What Drives Conspiracy Theorists?
Brain Dump- Trying to understand the emotional drivers of conspiracy theorists
People Can be Shit.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or distancing yourself from social media, you would have noticed an online trend where every single time a middle-aged celebrity passes away, people immediately jump online to claim the death was caused by a covid vaccine.
Usually, they do so right away before a genuine cause of death can be released. This is most likely to reduce the likelihood of them being proven wrong or fact-checked.
You don’t have to look too deep into Twitter to find it.
When Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins died in March last year at age 50, the anti-vax brigade immediately took to Twitter to claim the covid vaccine caused his death.
Taylor had a known history of heroin addiction. He had spent the best part of the last 30 years travelling the world, playing shows in and out of all different time zones. Playing shows until all hours of the night, then flying to the next city to play another the next night. Fucking with your circadian rhythms year after year like that is very unhealthy. You only have to listen to recent podcasts on sleep by Andrew Huberman to understand how crucial sleep is to maintaining good health.
In more recent years, the Foo Fighters were known for playing as long as three hours per show and being the drummer is arguably the most physically taxing role someone can play in a band.
It was reported that Taylor used medications to help him sleep at times due to the demands of the lifestyle he led. At the time of his passing, several drugs were reported to be in Hawkin’s system.
Despite all of this, these people still came out of the woodwork to speculate on his cause of death and claim it was or could have been the vaccine, even though no official information was available.
It happened again just this week when celebrity chef Jock Zinfrillo passed away in his Melbourne hotel room at age 46.
Jock had a history of anxiety issues and heroin addiction. There were reports that Jock had been treated for bowel cancer before going into remission in 2016, only for the cancer to emerge in May of 2021. An unnamed source was quoted as saying he “wasn’t coping well” but didn’t want to tell anyone about the cancer because he didn't want to be treated any differently.
Some articles even had the token “If you are struggling, please reach out to Lifeline”, which is usually how media outlets let you know someone has died by suicide without actually saying it because they’re not allowed to until it is confirmed.
The moment it was announced by police that Jock had died suddenly and there were no suspicious circumstances, the anti-vax brigade jumped straight out and began to speculate about why another middle-aged celebrity had died suddenly.
Another case where there are so many possibilities, yet these people online come out suggesting it had something to do with the vaccine.
But Why do They do it?
This isn’t about bashing people who chose not to get the vaccine. That’s your prerogative. I am struggling with understanding the emotional driver for people like this.
Why are you so happy to publicly display their complete lack of compassion to push their agenda? If they don’t want to get the vaccine, just don’t get it. Maybe I’m a sheep or a conformist, but I got vaccinated so that we could hit the government-mandated targets. We had to have lockdown restrictions lifted and return to a normal way of life as soon as possible. When I caught COVID, I was bloody glad I got vaccinated because it was horrible, and I don’t want to know how bad it would have been had I not had that protection.
I understand rebellion against conformity, particularly for the pressed, but I don’t believe this demographic of people is particularly oppressed or more so oppressed than any other demographic.
I understand that sometimes people who feel like they don’t fit in find niche communities of people to associate with purely because they are seeking a sense of family and/or belonging. I think this is often how people become indoctrinated by religious extremism. They want to belong to something and to believe in something greater than themselves. They crave security in believing they are serving a greater purpose or the justification of what they are doing is right and good.
Still, I’m struggling to understand the desire to spread fear into the world, particularly when it’s not backed by any concrete scientific evidence, especially off the back of such a tragic loss of human life. A celebrity dying is no more tragic than an every day dying, but it affects more people. They see this as an opportunity to jump online and include keywords in their message that they know will be searched by people looking for more information on said celebrities death in the hope of their message gaining more exposure.
They show no compassion. These people have families. Families who are often as shocked as the rest of us after hearing of these sudden deaths. They have children, partners, parents and the rest who simply don’t need to be seeing this shit.
Why do they do it? What do they want? I feel like these small but loud minorities enjoy being minorities. Maybe they just want to feel different and edgy? Maybe they get a little dopamine hit when someone likes or retweets their tweet. Have they become so angry that the governments of the world are pushing them to get something to protect them from one-in-100-year influenza that they feel they have to push back?
Or are they just miserable within themselves and want everyone else to be as miserable as them? Almost like, “If I can’t be happy, then you can’t be happy either.”
Does making abhorrent and vile online claims that could upset countless amounts of people, yet also get them a small, online bum pat, make them feel justified in what they’ve done? Or are they that deluded that they genuinely think they are doing the world a favour by spreading their message, albeit sometimes only hours after someone’s passing?
I’m only having a stab in the dark here, and I’m hoping to open the floor and see what other people believe because I am not a psychologist’s arsehole, but the only thing I can think of is fear.
These people don’t want to get the vaccine for whatever reason, and that’s fine. I think deep down, they’re not entirely comfortable with that decision, though that is why they feel the need to go online searching for vindication. Whenever someone agrees with them, they feel a little less insecure about their viewpoint and gain temporary comfort.
As I said, I’m only speculating and purely using the anti-vax rhetoric because it’s an easy example. It happens all over the place. Religious, cultural, racial and social groups all do the same.
My belief is that people are that it all stems from fear. The thing people fear the most is what they don’t understand. When you don’t understand something, it’s easier to discredit it than to educate yourself about it. When something requires a little bit of effort to educate yourself about, it’s much easier to simply not acknowledge the potential benefits of something and at least give it the time of day.
Or maybe they’re just afraid of needles.
I’d love to know what you guys think.
RIP Jock Zonfrillo
Cheers Wankers.
X.
Bogues Tonnes Up
Each week I will chuck a bit about my journey to my first 100k run at the Sri Chinmoy Canberra Trail 100k for anyone who gives a shit.
Last week I ran a marathon on Sunday morning, fuelled by pure rage due to my failing at The Canberra Marathon the week before.
I don’t want to be running those distances every week. Maybe every fortnight, I’ll try for a longer, long run. So this week, I just went out for a slow three hour with plenty of hills to work on elevation. It was cold and rainy, perfect weather for a long run
!
I’ve wanted to do a 100k for a while now, but I also want to raise as much money as possible for Beyond Blue. A fantastic charity that does brilliant work in the mental health space.
If you want to help out and help keep me accountable for this fucking ridiculous goal, CLICK HERE to make a 100% tax-deductible donation.
Every cent counts, and you’ll be comfortable knowing it’s going to a reputable organisation who do fantastic work.
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