Why People Embrace Conspiracy Theories

According to an NPR/Ipsos poll conducted at the end of last year, 17% of Americans asserted that the following statement is true: “A group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.” Of those respondents, 37% were unsure whether the statement is true or not. Fewer than half identified it as false.

As the reader would know, the above claim is central to QAnon conspiracy theory, the wide-ranging set of claims that circulate on the internet about a “deep state” that threatens conservative values. QAnon posts or “drops,” commonly presented as coded messages, tell readers that they are victims of misinformation from government bureaucracies, established scientific communities, and the mainstream media. Against official versions of events, adherents of the theory argue that the terrorist events of 9/11/2001 did not occur; neither did the Sandy Hook school shootings. Government is over-publicizing the severity of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic which, or so the account has it, arose in a Chinese lab. The 2020 national election was fraudulent.

The extreme forms of the theory defy the credence of any reasonable person. An elite of Satan-worshipping pedophiles purportedly practices cannibalism, with the intent of ingesting a life-sustaining chemical (“adrenochrome”) from their victims. Alerted to the danger, top military officials recruited Donald Trump to run for President in 2016. His victory would result in the punishment of the pedophiles and restore order and decency. Even now, some people await “the storm” that begins that restoration.

Why do people propound, pass on, and enjoy such ideas?

A student of human play, I am well aware of people’s taste for fantasy. As children, we believe willingly the stories adults tell us about holidays and other special events. With all deference to Easter’s profound religious meanings, that special time may also entail a visit from an invisible bunny who hides colored eggs and sweets for us to discover. At other times, a lost tooth, deposited under a pillow, produces a response from a fairy, who exchanges it for a gift. Deep into the night, Santa comes down a chimney and rewards our dearest anticipations.

Pointedly, these are not just things that happen to us. To have them occur, we must “be good” and otherwise follow proper procedures. There must be no peeking. We must believe. Adults must play their parts. For these are not only stories of what may occur. hey are little dramas or rituals that require our enactment to make them come true. Non-believers — spiteful teenagers, bitter hermits, and other cranks — have no place here. For the rest of us, it is a pleasant conspiracy.

Importantly, both children and adults recognize that these fanciful stories and events confine themselves to certain times and places. We look forward to those clearly marked occasions, savor their meanings and, after they are over, return to our various routines.

As noted, events like these have special significance for young children, who are still learning the boundaries of their imaginative powers and who trust caring adults to protect them from harm. However, older people also enjoy fanciful stories and occasions In that spirit, most of us willingly dress up for some party or masquerade. We join social clubs that have elaborate codes and costumes – and perhaps rules that swear us to secrecy about what happens there. We play games and sports, many with the most curious regulations, language, equipment, and costumes. We read novels, go to movies, watch television shows, and peruse the comics in the morning paper. To that degree we do not wait for special occasions to happen to us; we seek them out or create them directly.

The historian Daniel Boorstin argued that we do these things because we want more than the ordinary world offers us. We crave novelty and excitement. We want “breaking news.” We want to feel that we are important and vibrant, someone that others must acknowledge. For such reasons, and to break the spell of work and family, we head off to our favorite bar or restaurant, clubhouse, sporting ground, hobby center, and website. Here, we can be a different version of ourselves and, crucially, mix with others who reaffirm that style of living. For some of us, that version may seem truer to the “real” us than the identities we hold as workers, spouses, parents, and neighbors.

In part, we enter play-worlds because we enjoy holding these identities and because we find satisfaction in our ability to perform the actions those worlds require. We like the quality of “difference” they provide, the sense that there is an alternative or parallel world just beyond the borders of ordinary functioning. Furthermore, these hypothetical or “as-if” worlds give us chances to play central roles, to feel important. Even though the settings confront us with new challenges and improbabilities, they somehow make us feel in control. After all, we choose to enter them and adopt their principles. We initiate actions there. We can quit them when we want. We can hide our involvement from detractors.

Participation in virtual worlds is another form of this self-chosen commitment. In that light, New York Times technology writer Kevin Roose compares involvement in online conspiracy theories to playing in massive multiplayer online games. Conspiracy sites invite people to co-create and sustain a shared, alternative reality. Featured there are recurring characters — heroes, villains, and fools — for the viewer to savor. Storylines ebb and flow. There are challenges to decode messages and solve mysteries. Participants seek to be “in the know” and to pass on, via social media, their insights to others. Strangers get to know and trust one another, albeit through the safety of distanced communication. Players sense that they are part of something much bigger, and more daring, than the circumstances of their ordinary lives.

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Add to this the idea that conspiracy theories offer heightened emotions. Much as we go to horror movies to provoke (and manage) feelings of fear or tell gross jokes to explore feelings of disgust, so virtual communities give us chances to act and feel in exaggerated ways. The information presented instigates puzzlement and, ideally, the satisfaction of solution. It promulgates distrust, fear, and anger. It replaces the disrespect common to ordinary experience with feelings of pride and agency. Loneliness, surely the lot of many people, gives way to the pleasure of communal bonding.

To partake of a conspiracy theory then is to be part of a grand army, with flags and badges, secret codes, forbidden weapons, and daring comrades, all directed to saving the world from the worst forms of villainy.

Once again, few of us are strangers to visions of this sort. We play – and spectate — to indulge those feelings and to explore their implications. We love our books and movies, with their stirring characters. Our favorite sports team, or so we proclaim, is the best. We like stories and jokes. We enjoy thinking about the world taken over by aliens or prehistoric monsters come to life. Our heroes — men and women with fabulous minds, bodies, and powers — attempt to save civilization or even the planet itself. In the more active forms of play, we become those heroes and villains, trying on their capes and unleashing their weapons. Play is the place where we can fight and die, love and hate, conquer and surrender all without the more serious forms of consequence.

Let us cheerfully acknowledge these appetites. But what we cannot countenance, as responsible people, is fantasy that forgets its boundaries. It is one thing to think about harming a person one dislikes; it is quite another to commit that harm. The drug use, sexual escapades, and wanton killing so prevalent in our popular media must not become models for ordinary life. Crazy theories – about international cabals of bloodthirsty perverts set on destroying the world — are the stuff of goofy action movies and pot boiling paperbacks with red covers. They are willful indulgences, not serious commentaries on the problems that beset us. Conspiracy theories, which inspire people to assault our common traditions, stand with these excesses. However inspired, no one has a right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater or shoot a gun in a marketplace. The spread of patently false information, especially to those who are young or poorly informed, is dangerous for the same reasons.