What Happened to Chemtrails?

C C

C C

Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy"
Valued Senior Member
Pretty much a yawn to me either way, but I guess even the fading of conspiracies needs to be explained with respect to the study of them.

Potential activist chiming in with insights: "No, no. The rumors of our passing are exaggerated. The evil is still transpiring, and we're very much crusading against it yet..."
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What happened to chemtrails?
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2023/12/what-happened-to-chemtrails/

EXCERPTS (Mick West): . . . The chemtrails theory does not currently seem very popular. Google Trends reveals a strong surge in interest sustained from 2010 until about 2018. [...] It very rarely seemed to surface on social media. It seemed like it had gone away. So, what happened?

A few of the key players are no longer with us. [...] But others are still going strong...

A part of the reason we don’t hear about chemtrails despite the continued efforts of activists is that big tech does not want you to hear about it. Their documentaries no longer pop up in YouTube search results. A Google search returns only debunking pages (and music videos). Is it a cover-up?

Sort of. In 2019, I flew to New York to take part in a discussion with a consulting company working with a major social media company. I talked about how so many conspiracists found their way down the rabbit hole by watching a video on social media. A corporate representative was there, and he told me that was something they wanted to stop... (MORE - missing details)
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C C said:
Pretty much a yawn to me either way, but I guess even the fading of conspiracies needs to be explained with respect to the study of them.

Potential activist chiming in with insights: "No, no. The rumors of our passing are exaggerated. The evil is still transpiring, and we're very much crusading against it yet..."
- - - - - - - - - -

What happened to chemtrails?
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2023/12/what-happened-to-chemtrails/

EXCERPTS (Mick West): . . . The chemtrails theory does not currently seem very popular. Google Trends reveals a strong surge in interest sustained from 2010 until about 2018. [...] It very rarely seemed to surface on social media. It seemed like it had gone away. So, what happened?

A few of the key players are no longer with us. [...] But others are still going strong...

A part of the reason we don’t hear about chemtrails despite the continued efforts of activists is that big tech does not want you to hear about it. Their documentaries no longer pop up in YouTube search results. A Google search returns only debunking pages (and music videos). Is it a cover-up?

Sort of. In 2019, I flew to New York to take part in a discussion with a consulting company working with a major social media company. I talked about how so many conspiracists found their way down the rabbit hole by watching a video on social media. A corporate representative was there, and he told me that was something they wanted to stop... (MORE - missing details)
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I thought the more interesting part of that Mick West piece was this section, about what he calls "dynamic conspiracies":

"The rise of dynamic conspiracies in the 2020s, particularly QAnon, includes a lot of older theories by default. They are not given much thought, because they are old, but they are nevertheless accepted as reality. Thus, any good QAnon believer will know that John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed by the CIA. They know that 9/11 was an inside job. They have no doubt that climate change is a scam, and they will have no problem at all believing that chemtrails are a secret spraying plot by the government.

Old-fashioned conspiracists such as Dane Wigington would believe a wide range of conspiracies, but they tend to focus on one thing, such as chemtrails, and stick with it for decades. Modern conspiracists are much more flexible, jumping from one new thing to another but with a solid foundation of traditional conspiracy beliefs."

What he is suggesting is that nowadays we have sort of umbrella conspiracist groups, like QAnon, who embrace a whole series of individual conspiracy theories, the common thread being that the government is, in various ways, doing nefarious things to the population in secret.

This of course undermines trust in government, which is why Trump, being bent on sidelining government to establish a personal autocracy, likes to give it tacit encouragement.
 
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