Beyond Beyond the Fringe category archive

Boston.com syndicates a disturbing profile of a QAnon believer and self-styled “digital warrior.”

Afterthought:

I have seen a number of articles and blog posts recently theorizing that many QAnon followers are disillusioned by the failure of their prophet’s predictions to come true. For example and exemplar gratis.

This is not a cause for optimism. They are ripe for the plucking by the next snake oil salesman to come around.

Hackensack school trustee resigns after airing bathroom break on Zoom

Words fail me.

In the current issue of Psychology Today, Jennifer Latson explores why persons are susceptible to illogical and often contradictory conspiracy theories. A snippet:

In a study published in 2012, (the University of Kent’s Karen–ed.) Douglas found that people who believed one conspiracy theory were more likely to believe another, even if it was logically impossible for both to be true. For example, the more someone believed the theory that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed she’d been murdered by British secret agents.

How is this possible? Douglas concluded that people who are prone to conspiracy thinking are so quick to see a cover-up that they’re willing to let the logical niceties slide.

it’s a short read–four pages in the print edition. I commend the entire piece to your attention; given the state of dis coarse discourse, it is a particularly timely read.

Afterthought:

Yes, I still subscribe to publications printed on (gasp) paper.

Follow the link to learn of a strange and exotic culture facing extinction.

Florida Man, meet Florida Woman.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Joe Pierre continues his exploration of QAnon, specifically whether belief in it and its elements can be considered a delusion from a psychologist’s viewpoint (he argues that, even though it may be delusional, it is not a delusion in a psychological sense of a person “having delusions”).

Here’s a bit regarding one of his points, that true delusions generally cannot be spread to others (emphasis added):

In my view, what makes delusions unshareable is that they often contain a self-referential component—the belief is about the believer in some highly improbable way. It’s one thing to believe that the government is spying on us or in a supernatural being. But it’s another to believe that the CIA is following you, or that you are the Second Coming. The “evidence” to support such self-referential beliefs is often subjective, not objective, experience.

In contrast, conspiracy theory beliefs are usually not about the believer. And the evidence to support them is often something someone else said. I don’t like the term “conspiracy theorist,” since most people who believe in conspiracy theories aren’t theorizing so much as they’re searching and finding information that’s “out there,” often on the internet. This search is highly influenced by confirmation bias, meaning that we tend to find and latch onto things that we’re looking for in the first place and that support our pre-existing intuitions.

Stuff is getting real on the bathroom front.

For real.

This story is downright loony.

(Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)