The oddballs are multiplying – along with their ‘theories’

‘You f------ idiot!” I’ve got used to the odd expletive being hurled at my husband in the Waitrose cereal aisle or through a car window, but my heart did sink when, halfway through our allotted daily stroll on Sunday, a man blocked the pavement and began spewing abuse.

I’ll never understand what kind of person thinks it’s OK to use that language in front of a child. The man who chose a beautiful Sunday morning to unleash a string of swear words at a stranger was middle-aged, welldressed and – it quickly transpired – a conspiracy theorist. “Why don’t you use your TV show to tell the truth!” he raged, as I guided our eight-year-old across the road.

Intrigued, despite himself, my husband asked the man which “truth” he was referring to. “The nurses being sent to kill us in our hundreds every day! Why don’t you tell the truth about that?”

It’s a strange fact that conspiracy theories – devised to draw us in, titillate and entertain – can be such instant curiosity-killers. Neither one of us stuck around to find out which nefarious forces were instructing the NHS to kill us off, or, for that matter, why. But when I recounted the incident to friends and family, a surprising number came back with recent conspiracist run-ins of their own. “It’s the perfect climate of fear, powerlessness and a surplus of information,” explained one. “Hence the conspiracy theory boom.”

I have a low tolerance for conspiracists at the best of times, and have ended taxi rides early and left rooms to avoid being enlightened about Princess Diana’s death, told “the truth” in hushed tones about JK Rowling – she’s just an actress impersonating an author – and scoffed at for believing it was actually Emily Brontë who wrote Wuthering Heights (when “everybody knows” that it was her older brother, Branwell). Ever since the brilliant French actress Marion Cotillard queried the veracity of the 9/11 attacks, I have found it hard to watch her on screen. Right now, however, conspiracy theories aren’t just tiresome, but toxic.

How many of the despicable subhumans abusing and “egging”

You don’t need a shrink to tell you that conspiracy theories provide comfort

heroic NHS nurses in the street are doing so off the back of conspiracy theories like that man’s? How many Asian-looking Brits and foreigners who have been attacked or spat at in our streets for “deliberately” spreading what Trump so helpfully branded “the Chinese virus” were targeted because of the “biological warfare” narrative that has proved more infectious than its subject matter on social media?

Just as enraging is the inverse theory, explained to me in tones dripping with condescension by a “believer” last month, that Trump

himself ordered the virus to be concocted and spread… to make China look bad.

Then there are the mobile phone masts currently being set alight across the country, after nefarious links between coronavirus and the 5G network were whipped up on social media. These acts of vandalism have cut off critical connections to the emergency services, hospitals and the vulnerable and elderly, forcing both NHS directors and the Government over the weekend to beg Twitter users and gullible celebrities “to hammer this message home”. Even laying out the two key phone mast theories for you here – the first that 5G suppresses the immune system, and the second that the virus is somehow using the network’s radio waves to communicate and pick victims – makes my head loll forward onto my keyboard in despair.

When it was just a few oddballs with too much time on their hands, conspiracy theorists could be laughed off. But as we enter our third week in lockdown, almost all of us have too much time, and the oddballs – thanks to cabin fever and the Petri dish of social media – are multiplying along with their theories.

In today’s febrile climate, those theories are no longer benign bits of idiocy but more often incitements to violence and racism, which is itself made up of layers and layers of conspiracy theories. And I wonder how many of the foolish lockdown defiers throwing beach barbecues over the weekend had convinced themselves that this was all an “elaborate plot” hatched by Matt Hancock to curtail their civil liberties.

You don’t need a shrink to tell you that conspiracy theories provide comfort, convincing people as they do that everything has been organised by a particular, malevolent set of human beings, and not just random, messy, sad and uncontrollable life. But as I watched the Queen address the nation on Sunday night, I understood that her motherly assurances could be pared down to: “Stay serene; stay strong.” Because, as easy and tempting as it is to spiral out into irrationality and blame, now is the last moment to do so.