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imawolempressions · 26 days ago

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🎙️ Crazytown Chronicles: “They Wouldn’t Lie to Us?”

By The Empress | TheEmpressPress.blog

“While regular broadcasting has been interrupted… let me reintroduce you to the facts.”

Some say, “They wouldn’t lie to us.”

To that I say:

Yeah. They would. And they did.

See, I keep telling y’all—I was on the President’s List every semester in Business school. Top of the class. Honor roll. Dean’s List. You name it.

And guess what the most valuable lesson I learned was?

Fake it till you make it.

Let that marinate.

🧠 The Autistic Mystic Mind: A Natural Lie Detector

Neurodivergent minds—especially autistic ones—are hardwired for pattern recognition. We spot inconsistencies, read between the lines, and feel the dissonance before others even notice the disconnect.

Psychologically, this isn’t magic—it’s science.

✳️ FACT:

Autistic individuals have been shown to exhibit increased systemizing abilities, meaning we analyze the rules, logic, and structure of environments. (Baron-Cohen, S., 2002: “The extreme male brain theory of autism”)

This often allows us to see institutional contradictions that neurotypicals ignore because they’re conditioned to prioritize social harmony over factual accuracy.

So when I say I “connect the dots,” understand that it’s not a feeling—it’s a calculation.

💸 Lies Are Lucrative: The Business of Deception

From education to medicine to religion (don’t worry, we’ll save those sermons for a rainy day), deception is not a bug in the system—it’s the system’s entire business model.

Let’s start with education.

⚖️ LAW: Every child is entitled under IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) to a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE).

Yet schools:

Mislabel kids to redirect funding

Over-pathologize Black and Brown children for being “too active” or “non-compliant”

Under-identify ADHD and autism in girls

Prioritize order over understanding

All while pushing behavior plans that are nothing more than compliance contracts designed to make life easier for staff—not students.

📚 Legal Reference: 20 U.S. Code § 1412 – State Eligibility; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

Now why would they lie?

Because truth doesn't pay—but dysfunction does. IEP meetings filled with jargon. Overworked teachers with no trauma training. Parents gaslit into silence. And children… silenced altogether.

🤥 Neurotypicals Will Gaslight the Galaxy Before Admitting They Were Wrong

I’ve always said:

“You can’t tell a neurodivergent brain nothin’ if it doesn’t make sense.”

We’re allergic to illogic. We reject contradiction. And if the math ain’t mathin’? We don’t go along to get along.

But for those who say “they wouldn’t lie”… let me ask this:

Why did medical journals suppress research on Black pain tolerance for decades?

Why were autistic women and girls excluded from research until the late 1990s?

Why are schools still using discipline models designed in the Jim Crow era?

Why do Black children make up 15% of the student population but 43% of suspensions?

📚 Source: U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2016 Civil Rights Data Collection

If truth were told, the entire system would collapse. So instead, they gaslight. They rebrand oppression as “support.” They call trauma “defiance.” They call survival “laziness.”

But I see it.

🏚️ The System Was Built for Their Comfort—Not Our Freedom

Let’s tell the truth: this whole setup was rigged from the beginning.

Education wasn’t built for the curious. It was built to create compliant workers.

Mental health wasn’t built for healing. It was built to manage and monitor.

“Support plans” weren’t made to understand your child. They were made to control them.

So yeah—they’d lie. Because if they told the truth, there’d be no profit in it. No diagnosis quotas. No special ed budgets manipulated. No rich pockets staying rich.

And they’d never admit it—because when the neurodivergent mind connects the dots, we expose what they need to stay hidden.

⚠️ The Neurodivergent Truth: Feelings Come Last. Facts Are Everything.

Autistic people don’t play about facts. We don’t bend reality to keep people comfortable. We say what we see.

And what I see is this:

A system built to fail us

Professionals protecting their paychecks, not our children

Whole institutions gaslighting parents into silence

And a society shocked when someone finally dares to call it what it is

So if it hurts to learn the truth… Maybe you should ask yourself why it was so easy to believe the lie.

👑 Final Word From The Empress of Pattern Recognition

They wouldn’t lie to us?

They lied. They gaslit. They branded it policy.

But here’s the thing: they never expected someone to come along and trace the whole map back to its origin. They never expected a neurodivergent mind to not only connect the dots—but to publish them.

But that’s exactly what I’m doing. And I’m just getting started.

🌀 Keep watching the sky. Keep questioning the system. Keep reading the truth. 📡 Only on TheEmpressPress.blog. For the misunderstood, mislabeled, and mighty—we see you. We got you. We are you.

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ahopkins1965 · 8 months ago

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Your Brain Type Results

Your Empathy score (EQ): 12

Most females score 6 to 16.

Most males score 4 to 15.

If you score 0 to 4 you are low on empathy, and if you score 16 to 20 you score high on empathy.

Your Systemizing score (SQ): 16

Most females score 2 to 9.

Most males score 3 to 11.

If you score 0 to 3 you are low in your systemizing drive, and if you score 12 to 20, you are high on your systemizing drive.

Your brain type classification: Type S

33% of people are classified as Type E (their EQ score is greater than their SQ score).

33% are classified as Type S (their SQ is greater than their EQ).

30% are classified as Type B for balanced (their EQ and SQ are relatively equal).

2% of people are classified as Extreme Type E (EQ is much greater than SQ).

2% of people are classified as Extreme Type S (SQ is much greater than EQ).

What are brain types?

Most people can be categorized into 1 of 5 cognitive ‘brain types’. Your brain type is an indication of how you score on two important dimensions of the mind: empathy and systemizing.

Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s thoughts and feelings and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. Systemizing is the ability to identify lawful patterns in the world, and the drive to analyse or construct systems.

If you are Type E (empathizing) this means your drive to empathize is greater than your drive to systemize. If you are Type S (systemizing), this means your drive to systemize is greater than your drive to empathize. Those with a Type B (balanced) brain type have relatively equal drives to empathize and systemize. Extreme Type E are people who are super-empathic whilst their systemizing is intact or even below average. Extreme Type S are people who are hyper-systemizers whilst their empathy is intact or even below average.

On average, more men than women have a Type S brain type and more women than men have a Type E brain type. It is suggested that these brain types are caused by genetic and prenatal hormonal levels (2,3), as well as by environmental factors.

Score Calculation.

Your brain type was calculated based on your responses to 10-item versions of the Empathy Quotient (EQ) (1, 4) and Systemizing Quotient-Revised (SQ-R) (1, 5). These two scores together provide an indication of your ‘brain type’.

References

1. Baron-Cohen, S. (2003). The Essential Difference: Men, women, and the extreme male brains. Penguin.

2. Baron-Cohen, S. (2012). Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new understanding of cruelty and kindness. Penguin.

3. Baron-Cohen, S. (2020). The Pattern Seekers: A new theory of human invention. Penguin.

4. Greenberg, D. M., Warrier, V., Allison, C. & Baron-Cohen, S. (2018). Testing the Empathizing-Systemizing theory of sex differences and the Extreme Male Brain theory of autism in half a million people. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi:10.1073/pnas.1811032115

Your AQ Results

Your AQ score: 2

Most non-autistic people score 1 to 5.

Most autistic people score 6 to 10.

What is the AQ?

Autistic traits fall on a spectrum and can be observed in the entire population. Autistic traits can be measured with the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). The AQ is not a diagnostic tool, but rather measures autistic traits in the general population and in autistic people. If you have concerns that predate completing the AQ-10, and you score 6 or above, you may want to consider asking your family doctor to be referred for a specialist diagnostic assessment.

Would you like to subscribe to our mailing list and be emailed once a month with new tests to take? If so, please enter your email address below to subscribe.

You may now exit this site or continue to take more brief tests.

Continue

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grainelevator · 11 months ago

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Extreme male brain theory of autism

#lol you guys know that one?

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jessicalprice · 2 years ago

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Bear in mind also that there’s an uptick in right-wingers (I assume from the chans) treating autism as some sort of hyper-rational supremacy, who are almost certainly self-diagnosed.

(My theory on why is that they read the titles but not the text of studies on autism as the “extreme male brain” and salivated all over the idea as making them more masculine.)

So, I dunno, when you come across a blog with autism or autist in the name you probably want to check their feed if you don’t already do that with everyone you reply to.

And just to follow up on that previous reblog without derailing it: a lot of the really weird relationships and discourse that exist out there in the neo-pagan, Satanist, and atheist communities are in fact echoes of the weird relationship that Xtianity has with Judaism.

Xtianity has a weird, tumultuous relationship with Judaism because they must simultaneously validate the Tanakh and the Jews who created it or else their own religion is devoid of context and built on a house of cards. But! If they validate Judaism, then they have to grapple with the fact that the Jews did not accept their interpretation of the Tanakh, that we still, against all odds, exist, and that because we still exist, we are still around to point out the ways in which the New Testament does not fit with the Tanakh and that the Tanakh does not inherently or naturally point to Jesus. And that's to say nothing of the bloody history of Xtianity towards Judaism. Our continued existence is a sore point and a weakness in the Xtian narrative that has been a constant source of irritation, frustration, and violence since the dawn of Xtianity. And, at the same time, there is a certain fascination with Judaism related to things that have been appropriated by Xtians or understood as particularly useful in spreading supercessionist ideas. So what you wind up with is a toxic mix of antisemitism and philosemitism (effectively fetishization and orientalism) that drives too many Xtians to "love" us by attacking our beliefs and way of life, and stealing whatever they think will be most helpful in their mission (especially as it pertains to Jews) in order to try and convert us.**

Many people who have also been hurt from inside of Xtianity or by the broader Xtian culture they live in seek to deconstruct those ideas by creating an inverse of Xtianity in one way or another. Those who turn to Satanism typically do this by worshipping the opposite force of the Xtian god. Those who turn to neo-paganism typically do this by embracing an unambiguously polytheistic religion and/or by turning to the cultural historical enemies of Xtianity. Those who turn to atheism typically do this by rejecting "God," "faith," and "organized religion" (as these concepts are understood by Xtian norms.)

And honestly? That's fine. If it helps, if it brings you meaning and joy, knock yourselves out. I have no problem with people turning to these beliefs for reasons of healing as well as simply being drawn to it. And for what it's worth, I did a similar thing by turning to Judaism. Obviously I had many other reasons for becoming a Jew as well, and I assume that's true for the aforementioned folks, too. Judaism healed a lot of Xtianity-shaped wounds for me, and if your paganism, Satanism, and/or atheism helps you in the same way as well as bringing you meaning, I sincerely wish you the best.

However, the problem is that many times, unless you turn to Judaism and learn our side of the story, it's very difficult to deconstruct the antisemitism of your past entanglement with Xtianity. Xtian antisemitism has permeated western society so thoroughly for so long that it is real *work* to identify and unlearn it. Those converting to Judaism have the benefit of the Jewish community and extensive educational resources to help. Other folks do not.

Here's the problem: if you simply invert Xtian ideas, you are still treating Xtianity as the baseline reality from which your other assumptions and beliefs flow. If you just choose the opposite at every chance, you divorce yourself from Xtianity, but not its prejudices.

Now you might fairly ask, "hey Avital, if we are making the opposite choice at every turn, wouldn't that invert the antisemitism to being at least neutral if not positive towards Judaism?" And that would be perfectly logical! But unfortunately deeply and (for us) dangerously incorrect.

The reason is because (1) antisemitism has never been rational but reactionary instead, (2) philosemitism is also bad, and (3) it is structured in a way that it's pretty much always "heads I win, tails you lose." Have you ever noticed that according to antisemites, Jews are both ultra-white and also dirty foreign middle eastern invaders? That we are supposedly very powerful and run the world, but are also weak and degenerate? That both the Right and the Left have extensive antisemitism problems? Etc.? There's a reason - it's because antisemitism is designed to other us no matter what. So oftentimes I see folks inverting Xtian philosemitism to being "those awful fundamentalist Old Testamenters" or inverting Xtian antisemitism to valorizing Judaism, but only to the extent that they can meme-ify our religion down to fighting God and/or being un-pious godless liberals.

But like other groups, we are a diverse and complicated group with a very long history and a lot of trauma to boot.

If you're trying to unpack your Xtian conditioning, please also unpack your antisemitism and philosemitism. If not for our sake and for it being the right thing to do, at least do it for yourselves, because unless you deconstruct that as well, you will still be operating within a really ugly aspect of a Xtian mindset.

(**Please note that this isn't literally all Xtians everywhere, but it is a lot of Xtians in most places and throughout most of history. There are absolutely Xtians who are good allies to Jews, but they are much smaller in number and are swimming upstream in their relationship to both Jews and Xtianity.)

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gatheringbones · 2 years ago

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[“Due in part to the prevalence of the ‘extreme male brain’ theory of autism spectrum conditions in the 90s, and the fact that clinicians had not yet shaken themselves free of the association between an autism diagnosis and perceived ‘male’ behaviour, my not fitting into traditionally masculine trait categories worked against me. Many of the more disruptive aspects of traditionally male stereotypes were in the 90s part and parcel of a clinician’s willingness to diagnose autism, and because my autism presented in a way that was more in line with people assigned female at birth with the condition, I was just somewhat overlooked.

While there’s not yet any firm list of differences between boys with autism and girls with autism, there are several observed differences in autism presentation that are now generally accepted as existing, and being overlooked by current diagnostic tool assumptions. These are not hard and fast rules, but some things that can make it troublesome for women to achieve a diagnosis. Girls with autism tend to have less trouble than their male peers socialising in their early years, but have a spike in difficulty entering their teen years. Girls with autism are more likely than boys to demonstrate a comorbidity with SSRI-treatable depression. Where boys with autism tend to be disruptive to gain access to physical items, girls with autism tend to be disruptive more often for human attention and contact. Girls with autism tend to be more passive, self-isolating and withdrawn, compared to boys with the condition who tend to be more outwardly aggressive. Girls with autism are also often more able than their male peers to follow pointing fingers and to gaze track.

While none of the above are absolutes, they are factors that are important, because they’re all aspects of autism that applied to me growing up, in spite of my being designated male at birth. I was designated male, but was displaying more traditionally feminine expressions of autism. Pair that with the fact that twenty years ago these differences were overlooked by the male-focused diagnostic criteria of old, and you start to see how the diagnostic system overlooked me.”]

laura kate dale, from uncomfortable labels: my life as a gay autistic trans woman

#laura kate dale #lesbian literature #trans literature #currently reading

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autism-unfiltered · 2 years ago

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Understanding the Gender Disparity in Autism - A Scientific Approach

Recent studies suggest that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) affects males more frequently than females. This disparity has triggered a plethora of research focused on exploring the genetic and biological factors underpinning this phenomenon.

One theory attributes the higher prevalence in males to the "male brain hypothesis," suggesting that autistic traits may be an extreme manifestation of male cognitive patterns. This theory is backed up by research indicating a higher level of fetal testosterone in males who later develop autism.

Genetically, some researchers have considered the role of the X chromosome in this gender disparity. Males have one X chromosome (from the mother) and one Y chromosome (from the father), while females have two X chromosomes. It's possible that some of the genes on the X chromosome could be protective against autism, and because males have only one X chromosome, they would have less protection against these genes.

Furthermore, some autism-related genes have been found on the Y chromosome, which could partly explain why males are more often affected.

From a statistical standpoint, the CDC estimates that ASD is 4 times more common among boys than among girls. This statistic further solidifies the higher male prevalence in autism diagnoses.

Although the 'camouflaging' effect, where females may mask or compensate for their autism traits, can influence diagnosis rates, the genetic and biological factors mentioned above provide a solid foundation to understand the underlying male predominance in autism.

Remember, understanding these gender disparities can aid in creating better diagnostic tools and intervention strategies for both genders.

Baron-Cohen, S. et al., (2011). Why Are Autism Spectrum Conditions More Prevalent in Males?

Werling, D.M., & Geschwind, D.H. (2013). Understanding Sex Bias in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network. (2020). Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children Aged 8 Years.

#autism #neurodiversity #genderdisparity #science #malebrainhypothesis #genetics #statistics

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missmentelle · 4 years ago

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Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

If you’ve been paying attention for the last couple of years, you might have noticed that the world has a bit of a misinformation problem.

The problem isn’t just with the recent election conspiracies, either. The last couple of years has brought us the rise (and occasionally fall) of misinformation-based movements like:

Sandy Hook conspiracies

Gamergate

Pizzagate

The MRA/incel/MGTOW movements

anti-vaxxers

flat-earthers

the birther movement

the Illuminati

climate change denial

Spygate

Holocaust denial

COVID-19 denial

5G panic

QAnon

But why do people believe this stuff?

It would be easy - too easy - to say that people fall for this stuff because they’re stupid. We all want to believe that smart people like us are immune from being taken in by deranged conspiracies. But it’s just not that simple. People from all walks of life are going down these rabbit holes - people with degrees and professional careers and rich lives have fallen for these theories, leaving their loved ones baffled. Decades-long relationships have splintered this year, as the number of people flocking to these conspiracies out of nowhere reaches a fever pitch.

So why do smart people start believing some incredibly stupid things? It’s because:

Our brains are built to identify patterns.

Our brains fucking love puzzles and patterns. This is a well-known phenomenon called apophenia, and at one point, it was probably helpful for our survival - the prehistoric human who noticed patterns in things like animal migration, plant life cycles and the movement of the stars was probably a lot more likely to survive than the human who couldn’t figure out how to use natural clues to navigate or find food.

The problem, though, is that we can’t really turn this off. Even when we’re presented with completely random data, we’ll see patterns. We see patterns in everything, even when there’s no pattern there. This is why people see Jesus in a burnt piece of toast or get superstitious about hockey playoffs or insist on always playing at a certain slot machine - our brains look for patterns in the constant barrage of random information in our daily lives, and insist that those patterns are really there, even when they’re completely imagined.

A lot of conspiracy theories have their roots in people making connections between things that aren’t really connected. The belief that “vaccines cause autism” was bolstered by the fact that the first recognizable symptoms of autism happen to appear at roughly the same time that children receive one of their rounds of childhood immunizations - the two things are completely unconnected, but our brains have a hard time letting go of the pattern they see there. Likewise, many people were quick to latch on to the fact that early maps of COVID infections were extremely similar to maps of 5G coverage - the fact that there’s a reasonable explanation for this (major cities are more likely to have both high COVID cases AND 5G networks) doesn’t change the fact that our brains just really, really want to see a connection there.

Our brains love proportionality.

Specifically, our brains like effects to be directly proportional to their causes - in other words, we like it when big events have big causes, and small causes only lead to small events. It’s uncomfortable for us when the reverse is true. And so anytime we feel like a “big” event (celebrity death, global pandemic, your precious child is diagnosed with autism) has a small or unsatisfying cause (car accident, pandemics just sort of happen every few decades, people just get autism sometimes), we sometimes feel the need to start looking around for the bigger, more sinister, “true” cause of that event.

Consider, for instance, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times by a Turkish member of a known Italian paramilitary secret society who’d recently escaped from prison - on the surface, it seems like the sort of thing conspiracy theorists salivate over, seeing how it was an actual multinational conspiracy. But they never had much interest in the assassination attempt. Why? Because the Pope didn’t die. He recovered from his injuries and went right back to Pope-ing. The event didn’t have a serious outcome, and so people are content with the idea that one extremist carried it out. The death of Princess Diana, however, has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories; even though a woman dying in a car accident is less weird than a man being shot four times by a paid political assassin, her death has attracted more conspiracy theories because it had a bigger outcome. A princess dying in a car accident doesn’t feel big enough. It’s unsatisfying. We want such a monumentous moment in history to have a bigger, more interesting cause.

These theories prey on pre-existing fear and anger.

Are you a terrified new parent who wants the best for their child and feels anxious about having them injected with a substance you don’t totally understand? Congrats, you’re a prime target for the anti-vaccine movement. Are you a young white male who doesn’t like seeing more and more games aimed at women and minorities, and is worried that “your” gaming culture is being stolen from you? You might have been very interested in something called Gamergate. Are you a right-wing white person who worries that “your” country and way of life is being stolen by immigrants, non-Christians and coastal liberals? You’re going to love the “all left-wingers are Satantic pedo baby-eaters” messaging of QAnon.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories are often aimed strategically at the anxieties and fears that people are already experiencing. No one likes being told that their fears are insane or irrational; it’s not hard to see why people gravitate towards communities that say “yes, you were right all along, and everyone who told you that you were nuts to be worried about this is just a dumb sheep. We believe you, and we have evidence that you were right along, right here.” Fear is a powerful motivator, and you can make people believe and do some pretty extreme things if you just keep telling them “yes, that thing you’re afraid of is true, but also it’s way worse than you could have ever imagined.”

Real information is often complicated, hard to understand, and inherently unsatisfying.

The information that comes from the scientific community is often very frustrating for a layperson; we want science to have hard-and-fast answers, but it doesn’t. The closest you get to a straight answer is often “it depends” or “we don’t know, but we think X might be likely”. Understanding the results of a scientific study with any confidence requires knowing about sampling practices, error types, effect sizes, confidence intervals and publishing biases. Even asking a simple question like “is X bad for my child” will usually get you a complicated, uncertain answer - in most cases, it really just depends. Not understanding complex topics makes people afraid - it makes it hard to trust that they’re being given the right information, and that they’re making the right choices.

Conspiracy theories and misinformation, on the other hand, are often simple, and they are certain. Vaccines bad. Natural things good. 5G bad. Organic food good. The reason girls won’t date you isn’t a complex combination of your social skills, hygiene, appearance, projected values, personal circumstances, degree of extroversion, luck and life phase - girls won’t date you because feminism is bad, and if we got rid of feminism you’d have a girlfriend. The reason Donald Trump was an unpopular president wasn’t a complex combination of his public bigotry, lack of decorum, lack of qualifications, open incompetence, nepotism, corruption, loss of soft power, refusal to uphold the basic responsibilities of his position or his constant lying - they hated him because he was fighting a secret sex cult and they’re all in it.

Instead of making you feel stupid because you’re overwhelmed with complex information, expert opinions and uncertain advice, conspiracy theories make you feel smart - smarter, in fact, than everyone who doesn’t believe in them. And that’s a powerful thing for people living in a credential-heavy world.

Many conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable.

It is very difficult to prove a negative. If I tell you, for instance, that there’s no such thing as a purple swan, it would be very difficult for me to actually prove that to you - I could spend the rest of my life photographing swans and looking for swans and talking to people who know a lot about swans, and yet the slim possibility would still exist that there was a purple swan out there somewhere that I just hadn’t found yet. That’s why, in most circumstances, the burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim - if you tell me that purple swans exist, we should continue to assume that they don’t until you actually produce a purple swan.

Conspiracy theories, however, are built so that it’s nearly impossible to “prove” them wrong. Is there any proof that the world’s top-ranking politicians and celebrities are all in a giant child sex trafficking cult? No. But can you prove that they aren’t in a child sex-trafficking cult? No, not really. Even if I, again, spent the rest of my life investigating celebrities and following celebrities and talking to people who know celebrities, I still couldn’t definitely prove that this cult doesn’t exist - there’s always a chance that the specific celebrities I’ve investigated just aren’t in the cult (but other ones are!) or that they’re hiding evidence of the cult even better than we think. Lack of evidence for a conspiracy theory is always treated as more evidence for the theory - we can’t find anything because this goes even higher up than we think! They’re even more sophisticated at hiding this than we thought! People deeply entrenched in these theories don’t even realize that they are stuck in a circular loop where everything seems to prove their theory right - they just see a mountain of “evidence” for their side.

Our brains are very attached to information that we “learned” by ourselves.

Learning accurate information is not a particularly interactive or exciting experience. An expert or reliable source just presents the information to you in its entirety, you read or watch the information, and that’s the end of it. You can look for more information or look for clarification of something, but it’s a one-way street - the information is just laid out for you, you take what you need, end of story.

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, almost never show their hand all at once. They drop little breadcrumbs of information that slowly lead you where they want you to go. This is why conspiracy theorists are forever telling you to “do your research” - they know that if they tell you everything at once, you won’t believe them. Instead, they want you to indoctrinate yourself slowly over time, by taking the little hints they give you and running off to find or invent evidence that matches that clue. If I tell you that celebrities often wear symbols that identify them as part of a cult and that you should “do your research” about it, you can absolutely find evidence that substantiates my claim - there are literally millions of photos of celebrities out there, and anyone who looks hard enough is guaranteed to find common shapes, poses and themes that might just mean something (they don’t - eyes and triangles are incredibly common design elements, and if I took enough pictures of you, I could also “prove” that you also clearly display symbols that signal you’re in the cult).

The fact that you “found” the evidence on your own, however, makes it more meaningful to you. We trust ourselves, and we trust that the patterns we uncover by ourselves are true. It doesn’t feel like you’re being fed misinformation - it feels like you’ve discovered an important truth that “they” didn’t want you to find, and you’ll hang onto that for dear life.

Older people have not learned to be media-literate in a digital world.

Fifty years ago, not just anyone could access popular media. All of this stuff had a huge barrier to entry - if you wanted to be on TV or be in the papers or have a radio show, you had to be a professional affiliated with a major media brand. Consumers didn’t have easy access to niche communities or alternative information - your sources of information were basically your local paper, the nightly news, and your morning radio show, and they all more or less agreed on the same set of facts. For decades, if it looked official and it appeared in print, you could probably trust that it was true.

Of course, we live in a very different world today - today, any asshole can accumulate an audience of millions, even if they have no credentials and nothing they say is actually true (like “The Food Babe”, a blogger with no credentials in medicine, nutrition, health sciences, biology or chemistry who peddles health misinformation to the 3 million people who visit her blog every month). It’s very tough for older people (and some younger people) to get their heads around the fact that it’s very easy to create an “official-looking” news source, and that they can’t necessarily trust everything they find on the internet. When you combine that with a tendency toward “clickbait headlines” that often misrepresent the information in the article, you have a generation struggling to determine who they can trust in a media landscape that doesn’t at all resemble the media landscape they once knew.

These beliefs become a part of someone’s identity.

A person doesn’t tell you that they believe in anti-vaxx information - they tell you that they ARE an anti-vaxxer. Likewise, people will tell you that they ARE a flat-earther, a birther, or a Gamergater. By design, these beliefs are not meant to be something you have a casual relationship with, like your opinion of pizza toppings or how much you trust local weather forecasts - they are meant to form a core part of your identity.

And once something becomes a core part of your identity, trying to make you stop believing it becomes almost impossible. Once we’ve formed an initial impression of something, facts just don’t change our minds. If you identify as an antivaxxer and I present evidence that disproves your beliefs, in your mind, I’m not correcting inaccurate information - I am launching a very personal attack against a core part of who you are. In fact, the more evidence I present, the more you will burrow down into your antivaxx beliefs, more confident than ever that you are right. Admitting that you are wrong about something that is important to you is painful, and your brain would prefer to simply deflect conflicting information rather than subject you to that pain.

We can see this at work with something called the confirmation bias. Simply put, once we believe something, our brains hold on to all evidence that that belief is true, and ignore evidence that it’s false. If I show you 100 articles that disprove your pet theory and 3 articles that confirm it, you’ll cling to those 3 articles and forget about the rest. Even if I show you nothing but articles that disprove your theory, you’ll likely go through them and pick out any ambiguous or conflicting information as evidence for “your side”, even if the conclusion of the article shows that you are wrong - our brains simply care about feeling right more than they care about what is actually true.

There is a strong community aspect to these theories.

There is no one quite as supportive or as understanding as a conspiracy theorist - provided, of course, that you believe in the same conspiracy theories that they do. People who start looking into these conspiracy theories are told that they aren’t crazy, and that their fears are totally valid. They’re told that the people in their lives who doubted them were just brainwashed sheep, but that they’ve finally found a community of people who get where they’re coming from. Whenever they report back to the group with the “evidence” they’ve found or the new elaborations on the conspiracy theory that they’ve been thinking of (“what if it’s even worse than we thought??”), they are given praise for their valuable contributions. These conspiracy groups often become important parts of people’s social networks - they can spend hours every day talking with like-minded people from these communities and sharing their ideas.

Of course, the flipside of this is that anyone who starts to doubt or move away from the conspiracy immediately loses that community and social support. People who have broken away from antivaxx and QAnon often say that the hardest part of leaving was losing the community and friendships they’d built - not necessarily giving up on the theory itself. Many people are rejected by their real-life friends and family once they start to get entrenched in conspiracy theories; the friendships they build online in the course of researching these theories often become the only social supports they have left, and losing those supports means having no one to turn to at all. This is by design - the threat of losing your community has kept people trapped in abusive religious sects and cults for as long as those things have existed.

#missmentelle #askmissmentelle #conspiracy theories #cults #psychology #science #neuroscience

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