Covid conspiracy madness
We're getting into really, really B grade film territory here
Hi, you beautiful person. I posted this up on the Webworm site this morning, but didn’t email it out because I don’t wanna spam you too much. My aim is to do 2-3 posts a week, so I’m not an inbox pest. Shorter posts like this I thought I’d place on the site, but not email them out.
But… I’m being told by those who have found it that I should have just emailed it. So… here we go.
I’ve been dipping my foot into what I like to call “conspiracy internet”. Back when I was a teen, conspiracy culture felt kinda fun and silly. It was Julia Roberts and Mel Gibson in a film literally called Conspiracy Theory. It was Mulder and Scully in The X-Files. Was the moon landing fake? What’s the coverup at Area 51? Who shot JFK? While conspiracy theories of yore were rooted in political paranoia, they were kinda… fun. Mind games you could play. Conversation starters.
Now it’s the President of the United States happily and gleefully retweeting QAnon accounts — a fact which might seem just funny or weird — but then some guy walks into a pizza joint with a gun in an attempt to liberate child sex slaves.
With Covid-19, conspiracy internet has gone into overdrive. Earlier this month, a train engineer derailed a train, because he wanted it to hit a Navy medical ship which was apparently up to no good. He told FBI agents he’d been researching Covid-19 online. And he had a hunch about that ship.
(He missed the ship, hit a fence).
Here in New Zealand, the Prime Minister’s daily press briefings are interrupted by kiwis concerned the worldwide pandemic is just a cover, so 5G towers can be installed while everyone’s distracted. They’re terrified 5G will kill their children.
Children are often victims in all these modern conspiracy narratives. Locked in a basement, or killed by 5G.
My favourite story to rise from the Covid-19 rumour mill appeared at the beginning of April: Apparently a giant rescue operation had taken place in New York’s Central Park. Child sex slaves were finally being rescued from tunnels underneath New York.
They were being liberated from a life underground. “Mole children”, someone called them. Many of them were deformed. A product of the deep-state, who were keeping the kids down there in order to stress them out, so they’d make adrenochrome to fuel an elite wonder drug.
They’re not joking. People think it’s real. This tweet got over 600 retweets. Not all of those RTs were ironic.
It’s bleak, man. It’s like an ARG that’s gotten out of hand. It would be harmless, but the paranoia just fuels some really bad, real-life stuff. A guy turning up to shoot up a pizza restaurant. Someone derailing a train. Parents of dead kids being harassed because they’ve been labeled a “crisis actor”. People voting for Donald Trump because Hilary Clinton’s leaked emails proved she was a pedophile.
This is the new normal.
If you’d like to deep dive into the latest from the world of QAnon, I really recommend the podcast QAnon Anonymous. Their first podcast outlines how QAnon started, and the rest of the episodes dive into all kinds of conspiratorial madness, including the secret mole children.
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Also, you should totally do a series investigating conspiracy theories!
The way I feel when I get a Webworm email is not dissimilar to the way you feel when you get a Sofia/Sophia text.