The Most Tedious Game

Interesting take on the the Q-ball "phenomenon." Like just about everything else, it makes sense in a weird way that this dopey, disjointed viral narrative -- which really doesn't even qualify as a conspiracy theory, since such things generally are used to explain things that have already occurred -- might really be the result of gamifying garden-variety internet pranksterism.

If there aren't already, there will likely be plenty of behavioral psychology studies and books regarding this sort of thing. This transcends the "is the dress blue or white" / "Laurel-Yanni" types of pop-culture takes from a few years ago. Nor is it quite the "epistemic closure" phenomenon that's immolated the political culture, such as it is, of this sweltering husk of a nation.

It's not even about the nature of "belief," since even cults are more or less consistent in the general arcs of their tenets, where the Q-balls just pile things up higher, as the last layer of revelations gradually prove to be untrue. Some of it may be the "inside knowledge" that conspiracy theories generally claim to impart, but even that doesn't adequately explain how people get tethered to shifting, increasingly loopy narratives.

It's really about how people get disenfranchised and disconnected from their corrupt political system, and so they construct a parallel system that operates in an alternate reality with its own peculiar mythos. Some of this is understandable -- the established system is such a transparent racket, so shamelessly awash in dark money from the sociopathic billionaires who really run this popsicle stand, it only bothers to be slightly responsive on whatever hot-button issue is currently distracting the rubes from their pockets being emptied. That is by design.

So which is really the more harmful -- in terms of actual, practical, real-world effects on ordinary people -- conspiracy theory:  the fanciful troll-narrative of Hitlery and her assorted minions running a cannibal pedophile ring from one of Uncle Jeff's secret islands in the Bahamas; or the idea that severe, ongoing wealth inequality can be comprehensively addressed by, say, modest tax breaks and loan prioritization for minority-owned small businesses?