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Eight US states seek to outlaw chemtrails – even though they aren’t real (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 day ago by abacabadabacaba@infosec.pub to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I was somewhat flippantly lumping conspiracy theorists together as a community, expressing an observation that the idiots who believe jet liners are spraying mind control chemicals are likely to also believe in bullshit like flat earth or anti-vax or all manner of other shit we just should not tolerate as a society.

But welcome to the internet where casual discussions must also be MLA formatted research papers because somebody's going to take your words as ridiculously literal as they can.

Those nuggets of truth are absolutely real. It's why I bring up TEL in AVGAS, there are airplanes hosing the place down with neurotoxins, it's a real problem. Fortunately there's a robust plan to fix it, and I'm surprised it hasn't been canceled by the Trump regime already.

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Fair enough. It just annoys me when conspiracies are lumped together.

One person believing the earth is flat has no relation to someone believing that industry executives hide the harmful effects of their products. Yet both are labelled conspiracy theorists.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Folks who buy into conspiracy theories may buy into more than one, often for similar reasons. A lot of them boil down to "Big They is trying to control you by putting X in the Y, so don't eat the Y" and if you're willing to buy that story once you're probably willing to buy it again. While I don't think the myths have much to do with each other, I bet you'll find a lot of "chemtrail" believers also...being afraid of 5G cell networks? Vaccines. Whatever they don't understand.

Industry executives hiding the harmful effects of their products definitely happens though. It's quite well documented.

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

The reason I gave those two examples was to highlight that conspiracy can range from false to (almost certainly) true.

Folks who buy into conspiracy theories may buy into more than one, often for similar reasons.

I have no data on this but suspect it is more true for lower IQ than higher IQ.

However, I don't believe it should be a standard assumption. Considering one topic to be possible doesn't automatically imply a person believes in something else.