THE CONSPIRASPHERE
With the mainstream media printing celebrity-inflected stories on fringe topics, NOEL ROONEY wonders who is really driving the conspiracy agenda these days...
FLAT EARTH NEWS REPRISE
Recent (and frankly gleeful) reports in the media about the continuing growth of interest in Flat Earth theory have left me wondering if the Conspirasphere is still in control of its own destiny. The interest taken in conspiracy theories, and the whole panoply of alternative thinking (ancient mysteries, alternative health, parascience) has become such a staple of mainstream media that one could be forgiven for thinking that the spectators are driving the circus.
A classic example of this trend is a recent Economist blog exploring the statistical evidence of interest in Flat Earth theory. The chart displays a clear upward trend in online searches related to the subject; and there are peaks corresponding to public pronouncements by celebrities endorsing the theory. All well and good; then the blog proceeds to witter on about the implausibility of the theory, and juxtaposes this with hand-wringing (and flatly superficial) homilies about the threat posed by conspiratorial thinking to civilisation as we know it. This species of dire warning on the one hand, coupled with prurient ‘look at the funny earthlings’ fascination on the other, is a hallmark of media attitudes to the Conspirasphere; they provide us with cake and then tell us that cake is bad for us.
What the piece signally fails to note is that the peaks in interest actually correspond to media focus on celebrities; that’s to say, it’s not the fact that a famous rapper thinks the Earth is flat that has drawn people to the subject, but rather the fact that the media are telling us that the rapper thinks so. As statistical analysis goes, this is both worthless and meretricious; snake-oil poured on waters troubled largely by the salesperson. Occasionally a celebrity is manufactured for the purpose (like ‘Mad’ Mike Hughes, the steampunk rocket non-scientist who didn’t quite launch himself into space to see for himself if the globe was actually a disc) but the basic principle is consistent.
Add a liberal dose of weighing-in by scientist celebrities such as the largely wonderful (but sometimes irritatingly pompous) Neil de Grasse Tyson – his photoshopped Flat Earth lunar eclipse image was snidely comical, but didn’t actually touch on the beliefs of the Flat-Earthers – and the cake is nicely iced. Responses from more serious scientific bodies (such as NASA) were conspicuously absent, perhaps indicating that at least some are aware that the Flat Earth thing is not really much of a thing.
There are people in the Conspirasphere who think that the whole farrago around (across?) the Flat Earth is in fact a conspiracy; a patently daft theory has been resurrected and promoted by Them to make conspiracy theorists and alternative thinkers look silly. The quantity (and largely abject quality) of media pieces on the subject makes this particular conspiracy theory look entirely plausible. Ultimately, however, it’s the media that look silliest; the journalists who have written about Flat Earth theory far outnumber those few brave souls who attended the first Flat Earth Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, in early November. It’s perhaps one of those rare instances where the strangest thing about the whole affair is that the lunatics are not running the asylum.
www.economist.com/blogs/ graphicdetail/2017/11/daily-chart-21; www. theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/22/ self-taught-rocket-scientist-plans-launch-totest-flat-earth-theory;www.breakingnews. ie/world/neil-degrasse-tyson-trolls-flatearthers-with-one-brilliant-tweet-816094. html; news.vice.com/story/people-fromaround-the-globe-met-for-the-first-flatearth-conference; www.henrymakow. com/2016/02/Flat-Earth-Psyop.html