The Conspiracy Tourist

Conspiracy theories appear to be on the rise. A survey by New Science magazine found that the percentage of people believing in one or more conspiracies had risen from 15% twenty years ago to 35% percent last year. They are starting to become so much more than the obsession of fringe individuals. They are now shaping politics, media, the way we view life itself. Under the unprecedented global uncertainty of the pandemic, these theories have thrived as people seek to explain the often unexplainable. In The Conspiracy Tourist I want to find out where these ideas come from, learn about the people who create and believe them, and consider what harm they might do to our increasingly uncertain future.

We've all encountered conspiracy theories at some point in our lives, usually online - the new Wild West. My social media pages are often boiling cesspits of anger and insanity, but trolls exist in a hinterland where they are emboldened to voice their crazy views. Meeting someone in real life expressing these views is different.

To differing degrees, we all have friends and family who inexplicably believe something we feel certain is outlandish or unhinged. How did this happen? And, why has the Covid-19 pandemic seemingly accelerated conspiracists and helped institute new ones? Is this a deadlier virus that faces us in the years to come?

Obviously there are different degrees to which people engage with conspiracy theories so in The Conspiracy Tourist I want to talk to people who specialize in understanding this sort of behavior - psychologists and specialists who analyze indoctrination, perhaps cult deprogrammers or therapists. I want to find out what makes a person believe something they watched on YouTube but deny seemingly obvious and sensible science.

From my own son's godmother and a local dog-walking buddy to the ardent, emboldened folk I've argued with online, the thing that has always struck me about "believers" is just how impossible it is to argue with them. They had all the facts at their fingertips...alternative facts, but facts nonetheless. If you dared to argue with their theories then you were "one of them", you were "part of it all."

As certain as I think I am of my views, a thought that sometimes crosses my mind is What if they are right? I've spent years battling and ridiculing wingnuts online but what if these people that I'd dismissed as crazed loonies actually have a point? What if we are the sheeple and they do have some special insight into the great issues of our time?

For the purposes of this book, I am prepared to cast aside all my preconceptions and enter the strange land of conspiracies as a wide-eyed tourist, eager to take in all the sights.