They say the misspellings and shoddy construction of phishing emails are specifically to weed out potential bites from people clever enough to do fraudsters some damage. It seems every conspiracy except for the real ones trace back to antisemitic beliefs – flat earth, qanon, hollow earth, pizzagate, 9-11 truth, antivax, gender crit, foreign infiltration, whatever. “They” are always, at the end of the day, “the jews.” It makes me think, in this moment, what if antisemitism serves a similar function? If you can believe “the jews” are up to no good on that level, you can believe any wack thing.
There are definitely holes in that. The spelling errors are there from go, in your spam trap. Sometimes the antisemitism is buried kinda deep; it can’t be the gateway drug. Just a random thunk on a random day.
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Could it be that conspiracy theories tend to evolve out of older conspiracy theories rather than being created out of whole cloth? Conspiracy theories regarding Jews date back through the Middle Ages (well poisoning during the Crusades, for instance). Since then, as new conspiracy theories are needed, the conspiracies are grafted onto the old growth (yeah, I know I am mixing my biometaphores) which means that, although a new conspiracy has evolved, it still carries the history of its ancestors? Perhaps if we view conspiracy theories as a clade rather than as individuals, the antisemitic roots are more understandable?
Strong idea, much more likely to be accurate than my own random thunk. But only one weakness in it I can think of – some of the modern creepo theories start out without antisemitism, then grow into it. Then again, that’s consistent with how cultural evolution involves a lot more “lateral gene transfer” than typically happens in sexually reproducing organisms, right?
I thought lateral gene transfer was, among sexually reproducing organisms, confined to plants?
But then there are the lateral gene transfers involving viruses.
(See? THIS kind of weirdness is why I was a public historian, not a biologist.)
lol, i like it. among sexually reproducing organisms, there’s a kinda related act in those sea slugs that absorbed algae to steal chlorophyll production. and the rest of us can do the real deal unintentionally with the help of endogenous retroviruses. i’m an art major but i watch PBS Eons on yewchoob.
I’ve kinda given up on TV, but I have about 20 shelf feet of paleontology and geology books. Post degree obsession.
haha, that makes me think of the meme about the guy with the lamborghini, “it’s fun to drive around the hollywood hills.” knowledge.