry picked to make up the lies.

Flashback Friday?


rise of social media... https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media

Wonder if this "skeptic" has figured out he was spewing woo after all these years.


One of the first Gish Gallops from way back when...

There were/are CTs about many subjects and the list is too long to copy here, but YT carries the burden in most of them. It offers a place for nuts to produce a "slick" film that does cherry picking, making statements that aren't true and provide no scientific justification for the CTs. I didn't get involved until after 2012 when I started banging on them in YT. That didn't go over well because it seemed like most of the people who watched and made comments CTs themselves. I then joined a few sites that had a much better platform to address the CTs and their beliefs.

 

[The Common Potato]

All you need is a good set of coordinates, I guess. No one's asking these guys to do loops. Of course, I had heard that their initial target was the white house, but I've since read that this might not be true. Still, "poor" is a relative term.

Personally, I'd use a bit flight simming flight planning software. https://www.dropbox.com/s/grgmb4q3401brb2/Screenshot 2023-06-03 014116.png?dl=0