Why is Everything a Conspiracy Now?

Is something else really going on?

I was waiting in line to order a coffee behind two girls.
“Yeah, but that’s what they want you to think,” one of the girls said.
“Who’s they?” the other said.
“You know, them.” She put her hand in the air and vaguely motioned at the rest of the café, although I’m assuming that she meant the government or a corporation or something higher than any of us in the room.

As I waited for my order to be called, I thought about how normal the conversation seemed to me. I think even 10 years ago that would have been reserved for people who existed on the fringe, not two normal girls taking a break from work. Conspiracies used to be for people who had been let down by life and were disenfranchised from society. I guess a lot more people are in that position now.

Still from Europa '51 (1952)

Sometimes it feels like we’ve tipped over into such a deep state of distrust that we think everything is a conspiracy now. Your favorite band is a psyop or an industry plant. The death of a celebrity doesn’t sit right with you. Everybody must be getting paid to give good reviews of that book or movie. Your video flopped, so it must mean you’ve been shadow banned. The celebrity who got a face lift is a clone. Whatever it is, something else is going on. Something deeper, a grand plan, a group of sinister people in a castle or a boardroom somewhere else, are determining the fate of the world around you. Nothing is as it seems.

I’ve been guilty of assuming that there’s something else going on. Maybe we all watched too much TV growing up or maybe facing the reality of the world we find ourselves in is enough to get our red string out. We were told as children to dream big and then inherited a world where it’s difficult to even have an average life. Younger generations aren’t doing as well as their parents, house prices are obscene, the job market is shit, tech overlords seem to have free rein, politicians are infuriating, scandals and abuses of power seem to be a mainstay in culture, no one feels like they’re being listened to.

The social fabric has been well and truly shredded and no one trusts anything or anyone. When enough bad things stack up, and you have to face imagining a life amidst it all, I think the overwhelming feeling is defeat. It feels so unfair, that it starts to feel a little too unfair, suspiciously so. We start seeing it everywhere, and connecting it all together until everything feels like it’s part of a plan.

But I wonder how helpful this is. I wonder if seeing conspiracy in everything just gets in the way of anyone actually doing anything or changing anything. While this stance of not trusting anything and questioning everything may feel like we’re onto something, I wonder if constantly asserting that there is a plan we’re not privy to, just actually renders us all powerless. The webs that we spin lull us into thinking that there’s nothing we can do about anything. If we question everything, then do our questions actually mean anything or can we all be written off as deranged?

Perhaps my biggest concern with our descent into conspiracy, is that I think we seek them out so much that it seems like people almost enjoy it. In a dark way, it’s become a form of entertainment for many. Something to sink our teeth into and fixate on, but it never seems to be enough. We involve ourselves in active criminal trials, in strangers’ lives, we exploit other people’s tragedies, all so that we can scratch an itch that is only getting stronger.

And when actual evidence of conspiracy, injustice, and abuses of power are exposed, it feels like it’s not sensational enough for people. When the Epstein files were released, people continued to embellish to make it more shocking than it already was. I even saw people infer that the evidence exposed was actually a conspiracy in and of itself to take down certain celebrities. When something does actually come to light, people just don’t seem to care as much as they did when things were still a theory. Conspiracies never go away they just grow legs and become something new. It becomes never ending, because I think people actually just don’t want it to end.

Conspiracy theories have never actually been about the truth, justice or change. I think they’re a way to self soothe in difficult times. They can make us feel a little important and in control, like we’ve figured something out. We can entertain ourselves and let our imaginations run wild, bond with strangers online and go down rabbit holes together. We can tell ourselves that it’s ok that our lives aren’t what we thought they’d be because it was designed that way, there’s nothing we can do about it.

And I often wonder if conspiracy theories are actually comforting to people, because the idea that there is no plan, might be far worse. What if life is just unfair? What if it’s not a conspiracy, it’s just inequality? Maybe there is no grand plan and many of the powers that be are just opportunists and grifters exploiting the chaos. Maybe people aren’t working together behind closed doors. Maybe everyone, especially the powerful, is just looking out for themselves. What if no one knows where we’re heading? In a way, a secret group of people deciding our fate sounds better than that, because at least that would mean there is a plan.

But if there is no conspiracy, if the world is just unfair and the odds are stacked against us right now, it means that the future is still undetermined. And if the future is undetermined, then maybe people can actually start working together to come up with a plan, just not behind closed doors.