Conspiracy Fatigue

The threat is real — but so is your paranoia

Joe Allen

March 28, 2024

As a kid, I loved the conspiracy genre. The idea that “they’re all in on it” thrilled me — like bungee-jumping into a kabbalistic abyss. In retrospect, it simplified things and it made hate so convenient!

I pored over eccentric literature about the secret cabals who rule our world: the New World Order, the Illuminati, the Masons, the KKK, the crypto-Nazis, quasi-Cthulu cultists, ET infiltrators, geoengineers, the Catholics, the Satanists, the Black Mass popes, the Southern Baptist sodomites, the Moloch Owl-worshipping Republicans, the psychedelic Hindoo pagans, thermite, holograms, Total Information Awareness, genetically modified yogurt, etc.

One of my favorite takes was the 1975 novel The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Absolutely brilliant.

I always wanted to do a graphic novel about a superintelligent, voodoo-doing African Illuminati who secretly control the supremacist Anglo empire. There would be robot rappers and Shriners racing up a Tree of Life go-kart track and a heroic cyborg autist wearing a Nintendo Power Glove.

But now the real empire is crumbling, and besides, who has the time?

As I got older, there were tons of new cabals to add to my trading card stack: the military-industrial complex, the corporate fascists, the commies, the CIA, drug cartels, nuclear secret sharers, the Jews, taqiyya-telling Muslims, reptilians, Gnostics, the CFR, the Bilderbergers, Google, Apple, Yahoo!, (aka, the GAY!), the technocrats, the transhumanists, the World Economic Forum, Chatham House, CCP operatives, pedo blackmailers, feminist castrators, and more recently, the Woke Mafia, the Russian colluders, the Khazarians, a deepfake president, and the 5G vaxxbot jabbers.

When I was a vagabond writer, such ideas were a lot of fun — like a death trip rollercoaster doing loop-de-loops around my amygdala. But three years ago, I started covering tech professionally. People began asking me, in earnest, utterly terrified, “Have you seen this? Is this REAL?!”

Suddenly, conspiracy thinking was less fun and more a matter of responsibility. What could I say?

“Sort of,” I’d reply. “Politics is a webwork of conspiracies. But this theory [you name it] warps the facts out of proportion… It’s complicated.”

No one wants to hear that. They want definite answers. They want definite enemies, and wherever possible, they want definite Good Guys. “White hats” and all that.

When you don’t give them definite answers to appease the tribal instinct, it becomes clear that YOU are in on it!!

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to report that no single theory could capture this vast web of conspiracies. It’s a filthy tangle of greed, sadism, and stupidity. Bow-tied Cain and unwashed Abel.

It would be so easy — SO EASY — if an apex cabal could be identified and neutralized. Problem solved! Instead, it’s more like evil minion whack-a-mole. This will be a perpetual battle till the end of time.

Worst of all, we traced the call — and the mind control rays are coming from inside the house.

My advice is to unplug before they get you.