Quote Originally Posted by TIC View Post
Quote Originally Posted by TitoFan View Post
I searched high and low for a thread like this, thinking surely one existed and I didn't want to incur in needless duplicity. Alas, I found none.

In any case, I thought damn..... some things today are soooooo radically different in their very core from things from just a few decades ago.

Take a for instance.....

When all is said and done, COVID-19 will certainly be nowhere near the worst pandemic in human history. It will probably fall short of the worst of projections.

However, it is sure to go down in history as.... The Most Vehemently Argued and Denied Pandemic in the History of the Universe.

Why's that, I wonder.

My own theory is that people themselves are different.

Conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen. Throw a rock and you're bound to hit a conspiracy theorist.

People by and large are more rebellious and automatically balk at anything the government or any authority has to say...... including health professionals and authorities.

Also, people will always deny that which they DO NOT WANT TO HEAR. Psychology 101.

I get the economic argument and all that...... but some people are downright belligerent when talking about COVID-19. It's like a raw fucking nerve.



But anyway, I see this as a sign of the times.

There's more, hence the new thread.
titofan do you know who created the phrase conspiracy theorist? the internet only came out in 1991, so not even thirty years ago. i think it's safe to say that not everyone has had the access to information available today for twenty years, i think that is being generous. before that unless you really wanted to study something it was at your library. most people received their information from the media. with things like project mockingbird that information was corrupted. in the beginning the internet was slow & expensive & most people were only starting to find its uses, sites like napster & porn probably took most of their attention. anyway today information is much more readily available, even with censorship & mis-information, people are becoming aware of the lies that have been told. i mentioned a few conspiracy theories to you awhile ago that turn out to be true, the governments have lied & lied, over & over, & have been responsible for the deaths of millions of lives, excluding wars. it's not a matter of not wanting to hear, maybe in case of those that don't want the truth, but a matter of truth & what can be proven to be true

All good points, TIC. Information availability to the public is eons greater today than it was some years ago. That is both good and bad. Bad because with it comes the inevitable flood of fake news..... from all sides. Fake news isn't just the realm of the wicked, evil government wanting to horse-collar everyone into submission. There is plenty of fake news from the other side as well. Serious, stable-minded people are caught in the crossfire between government shenanigans and propaganda, and those who are "drug-like" addicted to conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories, as recent or not-recent as the term may be, have existed in one form or another for many years. Nothing is ever just a simple piece of news. No assassination was ever "just" an assassination. There was always some convoluted story involving many parties and interests. Nothing is taken at face value. No sooner did man landed on the moon than the conspiracy theories started pouring out, calling it all an elaborate hoax. It's probably a part of human nature, to want to question everything.

Something I find oddly exaggerated is this mistrust and fear of governments in general. I guess if we all lived in a dictatorship or just a heavily-censored country, it would be natural to harbor this enormous mistrust and fear. But in a society where everyone can pretty much say what they want..... and certainly do? I just don't see it. Not saying governments are trustworthy at all. But the extreme mistrust and fear of the government shown by a small portion of society, especially in the U.S., is weird. It's like being stuck in a time warp from back when governments were still being formed and the nation was still new.