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conspiracy madness

T

thethingishere

Gone But Not Forgotten
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May 7, 2009
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I have a friend who as started to read Alex Jones (A total gob shite) website he as become oppcessed with what is on the website last nite he was telling me how in america your mail box as either a blue spot or a red spot on them if your mail box has the blue spot you will be taken away and reprogrammed sometime in the future but if it is red well you are going to be killed. My friend has had people stop speaking to him because of him always going on about this site. is there any sites that i can point him to for a different view point.
 
thethingishere said:
...if your mail box has the blue spot you will be taken away and reprogrammed sometime in the future but if it is blue well you are going to be killed.
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So what happens if you have the red spot on your mail box?
 
Tell everyone to paint a yellow spot on the boxes, that should confuse the buggers. :D
 
I'd paint a blue spot on my paranoid friend's mailbox... :twisted:

(No, I don't have many friends, you're not surprised?)

I'm afraid once someone buys into the conspiracy, most attempts to dissuade them from it become part of the conspiracy...
 
Mythopoeika said:
thethingishere said:
...if your mail box has the blue spot you will be taken away and reprogrammed sometime in the future but if it is blue well you are going to be killed.
Click to expand...

So what happens if you have the red spot on your mail box?
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Sorry typing error changed it to red well you are going to be killed
 
It's funny. I'm largely skeptical about conspiracy theories (though I'm certain that conspiracies do happen - just that they're often a lot more mundane and make less of a good story than all the really crazy stuff). The thing is, a few of my friends really believe this stuff, and I always get halfway through the conversation before I realize that they're not joking and they really do believe that 9/11 was an inside job or x or y or z. I was talking to a guy the other day who was saying 'Richard Dawkins is Illuminati number 1'. After a while, I realized he meant it. I argue, but then come to doubt my own position and arguments, because for me it is clearly an ingrained article of faith that what the other person is saying is not true, and I'm not looking as deeply as I could be.
 
Timble2 said:
I'd paint a blue spot on my paranoid friend's mailbox... :twisted:

(No, I don't have many friends, you're not surprised?)

I'm afraid once someone buys into the conspiracy, most attempts to dissuade them from it become part of the conspiracy...
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I know when me and him talk he says that I am taken in by all the lies the main stream media are feeding us. When I asked him to check out a site that may interest him he told me that the whole site was all lies. the only differrence between that site and the Alex Jones site he reads was that this other site said Alex Jones was a goverment plant to dissive us. I know that now his father only talks to him when he is wants him to have his dinner because he is always going on about the conspiracy.
 
He sounds like he has mental health problems. Does he use /abuse drugs at all?
 
Have you asked to see the spot on his mailbox? What if, like me, you don't have a mailbox? The mailman comes to the door and pushes it through the slot on the side after getting the outgoing mail we've stuck in from our side.

I'm afraid if he's delusional and has latched onto this website as a focus of his delusion, but can't be made to see that he has a problem, he'll never be helpable. But it may not be a full-on psychiatric problem. Lots of unfalsifiable belief systems that people outside the system don't buy into don't reach the point of interfering with daily life. Functionally, this is like his being born again into one of the evangelical faiths - he's all excited about it, and worried that if he can't convince those he loves of the truth of his belief they're doomed to hellfire or endless transmigration as lower lifeforms or whatever. That can be gotten past.

Being separated from his family and friends by his belief system is a Bad Thing (unless, as sometimes happens, his family and friends needed to be shut out of his life; that's not the way to bet). Talk to him about it as a phemomenon separate from his belief set, making the conversation about you and not about him. "Look, I know you're excited about this and you think it's important, but I'm not seeing it and honestly the more you try to sell me on it the more my knee-jerk reaction is to reject it. Could we talk about something else for awhile, go do this thing we used to do, and forget about it for now? If you turn up something new and feel like you really need to tell me once in awhile, I'll try to give it a fair hearing, but it can't be all we talk about." That way, if things start to go badly wrong, he'll still have you for a lifeline and not be in the position of having lost all his easy options except going into full-on cult mode.
 
Mythopoeika said:
thethingishere said:
...if your mail box has the blue spot you will be taken away and reprogrammed sometime in the future but if it is blue well you are going to be killed.
Click to expand...

So what happens if you have the red spot on your mail box?
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Pay Alex Jones 10 dollars and he will tell you.
 
It might be worth taking twenty minutes or so to watch one of Jones' films. That's about all it takes (well, after skipping past the opening ten minutes of untestable hyperbole and hysteria) to debunk them. Make a note of any of the nonsensical claims that he or his army of self-supporting talking heads make (my favourite is in Terror Storm where Jones claims that the London transport bombings were carried out to boost Tony Blair's general election prospects despite the fact that the election actually took place more than two months prior to the bombings). Show any of your findings to your friend and point out that whilst Jones might not be lying (although his site regularly posts details it knows not to be true) he is clearly an ill-informed oaf who despite his claims of knowing the secret truth seems completely unaware of the non-secret truth that just about with a modicum of intelligence can see.

If that fails to convince him just manufacture the proof he wants and tell him you've been warned off talking to him because of his views.
 
I do find conspiracy theorising entertaining and i am sure that the grain of truth is contained within the mountain of shite but i also know people, generally sane and well adjusted who are becoming completly consumed by it. No matter how you try to disarm their arguments they always counter with: ' but thats what they want you to think'. part of the problem lies with the general poor esteem that our politicians find themselves in and this is in itself a cause for concern. I believe that the internet reflects the human condition quite accurately, the very good with the very bad but I feel that it is all too easy to slip into this paranoid worldview with its dangerous repercussions for mental health.
Is there an answer to the problem? probably not , love and look after your friends and loved ones and remind them to just turn the damn thing off once in a while.
 
i consider myself to be a conspiracy theorist but i can`t stomach Alex Jones. It takes too long for him to get to the point and once he does you wonder what all the fuss is about. The video he did on skull and bones made my blood boil when he ridiculed wiccans for protesting AGAINST bohemian grove, saying wiccans have double standards as they also dabble in the occult (i am wiccan and i can assure you, i do NOT dabble in the occult!)
My younger brother, on the other hand is a sceptic, apart from when it comes to Alex Jones. Whatever that man says, he buys. To the point where hes attempting to purchase a gas mask for the coming apocalypse!
 
PeniG said:
What if, like me, you don't have a mailbox? The mailman comes to the door and pushes it through the slot on the side after getting the outgoing mail we've stuck in from our side.
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Clearly, Peni, you're one of them in that case. It's obvious.

Not sure how the Powers That Be in the UK* intend to mark the populace for death, because we don't have mailboxes, generally, just brassy flaps in the front door. We call them letterboxes, just to confuse you, but there's usually no box there at all. In fact, now I think of it, why do we call them that? I smell a conspiracy...

*Most of them are too dim to be Illuminati, mind you. Gloominati, maybe.
 
I think its interesting that thousands of people are validating and encouraging each others mental illnesses online. Google gang stalking sometime. People are organzing protests to stop governments from beaming thoughts into their heads. These types of cranks just used to just write crazy letters to the editor, now thanks to technology they can communicate with each other.
I am no longer shocked when an otherwise normal person tells me they believe that 911 was an inside job, or theat FEMA is building concentration camps, or that HARRP is a mind control weapon, or contrails from planes cause cancer. People like David Icke sell thousands of books that claim the world is run by Lizards. It seems like crazy ideas are gaining popularity, and some folks like Mr Jones are profitting pretty well from preying on the borderline insane. My favourite kook selling a book is Cathy O'Brien who calims to be a victim of CIA mind control and says she was a white house sex slave.
 
My favourite kook selling a book is Cathy O'Brien who calims to be a victim of CIA mind control and says she was a white house sex slave.
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Hmmm, is she claiming that Bill Clinton was her Master?
 
I listened to Alex's show once or twice in the past...full of adverts for "berky boy water filters" and "MRE's". :D


Zoltar
 
I mean let's face it conspiracy or not. The world is run on the basis of greed and profits there's no secret about it. It just doesn't get reported in the main stream media.

The world is run as a business to maximise profit for western business interests which involves installing pro-western governments in mainly third world countries so that said countries' resources etc are for the benefit of the west and not the country where they originate.

To help this along Western Interests have dictators running those countries on their behalf and if a country wont play ball they get rid of said dictator and intsall a new one. either that or invade: Look at Saddam and Iraq. After all saddam was our good friend in the 80s when he was playing ball and being a sport.

Those countries which dont have a dictator and have a more socialist bent are usually invaded or coups are staged to install pro western governments: Vietnam, Indonesia, most of central America. And failing all that - as in the case of vietnam - if the west loses then they just use institutions like the WTO or the IMF to squeeze the life out of those countries with sanctions.

It's no secret that the british Government tried to block a case in the British High Courts made my workers in south and central america for human rights abuses by British companies operating over there and its no sectret (anymore) that the US clandestinely and 'illegally' bombed Vietnam for five years before actually invading them and that the 'communist' government in Vietnam had been democratically elected. And its no secret that Britain supported the Burmese Government and that British hotel companies were investing in hotels in Burma knowing they were being built by slave labour.

What really made me believe all this from first hand experience was when I was working for a company in London that put out podcasts and documentaries on the internet and sometimes TV on the basis of how business is good for the community. Which is, of course bollocks.

The company used to interview a lot of politicians and business leaders. One person they interviewed was (and maybe still is) the leader of the CBI - a notoriously 'pursuasive' business organisation which has had members in the british cabinet and maybe still does. Said leader of the CBI had also been the editor of a major national british newspaper (I mean obviously we have a free and impartial press which in know way reflects the interests of their rich owners and advertisors).

I was transcribing the interview he had done with the company. In the interview he said in the interview that if you go into the viewing gallery at the house of commons and close your eyes and listen to the politicians speak you cannot tell which person is from which party and then laughed and added that that was probably a good thing.

So a guy who is head of a leading business lobby with members in Government who was the editor of a leading 'free' national newspaper is saying its a good thing that there is no difference between the political parties. So i guess that says a lot about the state that democracy is really in. Presumably he meant that it was good for business, that you could not tell the difference between who was in what party, but still....

You could argue that people have the choice about who they vote for but I am hazzarding a guess they are just conned by the press into believing there is genuine political difference between the parties when clearly there is not?

Or maybe all those drugs I have consumed have just given me a mental illness and that's why I believe all this?
 
And just to bolster the opinion that we have a free press in this country that surely would not tell us blatant untruths or distort reality through the practice of what is called in the common parlance "censorship by ommission" ie. Distorting news coverage by what they choose to leave out rather than what they actually choose to print, I also remember the time a local advertising executive walked into the book shop I was working in asking if we wanted advertsing.

He stated quite matter of factly that the local radio station he was working for based most of their news stories around paid advertising. So any company who advertised on the station.... then the station would then broadcast news stories that somehow related to the product being sold so as better to manipulate or 'consumerise' listeners into being more likely to buy it and that such a practice was the norm throughout most of the media and was how the media in fact functioned.

Something I had always known about but couldn't actually prove because I had only read that that is how things were done and now here it was coming from the horses mouth, so to speak.

If any more proof is needed that most or faily large proportion of news is based around advertising to manipulate people into buying stuff, then just have a look at the msn.com home page, for example.

Maybe there is no conspiracy about it but nobody can claim that the reality we're sold through the media has any actual basis in 'reality'.

It could be no conspiracy exists but obviously its the way things work because without this advertising these news 'outlets' would probably not be able to survive
 
"If any more proof is needed that most or faily large proportion of news is based around advertising to manipulate people into buying stuff, then just have a look at the msn.com home page, for example."

You've put the cart before the horse, mate.

Online advertising is targeted at the story on the page. The story is not designed to fit the advert.

Google Ads is a prime example. It takes key-words from the page content and inserts related adverts.

Sometimes the results are quite ironic like the page reporting on police violence leading to the death of a man they thought was a protestor which contained an advert for police recruitment.
 
brother said:
Of course.
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Due to the nature of online posts I have no idea what your "Of course." is meant to imply.

Could you elucidate please?
 
of course...

if you say so.....

it was a way of 'dryly' disagreeing with you without getting into a continuing debate which I have neither the time or the inclination to get into as I feel I have made my point.

Which is that just because I believe what I have written above does not give me a mental illness because it is not what most people believe or what appears to be true about the world
 
brother said:
Which is that just because I believe what I have written above does not give me a mental illness because it is not what most people believe or what appears to be true about the world
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Oh, I don't know. I think a fair majority of people are well aware that rich corporations like to keep themselves rich and appear to have a company ethos of happily selling their grandmothers as soon as look at you. There's no doubt there's often corruption in both the business and political spheres. However, all that's a long way from some of the conspiracy theories that get an airing on this net we call inter ;)
 
yes, but what I have stated above, many people would consider it to be 'out there' and 'paranoid'.

And on some of the issues I touched there is only a fine line between them and some of the more 'out there' conspiracies. Usually with believers in both sides of the conspiracy theory coin accusing each other of being plants of the conspiracy :).
 
brother said:
of course...

if you say so.....

it was a way of 'dryly' disagreeing with you without getting into a continuing debate which I have neither the time or the inclination to get into as I feel I have made my point.

Which is that just because I believe what I have written above does not give me a mental illness because it is not what most people believe or what appears to be true about the world
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Okay.

You started the debate. At least I think you did. Or were you just making a statement of fact which you did not expect anyone to question?

I didn't at any point suggest you have a mental illness. Why did you bring that point up?
 
brother said:
Usually with believers in both sides of the conspiracy theory coin accusing each other of being plants of the conspiracy :).
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You only say that because you're clearly working for THEM! :D
 
danny_cogdon said:
I didn't at any point suggest you have a mental illness. Why did you bring that point up?
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Classic symptom of paranoid schizophrenia...


Sorry. ;)
 
Because, supposedly, there is actually only a fine line between the beliefs I expressed above and the more 'whacky' conspiracy theories.

So therefore by implication there is a fine line between being a well informed person on world affairs and having a mental illness :).

So where does that line exist and when does one cross over it if it does exist that is. i supsect that a lot of people who believe in whacky conspiracy theories know (quite righly in my opinion) that there is a huge discrepency between what we're told and what is actually happening.

but there are many people, I am sure who would consider me crazy for my opinion - even though there is eveidence to prove it and many main stream academics believe it - because my opinion is still so outside main stream norms. But because I believe i something outside of main stream norms it doesn't make me mad. Nor does it necessarily make people who believe in whacky conspiracy theories mad, just misinformed.

Thats not to say some of them arn't mad anyway though :)
 
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