How I Cured Conspiracy Theorists by Selling Them a More Ludicrous Conspiracy

Human nature is to know. The absence of knowledge haunts us, tears away at our sanity. I say to everyone I meet, from children, to bus drivers, to college professors I reserve large blocks of office hours with: epistemic validity is desirable to avoid uncertainty, which in itself causes insecurity and threats to our well-being. It’s a simple phrase, but effective.

Furthermore, the social component of the self-aggrandizing metaphysical wealth that we call truth feeds from the id and into the superego. This service towards the subjective truth is the nature of the conspiracy theorist, the anti-vaxxer, the birther, the genocide denier, the flat-earther.

How the brain, a complex organ, the pinnacle of evolution, could be reduced to a glorified copying machine for egregious falsehoods is beyond my comprehension — is what I would say, were I of lesser self-awareness and of lower cognitive competency. Fortunately, my astonishing intellect has surmised a solution that trumps even the most rudimentary simpleton: providing a more inane alternative for a subject so already entrenched in artifice for the aforementioned ignoramuses supersedes their previous notions and modifies their perceptions to fit the truth, albeit in a roundabout configuration.

To evaluate my inquiry, I arranged a quintuple-blind correlational study analyzing 1,782 irrationally-minded dullards’ responses to being provided with a proposition of statistically higher fantastical quality than their currently held belief. For instance, I suggested to a young man who believed the moon landing was a Hollywood production that, instead, the director and producers of said film were Soviet agents attempting to produce a red herring meant to infiltrate the American public consciousness into believing the American nation untrustworthy. The bachelor was enamored, even going as far as to write to Buzz Aldrin asking for a “whiff of his moon socks.” A disarmingly distasteful development for sure, but nonetheless successful proof of concept.

Another notable anecdote was the juncture where I queried a middle-aged woman about her conviction that ivermectin was a suitable remedy to COVID-19. All it took to shake her faith was the positure that the horse-dewormer drug was actually a ploy by Big Pharma to ruin the intestinal fortitude of Republicans so that the Democrats could usurp power and convince God-fearing believers to avoid the perfectly functional Moderna vaccine. Her rush to the local Walmart for the jab was so expeditious that she forgot her baby-carrier on the roof of her car.

Perhaps my greatest achievement and most valiant struggle in this venture was the encounter with a rather infamous podcast host who had been known to air conjecture to the most fallible degree. Under the guise of an ex-FBI informant who had information relating to Donald Trump’s reinstatement as president, I hypothesized on the air that Trump himself was a “deeper state” operative who had launched the proposed reinstatement to solidify the power of an inner circle within the inner circle of the deep state to rule the United States from the shadows of the shadows. Even I, with my considerably elucidated consciousness, almost lost track of the narrative I was presenting. Complete with details about false flag operations and illustrated diagrams, I managed to convince the host as well as his hundreds of followers of the veracity of my claims. My prosperity was so great that I am now legitimately on an FBI watchlist on the grounds that I hold dangerous anti-governmental views.

My investigation concluded with strong confidence that the method of supplying absurdities in the face of farcical suppositions proves to be effective in rerouting the behavior of imbeciles. Further investigation may be required to determine whether the same tactics can be employed against subjects of slightly higher intellectual capacity. To preserve the integrity of the experiment, please disregard any persons you consider to be observing you reading this article.