Conspiracy theorists and liars

One of the favorite insults conspiracy theorists love to use, especially against the United States government and NASA, is that they are "liars". It's a short insult that is quite effective in its provocativeness.

Conspiracy theorists also like to claim that they are "truth seekers" and that all they care about is uncovering the truth.

The thing is, however, that the conspiracy theorists are hypocrites. They accuse others of lying, but in order to "prove" those claims, they fabricate lies themselves.

Not every single conspiracy theorist, of course. Some of them simply repeat what they have heard from others, like parrots, without even realizing if what they are saying is the truth or not. They might personally believe it to be the truth.

However, those are only the "lower-level" conspiracy theorists, so to speak. Those which have simply been deluded into the conspiracy theory religion and are just repeating what they have heard.

The real hypocrites and liars are the people who fabricate all the "proof" for these conspiracy theories, often willingly ignoring or denying any counter-argument, no matter how valid and clear it might be.

Just as an example, even the most committed conspiracy theorists can easily understand the basic properties of film photography, and hence understand the basic notions of shutter apertures and exposure times, and thus why no stars are visible in most photographs taken from space (where the subject is a brightly-lit object, such as a satellite, a spacestation, or the surface of the Moon). This is not just something which happens in the photos that were taken on the surface of the Moon, but on any photograph taken in space where the subject of the photograph is brightly lit (just make a search for such photographs and you'll see there are no stars visible). The explanation is extremely simple: The exposure of the camera has been set to photograph the brightly-lit subject, and stars are not bright enough to register onto the film in such a short exposure.

Conspiracy theorists understand this, and can corroborate this by checking any such photographs taken in space, even those which are not under any form of suspicion. Regardless, conspiracy theorists willingly choose to ignore basic facts and keep repeating the same old tired lies about the lack of stars in the Moon landing photographs as some kind of evidence of hoax. Some theorists may do this out of stubborness (they simply refuse to acknowledge simple facts), while others do it out of pure malice, completely on purpose, just to add one more piece of "evidence" to their repertoire.

And that's just one simple example. There are literally hundreds of similar examples.

It's these conspiracy theorists who are willingly ignoring facts and repeating lies over and over. It's these conspiracy theorists who are the liars. They know that most of their arguments are false, yet they keep repeating them over and over, never acknowledging the true explanations. They are the liars, they are the hypocrites.

Sadly, some conspiracy theorists are extremely good at this kind of deception. They can be quite inventive and come up with "evidence" which can be pretty convincing to the unwary and inexperienced. Heck, even very experienced people have got silenced by cleverly laid surprise arguments.

However, when one studies the phenomenon further, the explanation is usually rather simple.

I like to compare these clever conspiracy theorists with magicians: Both can present you with some cleverly laid out detail or event, and you will be completely dumbfounded, and simply have no explanation whatsoever at that moment. Of course with magic tricks you know it's not legit: It's always a trick, even if you don't know how it's done. The problem with conspiracy theories is that people are truly fooled into believing that the "evidence" is legit.

Of course, like with magic tricks, when the explanation is given, it's often embarrassingly simple. "Doh, why didn't I think of that?" Hey, I'm pretty good at spotting flawed evidence of fakery or hoaxing, yet even I get sometimes silenced by new, cleverly presented "evidence". Inevitably, when I study the phenomenon further, the explanation is often quite simple.

(Perhaps a bit ironically, when I understand the true explanation, I get even more convinced the photos or whatever are genuine and that there is no conspiracy. It's like the conspiracy theories are working in reverse for me: The more I study them, the more I'm convinced there's nothing to them.)

Of course there's a huge difference between magicians and conspiracy theorists: Magicians don't try to claim that what they are presenting is genuine (except, of course, for all those mentalists and dowsers and other con artists who do it for profit). Conspiracy theorists are claiming that their "evidence" is genuine and valid. Sadly, rather convincingly at that sometimes. And often deliberately and with malice.

But as said, it's the conspiracy theorists who are the liars and hypocrites. Many of them know that their "evidence" is not valid, yet they deliberately keep repeating it.

And if you, my reader, are presented with such an evidence that you can't think an explanation of right there, don't be fooled. It's like a magic trick: Just because you can't think of an explanation, it doesn't mean there isn't one.

(Back to index)