re: Conservatives More Likely To Believe Conspiracy Theories

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Didn’t this board have a massive Q thread? Kind of proving the study’s point…

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At the same time, didn’t Chicken try to quarantine the nutcases ON that thread and limit contamination of the rest of the board?

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Registered on: 10/24/2025

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Does it seem that RW media tends to be more entertainment-driven while LW media tends to skew more sanctimonious and that’s why it appears CT are mostly a conservative phenomenon?

The RW ecosystem prioritizes emotional engagement, outrage, humor, and simple "us vs. them" narratives. Because CTs are inherently sensational, dramatic, and emotionally intense, this media style is perfectly suited to introduce, amplify, and sustain them.

The LW ecosystem focuses heavily on policy process, institutional critique, fact-checking, and moralizing about societal change. While they have their own CTs (corporate plots, elite cover-ups), the overall style is often too serious and dry to effectively circulate the high-drama, simplified narratives common in modern political conspiracies.

The political slant of those who entertain or subscribe to CTs might have more to do with the media's business model and style than the actual political beliefs.

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Last century and especially post-WWII we got massive expansion of secrecy, classification, compartmentalization. No one can know the whole picture anymore, even inside government. That “Top Men” moment from Indiana Jones basically captures the civic mood.

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It’s important to note that the public also started becoming aware of the profound ethical betrayals the government committed against its own people during this same period, too. Consider the Belmont Report which was produced largely in response to a series of high-profile psychological and medical studies that raised serious ethical questions about the protection of human subjects in research (the most famous and possibly egregious being the Tuskegee Syphilis Study). When the government’s betrayal of Americans is publicized, we’d be foolish to take any government narratives at face value.

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So I don’t think enjoying conspiracies is the problem. It’s when the enjoyment itself becomes the business model, and truth becomes optional, that things go sideways.

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Even if we take the media's business model out of the equation, certain structural critiques or explanations of systemic corruption (calling them conspiracy theories cheapens them out the gate) are still immediately dismissed by large segments of people, typically along political lines. For example, suggesting that the government has a vested, structural interest in mass incarceration (to ensure cheap prison labor and/or a class of desperate workers) is immediately scoffed at by people, often along political lines, despite the historical evidence of its economic function.

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So I don’t think enjoying conspiracies is the problem. It’s when the enjoyment itself becomes the business model, and truth becomes optional, that things go sideways.

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The commodification (enshitification) of conspiracy theories has ruined them for everyone. Capitalism is why we can’t have nice things (or it’s the only reason we do have nice things, depending on who you ask).

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the Secret Service tried to assassinate Trump

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I don't believe that. I think they just didn't do anything to prevent it.

What's the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth? (About six months). Do a little digging and see who coined the phrase as a psyop? It worked quite well and continues to do so.

Facts are facts, not interpreted into what makes people feel good. Not alternative opinions.

Conspiracy theories do just that.
Kinda like Qanon and BBond on here.

MAGA people are all about that, bc they hear what they want to make them feel good. It doesn't matter if they are wrong in what the truth is.

That's why we are where we are in todays world.

Yes, most smart leftists are conspirators and we know about the rest of them.

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truth becomes optional,

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Agreed, optional truth, my truth, his truth.

Its all a path to evil.

When the left cares more about not hurting the feelings of a man pretending to be a woman than the truth that he is and will always be a male.

When Germans decided that excusing their loss as stabbed in the back was less embarrassing than their total collapse of morale on the Western Front.

When some decide that they want to ignore the Holocaust, or slavery or indeed any awkward part of history.

When they would rather imagine themselves as great, to LARP as the hero, then to actually try to be good.

Without truth it is only rule of the strongest, the law of the jungle.

95%+ of what the mainstream media calls "conspiracy theories" are true.

fact.