What is it with men and conspiracy theories 🙄

[Titicacacandle]

Online dating and it seems the only men I seem to be attracted to seem to have so many issues that come up after a few chats!

Latest one, and not uncommon by a long shot, has told me that he doesn't pay his water bill because water is free from the sky and the water companies are poisoning us (but doesn't have a distiller so drinks out of plastic bottles and that can cause cancer if all your drinks are from plastic), doesn't pay council tax, doesn't work because he's awake and it's part of the matrix, 5g is going to fuck us all up and our cows are now being injected by another Bill Gates vaccine. I asked him what he did with his day if he doesn't work and he spends his days researching on what is going wrong in the world in the fight against good and evil.. oh and the huge American pedophile rings and social workers trafficking kids. I am a bloody SW, no we don't want your kids, caseloads are overwhelmed enough as it is thanks.

I just think it's sad that his life has become this. I told him we aren't compatible as we don't believe in the same stuff. I feel bad for him and did like the look of him but these conspiracy theories are mental illness. It's almost like they are the new religion with the fevered zelous that the newly converts preach.. even when you tell them you're not interested in conspiracy theories they still bang them down your throat!

I agree with @Bananas1350 - I think people find an odd comfort in seeing patterns where it's actually just chaos where in fact no one knows what the fuck is going on.

Also, for men especially, I think a lot of conspiracy theorists are people who feel powerless but spending a lot of time on these conspiracies makes them feel smart and special: 'You're all dumb sheep, but I know The Truth because I spend all this time on it making these connections because I'm so smart'.

Doesn't work
Doesn't drive
Doesn't pay his bills
But "has a lot of offer"

What a guy eh!

Spot on

So frustrating OP. Your example sounds pretty extreme but there are so many men engaged in conspiracy theories. My own DH started doubting the moon landing and that led him all sorts of crap. Also just a hatred for all mainstream media and following random people on the Internet.

I actually work in a job connected to government and the disorganisation, chaos and incompetence all v much apparent. They can barely all turn up to a zoom call on time- let alone create shady global agreements that would require thousands of people to work together and keep it secret.

I agree with this.

The most interesting man I know is highly intelligent, educated to a very high degree. Knows the ins and outs of world politics dating back to pre WW1, has an in depth knowledge of military history, studied anthropology at masters level.

He has been talking about certain issues since they were considered bonkers conspiracy theories (like MK Ultra, organ harvesting, Epstein Island). He currently talks about issues that have been mentioned in this thread as paranoid.

His take is that it’s about questioning what we’re told, being curious about the world around us, about the people in power, about what the media tells us and what they don’t.

Some people cannot filter out the obvious bullshit, and inevitably are relegated to paranoid status, and are largely harmless, if boring.
His opinion is that the most dangerous people are those who don’t question anything, who blindly believe what they’re told, who are so closed minded and unquestioning that they’ll go along with anything (his best current example of this is the mainstream acceptance of transitioning children - one day this will be a huge scandal).

It’s pure escapism for many men. A way to avoid emotional thinking and adult responsibilities.

In some cases it is quite worrying. I know a couple in their 60’s who have convinced themselves, though I’m sure he’s the driving force, to transfer their family home into the legal and beneficial ownership of a Caribbean company under some law of natural justice. Apparently, this will not only legally avoid inheritance tax but also the local authority taking the proceeds to fund care fees. You really couldn’t make it up! It’s going to be interesting to see which law firm is prepared to deal with the conveyancing!

To be fair, it's not just men. I know two women, come to think about it.

What exactly were the conspiracy theorists right about? I have no idea what MK ultra is either.

I think it's the - I know more than you - as well. It's a feeling of one up man ship.

There are zero critical thinking skills in conspiracy theories. My exh had me watch a video around the pyramids being built using copper pipes and aliens. It was all this is what happened, they did this, they did that. When I pointed out even in academic work you say - it appears to show, this may be the case, the evidence suggests etc because you could be proved wrong in the future, science is always changing and actually even if you did believe aliens built the pyramids you weren't actually there so it's a theory that you think happened so it's not a fact and I couldn't watch such drivel because they weren't using any critical thinking.. he completely blew up at me for not believing some crack pot youtuber spouting on like hos theories were real!

And I actually like the weird and wonderful, the unexplained stuff, real conspiracy theories such as the crack cocaine conspiracy (how Washington paid a black person to sell crack cocaine and be caught to create a moral panic). I loved the Graham Hancock thing on Netflix, the one my lovely dn lived through where our government sprayed stuff in the air and then told people if they felt ill take an aspirin. I like the weird and wonderful but millions of children being taken into peodo rings and being sold in catalogues is bollocks. Organ harvesting from these American kids is bollock (refugee teenagers do actually face that real threat BTW but no one care about them) and covid being a conspiracy for the new world order is again bollocks.

As @GentlemanJay says it is not just men, but in my experience it often needs a man to pour flames on the fire. The men are escaping from the realities of life while using a form of power and coercion to bring some women into side. Some are more gullible than others.

Without wishing to derail the main issue of this thread.....

The latest bat shit craze from a group of people I know of is that the UK government is holding onto individual trust funds for every man, woman and child in the country. Apparently, when we are born the government puts several hundreds of thousands of pounds in a special fund for each of us. It is given a unique account number and is managed by the government for each of us. We each have the right to this money, but 99.99% of the population do not know about it so most of it goes unclaimed. There are some gurus who will teach you how to go about it but because many people in the government do not know about it, most claims are denied. Some people have been successful and by knowing exactly how to go about it they have been able to cash in, retire in their 50's with very rich lifestyles.

There is a class action apparently being organised by someone on behalf of many individuals. I am in touch with one and they are funding this in relatively modest amount, something like £250 every couple of months or so. The intention is to bring a claim against the government to release this money for all of use.

At the moment, there are only a couple of solicitors willing to take this on. One is retired and the other looks like a wizard (I have seen a picture) and works from home. They do not have large law firms behind them because - apparently - the establishment is trying to strip them of the right to practice to again block these funds.

But this is the retirement plan of these people. There is one common denominator with all of them. They have been scammed before out of savings and pensions. This individual government trust fund they have all heard about will be recovered by them not by going to court but through 'The People's Law of Natural Justice.'

Fucking bat shit crazy escapism and not facing up to reality.

Interestingly the two women I know have had their flames stoked by male family members. Brothers and sons. If they said "let's jump off this cliff mum" they would. Lol.

Looking at this topic logically -

Do criminal conspiracies exist?

Are there laws against criminal conspiracies? (such as anti-racketeering laws)

For example, I believe the 9/11 conspiracies

Oh really, which ones? The one where all Jewish people stayed home that day because the Israeli government told them to, because they were the real perpetrators? Because that's one of the most popular ones.

As a New Yorker, personally affected that day, I would tell any 9/11 Truthers to read the 9/11 Commission report and then if they still believe all that bullshit, to kindly go to hell.

Some conspiracy theories are silly, yes, but some of them are deeply hurtful and offensive, and many of them originate in anti-Semitic and racist extremism. 9/11 was an extremely traumatic event that was then used to justify horrific wars and violence around the world. It is not something to tell silly stories about.

My brother in law is a conspiracy theorist (and a terrible, bigoted person too but I digress) and he has managed to suck in my wife's sister to his ridiculous theories. He believes NASA wants to assassinate him because he has 'uncovered' the moon landing conspiracy, (he did nothing new, just made some terribly edited and poorly researched YT videos), and he uses his lack of understanding of science to make claims such as gravity/physics in general being a governmental lie, various ethnic backgrounds being lizards, gay people causing tsunamis (also gay people causing the downfall of ancient civilisations in general) etc. I don't know what on earth happens to some people to make them like this but I feel very sorry for my SIL who used to be a carefree, happy person and is now his loyal subject.

Epidemiologists have been saying for decades that new viruses and global pandemics were likely to occur. Responsible institutions and governments did run simulations of this, yes, to try to prepare for what scientists said was likely to happen. None of that is evidence of a global conspiracy. Do you know nothing about history? New diseases do emerge, and the problem now is that the world is so interconnected, they can be much more damaging.

The question that covid conspiracy theorists can never answer is why. Why would governments around the world want to do this? Covid tanked the global economy and ruined many countries and industries, besides killing millions of people.

The only answer they seem to have is that the govenrment wants to control us and keep us in our homes, which is also the underlying theme of lots of other paranoid theories, like the 15 minute city nonsense. So that tells you something about the pathology of people who believe in this stuff.

Yes, there is a lot of murkiness around the origins of Covid. I don't consider that a conspiracy theory in that, for example, even US intelligence agencies are disagreeing about the real origins and whether this was an accidental leak from the Wuhan lab. I see that as an issue we just can't resolve with what we know now, maybe someday we will know more.

Gay people cause tsunamis 😂 I’m going to have to google that one!

That is bollocks. Just like the end of the world stuff that comes out every few years.

I've had a look at the MK1 stuff. It was experiments on vulnerable people from the US gov in the 60s/70s where they dosed people up with LSD. The utterly awful conspiracy theories around this are the ones that say Sandy Hook wasn't real! That they were actors acting out their children were shot and killed in school! That actors in hollywood are puppets and being controlled. It's utter rubbish and so awful to the families where disasters happen. How can you say that MK1 ultra is real?!?

The grain of truth around the experiments that then they twist to make facts suits them and the stories that are invented are ludicrous.

One of the rules about Mumsnet is that threads about wacko conspiracy theories always attract some wacko conspiracy theorists.
It’s like they can sniff them out.

And as if by magic, one appears…

It was part of a larger conspiracy about some religious article or speech that blamed gay people for freak weather anomalies, if I recall correctly 🤣 it was a while ago now!

Sorry, phone glitched. That was for @ReeseWitherfork 🤣

what sort of property industry are you in that requires you to quiz people about their vaccination status?