Conspiracy Theorists Can’t Even Tell When They’re Being Trolled

Conspiracy theorist Bob Mitchell

Are you a sheeple? Do you blindly follow whatever you’re told and refuse to exercise critical thinking? If you said yes, then may I offer you a theory about reptilians? If you’re tired of being condescended to by your semi-homeless cousin (the one who always has “big things on the horizon, man”) because you believe things just ‘cuz the “lamestream media tells you,” then you are about to read the most satisfying recipe for humble pie: conspiracy theorists are so credulous when it comes to news from alternative sources that they can’t even discern when that news is just simple trolling. A group of American and Italian researchers collaborated a little while back on a little social experiment. The researchers examined the social media habits of Italian conspiracy theorists, who believe some real gems that not even our American conspiracy theorists are man enough to take up: Pages like Scienza di Confine, Lo Sai or Coscienza Sveglia promote heterogeneous contents ranging from aliens, chemtrails, geocentrism, up to the causal relation between vaccinations and homosexuality. Vaccines lead to buttsex. I guess if you get poked once, it’s not a huge stretch to get poked again. The researchers examined the social media habits of these conspiracy theorists as compared to the social media habits of people who are fans of science- and evidence-based pages. They found that conspiracy-minded people interacted almost exclusively with other conspiracy pages. The science-oriented people commented on at least a slightly greater variety of pages, but the conspiracy theorists were pretty much set in their alternative media bubble. So set were they in their bubble that even when scientists presented them with internet memes which were clearly sarcastic parody of conspiracy memes, some 80 percent of people who liked and shared them were people who interacted exclusively with other conspiracy sites. In other words, they weren’t sharing the troll memes ironically; they thought they were real. What does this mean in a soundbite? It means that a Google U degree doesn’t teach you squat about critical thinking. A quick peek over at Literally Unbelievable is enough to prove that much. However, some people’s critical thinking skills are so fine-tuned that they will blow your mind (right after they blow something else). God bless

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WHY I AM NOT A DISPENSATIONALIST John Nelson Darby is recognized as the father of dispensationalism later made popular in the United States by Cyrus Scofield's Scofield Reference Bible. Charles Henry Mackintosh, 1820–1896, with his popular style spread Darby's teachings to humbler elements in society and may be regarded as the journalist of the Brethren Movement. CHM popularised Darby more than any other Brethren author. As there was no Christian teaching of a “rapture” before Darby began preaching about it in the 1830s, he is sometimes credited with originating the "secret rapture" theory wherein Christ will suddenly remove His bride, the Church, from this world before the judgments of the tribulation. Dispensationalist beliefs about the fate of the Jews and the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel put dispensationalists at the forefront of Christian Zionism, because "God is able to graft them in again," and they believe that in His grace he will do so according to their understanding of Old Testament prophecy. They believe that, while the methodologies of God may change, His purposes to bless Israel will never be forgotten, just as He has shown unmerited favour to the Church, He will do so to a remnant of Israel to fulfill all the promises made to the genetic seed of Abraham. I am not a dispensationalist; it is unbiblical.