I said the same thing about Flat Earthers until I sat and had a conversation with one.

There are people who will believe anything if it’s spoken with enough confidence or fits their world view. Doesn’t matter how crazy it might sound to you or I, it sounds real enough to them.

Sometimes it’s simply undiagnosed mental illness, someone legitimately disassociated from the world who, for whatever reason, can’t get help.

Used to be a dude who hung around the DC Metro stations, talking about how white bread was filled with chemicals designed to poison black people. He could go for hours how it was designed to keep ghettos poor and stupid, but was good for white kids, so they got away with it.

He seemed to genuinely believe it, or was one hell of an actor with the passion he’d put into it.

“Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they’re in good company.”

Every time we have a nice memey community about something outrageous, like “lol flat earth is real” at least half take it seriously and make a new religion out of it.

Every dumb thing in the last decade that took off started as a LARP about being dumb.

I don’t buy it. I would love to hear some real life examples. Birds aren’t real lampoons conspiracy theory culture.