#conspiracies are really persuasive if you don't know how something works

[tanadrin]

I feel like a conspiracy theorist, but I'm convinced the GOP cheated by disenfranchising enough voters to win. Not just in swing states. The margins in every state are weird. A few thousand votes here and there across every county. The huge number of split ticket votes. The sudden loss of 12 million democratic voters despite record early voting turnout and voter registration?

It doesn't add up. It doesn't make sense.

So many people who had confirmation of their ballot being received and accepted are now finding out that they were unregistered or there was a "problem" with it.

They were saying for months that they didn't need anyone's vote. The betting market manipulation. The billionaire backers. Elon Musk's grubby hands all over the election.

They did steal the election. And we'll probably never find out how.

in the broad sense, yes, american elections should be fairer, and the franchise should be more universal. in the narrow sense--this is cope. purges of voter rolls happen in public. there's litigation on them all the time. a purge of 12 million voters from voter roles would not have gone unnoticed. to account for all these factors you would need an improbably large conspiracy. (stealing elections in the united states would be hard. each state administers its own elections! you'd have to steal 50 elections. and once again, this would be a case of someone rigging the presidential election and forgetting to rig any of the downballot races, which would be stupid.) including a conspiracy to rig most polling, given the outcome was within the margin of error of most polling averages for this election.

i get why it's the preferable scenario--people aren't dumb! my opponents are just evil! there's some optimism in that--but "i personally do not understand how this outcome could have occurred" does not mean it was a conspiracy.

So many people who had confirmation of their ballot being received and accepted are now finding out that they were unregistered or there was a "problem" with it.

this is normal and you typically have several days after the election to amend your ballot if there was a problem with it. if you do, it still counts. fun word problem time: if ~150 million people vote in an election, and 0.001% post on twitter about how they needed to amend their ballot (especially in non-swing states), how many twitter posts in a row do you have to see to convince yourself there is a ~conspiracy~ afoot?

fun second word problem: out of seven swing states, how many were governed by the opposing party or someone who had publicly opposed donald trump's election subversion attempts in 2020?

fun third word problem: do you know how elections in your state work? do you know which state official is in charge of administering them, and their party affiliation? do you know what the margins of downballot races like house and senate in your state were this election, and their relative swing from 2020? in short, do you know in detail how elections in the US work and what "typical" voting patterns look like, or are you just going off of vibes from a vaguely paranoid local bubble in social media?

[alwaysalreadyangry]

Collab poetry anon here: I'm actually also usually not into theories about other folks writing Shakespeare's stuff, because who cares and also I don't think any of them are persuasive. There is unlikely to be any smoking gun historical evidence that proves any theory right or wrong so it's mostly just academic vanity and a penchant for conspiracy theory. The plays are good, I'd rather focus on the work. But I set my eye-rolling aside for theories that are obvs false (aliens made him do it!!!) and are more about poking fun at the tendency to theorize about the authorship of his work than believing he didn't write the work. My hottest take was the one that was actually the most tongue in cheek. (The middle one you will pry from my cold dead hands: they write poetry together, that is immutable TRUTH.) That said, there is actualfax reason to believe that Shakespeare collaborated on many of his plays, so it would also be funny if in TOG world the three of them were writing the sonnets trying to out do each other. That retains Shakespeare's authorship, just with some added Joe/Nicky collaboration. Just three dudes trying to annoy one another by one upping each other. The dark lady is Andy and Joe and Nicky are like S T O P.

I'm also obsessed with the idea that Joe & Nicky cowrite a bunch of stuff together, not just poetry: Plays!!!!!!! Novels! Comic books! Music! Even if something starts as Joe's project (which I suspect is how many usually start), I can't imagine him NOT talking about it with Nicky and Nicky not becoming involved.

YES to all of this. And I LOVE the idea of them collaborating together with Shakespeare... are Joe and Nicky Beaumont and Fletcher...

In my head I’m also fitting this in with the incredible shitpost from a while ago about Nicky as the fair youth, so like. Shakespeare writing love poems to BOTH Nicky and Joe and their response being like, oh sweetheart no, and then writing sonnets in return which are ever-so-slightly mocking him. Yes yes an excellent love triangle that isn’t really that at all.

Also I completely agree about them collaborating on everything. Part of my issue with thinking “Joe does this thing and Nicky does this thing and they’re different things that never meet” is that like. They’re almost 1,000 years old, they have surely tried pretty much everything. Including writing and drawing and painting and music. In that time you KNOW they regularly got bored and collaborated on epistolary 18th century romance novels they published anonymously and scandalous plays and operettas and everything. Everything! They have had this gorgeous shared long life and they want to share all of it.

Especially given that like, ideas of a single genius author being behind a work of art was not really a thing until recently. When i was writing about early lyrics and having Joe singing poetry for Nicky in the 12th century... that’s a period of intense poetic development but also oral transmission, and people using kharjas written by other people in their work. Because it was better to have something good than something you write yourself, if you can’t manage it. And we have these different “corrupted” versions of some kharjas, because they change with transmission. That’s my shit! I like to think of Joe and Nicky mock-competing to see who can come up with the best closing line to a couplet, composing whole poems this way. And then years later they remember the poems but not who wrote what. Except for when there’s a flourish that they know must be Joe, or an image that has to be Nicky. But even then: where does one end and the other begin? What if they were mocking or imitating each other’s style?

Galaxy brain: Joe and Nicky wrote the Isle of Dogs and got chased out of London for it

[spaceorphan18]

I don't follow anyone that believes in this "theory" that Darren and Chris are secretly together, so I find the whole thing confusing (and deeply bizarre) Do you know if any of them have articulated why they think these two people would go through this much trouble and involve so many other people for so many years to hide their relationship?

I’ll preface this with - I’m not a psychologist, so all of this is armchair psychology, and I understand the twisted curiosity of – how can these people believe in such nonsense?  It reminds me a lot of – people who believe the Earth is flat, people feel the moon landing was faked, people who believe the orange cheeto-in-chief can do a good job.  It’s a microcosmic look at how people essentially get so brainwashed into believing a thing so strongly that for them it becomes a reality.  I hope you don’t mind me indulging a little - and kind of exploring the psychology behind this stuff.  

First, I wanna say there are three-ish groups - there are the people who know RPF is not real, and specifically just write fiction because they find it fun.  Most of the tinhatters are not these people.  Unfortunately, most (not all) of the people who still dabble in Glee RPF are enablers, in a way, and don’t seem to care that these other people are overly invested in their subjects.  The second group are the True Believers.  They 100% believe Chris and Darren are in a relationship.  (More on them later).  And there’s a third group – and I only have a theory that they exist, not proof, is that there’s a subsection of the second group that know that Chris and Darren aren’t in a relationship but a) enjoy the power of leading the rest of the followers and/or b) want to hold on to this fantasy because it’s more appealing to them.  

Anyway - what the tinhatters are, actually, are a bonafide cult.  

Cult definition according to Google Dictionary: 

a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.“the cult of St. Olaf”

a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.“a network of Satan-worshiping cults"synonyms:sect, denomination, group, movement, church, persuasion, body, faction"a religious cult”

a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing.“a cult of personality surrounding the leaders"synonyms:obsession with, fixation on, mania for, passion for, idolization of, devotion to, worship of, veneration of"the cult of eternal youth in Hollywood”

So.  I don’t know the exact science behind this but (I promise I’m not making this up) – the human brain sees patterns.  For most of human history - it’s been helpful.  However, it has kind of a strange side effect of – we start to see patterns when they aren’t really there.  Such as – hey, the burn mark on this grilled cheese sandwich looks like Jesus! Well, no, that burn mark is just a burn mark - but it’s shape is familiar to something you already know, hence your brain makes the connection. 

I don’t know where the origin of this story is, I wasn’t around when it became a thing, but from what I can tell - the story is that when Darren started on Glee, he had to hide his sexuality because there was a contract between – Fox? Ryan Murphy? His manager Ricky? I don’t fully understand who the evil PR people are in this scenario.  I don’t, also now that I think of it, really understand when Darren was supposed to have started dating Chris, ether.  I think it was Never Been Kissed week - but I don’t go far into their mythos.  And Mia was brought on as Darren’s beard to keep the secret alive.  

Is any of this probable? No.  Is any of this real? No.  A logical (and sane) person would look at the facts presented and see what reality is.  Darren says he’s straight and in a long term relationship with a woman named Mia.  That’s the simple truth.   But they’ve built such a deep narrative, and confined themselves in their own circle – to the point where they feel they are in an us against them scenario – that they’re almost unable, at this point, to be told anything but what they feel is true to be true.  One thing about cults – is that the only person who can get someone out is that person, unfortunately.  

In addition – there’s something about being a part of this that makes them feel special.  On their own, the conspiracy might just be another crazy conspiracy.  But if other people feel that way, well then it’s okay to indulge, it’s okay to really believe.  

The crux of this whole thing is that they these people want (or need - now that they’ve reached cult-like brainwashing status) Darren to be gay…or not straight.  That seems to be the biggest fixation.  And kind of like the crazies who thought the world was gonna end ind 2012 because of an ancient Mayan calendar - they feel that there will be a point where Darren ‘comes out’.  (It’s always soon, btw.)  But the okay now moment always gets pushed back.  It’s something that’s never gonna come, though, which makes these people’s lives sad, really.  

But I digress.  They’ve receded so far into this fantasy at this point that I don’t think Chris even matters to them much anymore.  I don’t think the story of Klaine matters much more than this is Darren and Chris making out.  I don’t think they even like Darren all that much, because he keeps disappointing them by not coming out.  They’re so fixated on Darren being gay that they’ve lost sight of everything except that one particular point.  

And they’ve wrapped themselves up in this pattern-seeking mentality.  Everything they twist to fix their own narrative.  As I joked about the Oscars - Chris wore blue and Darren wore red.  And we often saw, in Glee, Chris in blue and Darren in red.  The reality of it is - with their skin tones, the costume designers and the personal stylists know that blue looks good on Chris and Darren looks good in red.  But to a tinhatter - you have to make that fit your narrative.  Chris and Darren wore blue and red respectively on Glee, and now they wore it at the Oscars, it’s another sign of their secret love.  And, etc, etc with all the nonsense they’ve said over the years. 

So now, finally, to your question: 

Do you know if any of them have articulated why they think these two people would go through this much trouble and involve so many other people for so many years to hide their relationship?

Essentially, what they’ll tell you if you asked, is because it needs to fit the narrative – Darren is gay, so all those people being involved has to be true.  They want (need) Darren to be gay, so they literally have to twist reality to make it work. And the twisting is that all of these people, as highly improbable as it is, would be in on the conspiracy.  

The question I’ve always pondered is… why do they need Darren to be gay?  And I’m sure each have their own reason - from just not liking Mia, to some thinking Glee should be a documentary, to them liking the idea of Darren making out with men instead of women, etc, etc. (Or more so - why do they need to have Chris and Darren be in love?  Why is fictional Klaine not enough?)  But I guess that’s the biggest part that trips me up.  Why is reality worse for them than this made up fantasy land? 

The unfortunate thing is that most of them don’t realize or understand the real world consequences they’ve had.  Chris withdrew inward to get away from them.  Mia has endured a lot of shit because of them.  And there seem to be these extremists in every fandom - so it’s not a Glee specific thing, even if we’re directly effected by these particular ones.  

I think, as an aside, I also find it sad, and further frustrating, that there’ve been signs that some people begin to understand reality, questioning whether they’re right or not, and there are a few ring-leaders who – (whether they’re part of group two or group three I’m unsure) who pull them back in.  And thus makes it a cult.  Hey - Chris sounds sincere about just being friends!  Nope - you’re just seeing things, Chris is lying because he’s an actor and he secretly loves Darren.  Or… Darren looks so depressed with Mia (on a picture where he’s clearly in love with her).  And those ringleaders are really the ones that keep the followers in line.  It’s a cult.  And I hate that.  

What also makes it sad is that these people are so deeply invested that for some of these hard core believers - questioning the foundation of this reality almost breaks their brain – like they can’t comprehend the truth - because if they did, they’d have to reexamine the amount of time and energy spent on this false thing, and they’d rather have the security blanket of someone telling them they’re right instead facing that they’ve essentially been brainwashed - or have to face a reality they don’t really want.  

I mean think about the fact that Darren could have a kid with Mia, or personally tell them that he is not in love/in a relationship with Chris, and they still would not believe him.  Nothing, at this point, except themselves, can pull them out of it.  

It’s also so weird, and frustrating for us, and I wish they’d give it up, but unfortunately, I think a lot of them will be still stuck in their cult long after the rest of us have moved on.  But hopefully helps you understand how they got this way.  And how answering the question of ‘why’ is so complex.