My Theory About Conspiracies

Written by Tom Being Tom

It’s inevitable. When everyone is talking and thinking about the same thing, theories abound. Some good ones, some bad ones, some – well, let’s just say it – wacky ones. Conspiracy theories.

I read a thread this morning, posted by a friend on Facebook, that essentially concludes that the coronavirus is a plot by Bill Gates to take over the world. He simulated a pandemic, see, then a pandemic started, right, and now he can push his vaccine, you get it, to implant us all with a microchip, man. Just like in those end-times books!

One responder shared his advice on the matter: Bill Gates, I’ve always suspected, is the anti-christ.

Sure, sure, we all knew that. Thanks for sharing, good point. So true.

Google it, the original poster said, if you don’t believe me. Google it for yourself.

I did.

It’s been debunked by so many sites by now that it hardly warrants consideration, here or anywhere else. But, the truth of the matter is we gonna believe what we gonna believe. As I’ve told you all, ad nauseum, I have no problem with what someone wants to believe, since there’s enough ambiguity in this great big ol’ universe to write in all sorts of our own conclusions.

I didn’t engage. I hovered above the keyboard, even copied a link, but I didn’t engage. Facebook isn’t the forum for debunking wild claims; Facebook is the forum for spreading them. One of the wisest things I have ever learned was the difference between that and that.

Another friend on Facebook made this claim:

“Even if you’re not conspiracy minded…Something deep within your soul has to be telling you something isn’t quite right.”

So true, friend, so true.

Something is not quite right, but you miss the point. It’s not a conspiracy. Conspiracy, by definition, requires coordination, competence, cooperation, organization, and synchronicity. The coronavirus pandemic has been utter chaos, handled with sheer incompetence, by almost every world leader since the start. And I don’t blame ‘em, this shit literally took us all by storm, virtually overnight.

(Bill Gates, by the way — among others — saw it coming, warned everyone about it, and told us to be prepared. But we ignored him, because that’s what we do when we don’t want a thing to be a thing just yet.)

But friend #2 is right about this: something is up. Something is always up. The world is full of competing ideas and agendas and everyone takes advantage of a crisis to advance their own. Everyone.

Donald Trump has taken advantage of this crisis to try and prove his central premise in life: that he is the greatest thing on earth and everyone should revere him as much as he does.

Other leaders like Bernie Sanders will take advantage of this moment to push a more social agenda, like universal health care and the like. That’s what he’s always been about so he’ll use this to push that.

Others, possibly even Bill Gates, will try to make a lot of money from this. For some folks, making money is everything.

Still others will push their religious agenda, to hook in folks like friend #1 above and hopefully add more sheep to the flock. Religion is an agenda, and faith leaders will use crises to push it.

This isn’t news. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But here I am, using the crisis to push my own agenda: critical thinking. What have I always said? Dig deeper. Think it through. Debunk your own theories, whenever you can. You’re wrong. I’m wrong. We’re all wrong.

But I can tell you this without a shred of doubt:

There is no mass conspiracy to steal your place in heaven, to control your life through implants, or to wipe out 10% of the population for some grand purpose. They ain’t that organized. They ain’t that together. It’s just a bunch of unrelated sapiens out trying to enact their own schemes, most often in direct opposition with the schemes of the others.

It’s chaos. It’s competition. In most cases, it’s incompetence. It’s just like it always was.

There just happens to also be a big contagion going on right now.

One more thing: we’re going be just fine. “They” are not shuffling us into oblivion or taking away our liberties forever. “We” won’t let ‘em, you and I, even if that’s what “they” really wanted, which “they” don’t.

We’re all in this together.

Even if we don’t always see eye-to-eye. 🧐

55 thoughts on “My Theory About Conspiracies”

  2. I went to the grocery store this morning. Waited in line for about 50 minutes to get it, but I was in the first group. I am irritated that we have to wait in line for supplies that are not actually in short supply because of some panic-hoarders, but things went well, people were polite, it wasn’t chaos. Now I am home and covered in sweat.

    BTW, I now have paper towels.

    Bill Gates did spend a lot of his life making ridiculous amounts of money, but now he is giving it all away fighting diseases. I guess it is just as fun to give money away when you can as it is to make it. I don’t know. I don’t have a problem with Gates. Much better man than Jobs ever was.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. See, there are those who would say that your having to wait in line was a conspiracy to control what you buy, when you buy, and why you buy, by some cabal or another. It’s just the way the thing played out, eh?

      Congrats on the paper towels! I have found TP, but no paper towels or disinfectant of any sort. We have some, but there will come a day…

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. I have always been an Occam’s Razor sort of guy. But, sometimes people want to believe in the most unlikely and complicated answer to a question.

        This reminds me of the post Hurricane Harvey run on gasoline. There was plenty of gasoline and there was never a shortage. But people started panic buying as much as they can and wouldn’t you know it, fuel stations temporarily ran out of gasoline until trucks could bring more. Just stupidity amplified by Facebook.

        I don’t have a Facebook account and I don’t think that I am missing out on much.

        A few weeks ago I bought some cheapo washable towel things. Those seem to be working.

        Back into my quarantine. I have been out walking every day that it isn’t raining and now I have a sunburn on the back of my neck of all things. I never get sunburns. Thanks for another problem, COVID19.

        Liked by 3 people

      2. Lmao Jason! So social isolation causes rednecks? Now we know!

        I bought some cheap, washable napkins to solve that problem, too. We use WAY too many paper towels around my house so this will be a valuable lesson.

        Say, look at that. I found an upside to the world contagion. Ain’t I the ever-rosy optimist! 😎

        Liked by 1 person

      3. I hadn’t considered that I am now a redneck.

        I am also afraid to get a much needed haircut, so my corona-shag hairdo is going to place me back in the 1970s fashion-wise.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. That’s a great point, jono, thanks for making it! I also find that folks don’t only want it to not be their fault, but the fault of “their guy” or “their side.” The blame game. Great point!

      Like

      Reply

      1. You see it differently, Jason? I took Jono as meaning that some will stick to their chosen rep (say, Trump) despite the overwhelming evidence that they are, say, incompetent or self-serving, just so’s they weren’t the ones that got it wrong. Did I read too much into it?

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I was just making a silly joke and thought it would be funny to say. I had no other intent or thought in my little brain.

        I kind of see Americans as mostly still in denial in spite of the overwhelming evidence that we are in a pandemic crisis.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Sorry, thinking in fragments again, but….I find that even if I don’t agree with everything you say, and honestly I pretty much do agree with most everything you say, but on that rare occasion when I may not, I still listen. I think you give people pause, take them off the defensive, give them a space in which to listen, and listening to each other is the only way that change will ever happen.

        Liked by 2 people

      3. I appreciate that sentiment, Susan! I make a conscious effort to open a dialogue, and to point out that we can all think different things, that in fact we do, but still be on the same side. It’s in the symbiosis of competing ideas that things get accomplished. This day and age, it is the thing most forgotten!

        Like

  5. I knew those infrared rays shooting from my pc couldn’t be good. Glad to know Gates is behind it all… now please, can we get back to normal toilet paper consumption? Because that’s really starting to tick me off.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  7. Critical thinkers are the leaves in the storm. The voices in the wilderness. FB and other social media platforms could have elevated and educated us, instead they are pulling down into the depths of mass delusions.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. No joke, George! When I was younger I took a course in critical thinking, and my professor kept emphasizing to the class how important it was to learn this stuff. I thought it was basically just common sense (having learned critical thinking skills from some smart people before) and couldn’t understand his emphasis at the time. Now I get it. Oboy, do I get it. 😜

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Individually, there are some highly intelligent sapiens out there. But as George Carlin stated, “never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

        Liked by 1 person

  10. Oh I am losing patience with two types, The conspiracy theorists and the “Just rub some oil of oregano on your feet” types. I have like 38 part time hippies in my life. Like Aunt Lisa, you can’t smoke 2 packs a day, have a package of m &m’s and a glass of wine instead of dinner and expect Oil of Oregano to save you.
    Also: Hi Tom!
    https://damngirlgetyourshittogether.com/

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  11. I know it’s a human impulse to try and make sense of things but one thing critical thinking leads me to conclude is that there are some things that just don’t make sense. The universe is a random, chaotic place. When we were small bands of hominids eking out a tough existence on the African veldt it was probably easier to accept that terrible things happen without reason or purpose, but we haven’t evolved enough to keep up with the amount of information coming at us. And it doesn’t help that in this crisis we have a so-called leader who shifts his positions daily, or sometimes minute-by-minute, depending on what he thinks will benefit him most.
    I started to say it would be comforting to think there really is a massive conspiracy because then there’d be a possibility that the perpetrators could be unmasked, brought to justice, disaster averted, and Old Man Whithers who runs the haunted amusement park would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids. But then I think, if there were such a conspiracy it would have to be so vast and well-organized it would be unstoppable, and knowing about it would just make me miserable.
    So in conclusion I don’t believe there’s a conspiracy but I do believe critical thinking is a great tool if you want to be depressed.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Some of the greatest thinkers I know are some of the most depressed; to understand is to be glum! I have always tried to temper my understanding of reality with bouts of hilarity or shots of rum, to keep my spirits up (or the ones in the bottle down).

      We all want simple answers to complex questions, but … sorry … that ain’t a thing. Life is one big mystery machine. Or, as one deep-thinking beatnik once said … “Zoinks!”

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  12. 50 years ago, every town had a village idiot who sat at the local bar getting drunk and spewing all kinds of nonsense. Now they’re all on the internet. Conspiracies are almost impossible in the age of Trump. I realized the other day that there couldn’t possibly be aliens at Area 51 because Trump would already have told everyone about it: “I have the best aliens. My extra-territorials are much better than any other world leader’s.”

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Haha! So true, Suzanne. 🤣

      But although cooperative conspiracies are hard to maintain in the best of times, in the Trump era “conspiracy theories” will reach an all-time high. After all, wild and inaccurate claims are the stuff of conspiracy theorists, and Trump is the king of wild and inaccurate claims. To spread such bull all ya need is a bunch of folks dismissive of facts and data willing to buy the lies they’re handed. Trump’s got no shortage of that type in his legions, eh?

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    1. It’s a “demon-haunted world,” Steve, and Facebook is core-central in matters of ignorance. I have another lost soul over there, right now, trying to “teach” me how much better Donald Trump is than … everybody else. 🤣

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  14. Pingback: My Theory About Conspiracies — Tom Being Tom – Superman can't find a phone booth

  15. wow, thanks for this. One of the hardest things I have ever had to do was remove myself from the angry dialogue and instead say “I don’t know enough about it”. This post speaks to that. So I shared it

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Awesome, Bill, thank you for that! Over on the FB I get involved in a lot of skirmishes, cuz I do tend to make myself a target for trolls (when I have the time), but I don’t mind. I only have one rule, and you’ve seen it: be respectful. For those who cannot, they get shuffled off my wall. My former lead troll is now trolling another mutual friend and driving him crazy instead. 😉

      Thanks again for sharing, brother, and always remember: your opinion matters!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  16. I have not be on Facebook in quite some time but have recently stumbled upon this sort of thing on Youtube and man is it ever rampant there! someone threatened to turn me into bacon! I know you can’t reason with that, but it baffles me.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Like, by using a magic spell? Is there a human-to-bacon incantation? Can it be cast through online video-sharing platforms?

      If you don’t answer I know what’s become of you. I’ll spread the word via underground channels. You won’t have become bacon in vain! ✊

      By the way, did you notice that the Pentagon chose the middle of the Pandemic to release it’s (supposed) proof of UFOs? You think THAT’S a coincidence?!

      (yeah, so do I 😏)

      Like

      Reply
  18. Pingback: Lies, Damn Lies, and Dog Walks – Tom Being Tom
  19. Pingback: Roe V – Tom Being Tom

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.