What nobody foresaw was that the internet allowed these benign isolated idiots to connect and form a super-cell, and begin coordinated recruitment.
Back when I lived in Austin, Texas, Alex Jones was just our funny cable access lunatic. He was like a funny wrestling match interview during a UFO convention. Then we built the modern internet. Sorry.
The internet allows every village idiot to say to the other idiots "No you're not the idiot."
The ones I ever met, none were malicious or stupid.
It's after the popularisation of the internet that it's become a dangerous tool for misinformation.
The nerds are alright. The normos are not. The nerds like tights and Star Trek. The normos like extravagant vehicles and Trump.
Once it became profitable the assholes took over for the mostly harmless loons.
I miss when conspiracy theories were somewhat fun and mostly harmless. Black helicopters, CIA mind control, hidden aliens…usually the forte of those afflicted with questionable mental health.
Now? Conspiracies are nurtured and pushed with paid troll farms and wingnuts high on winning at literally any cost. Deliberately designed to harm and damage. Overwhelming the ability of reason and rebuttal to make a solid defense. Worse are those who so easily believe bullshit over decades or a century of objective proof of any kind.
I do remembrer a time when I was younger where conspiracies scratched an itch with me. It was a fun rabbit hole of stories to explore, I wish they never became more than stories
Yep. They were fun and mysterious. Now they’re in your face and sometimes violent.
The first conspiracy was Watergate.
After Watergate, Late night FM (new at the time) programming filled with a bunch of "Well what else is the government hiding from us?"
Someone eventually proclaimed that aliens were covered up at the Roswell Incident, which everyone had forgotten about after 20 years.
Kennedy assassination was before Watergate... Pretty sure there were immediate conspiracy theories with that one.
The worst part is that you're describing an actual real conspiracy that they won't believe.
I want to believe!
I knew a guy when I was a freshman in high school in the year 2000 and he would not stop talking about how Japan already had PlayStation 7 and that the US was not allowing it to be sold in America.
I was in elementary school in the mid 90s and had a friend whose mom owned an independent movie rental store. He claimed that because of this he was able to get all kinds of insider info in the movie industry. My favorite was that George Lucas originally planned 9 Star Wars movies, and that three of them, taking place before the original trilogy, were already in the works. What nonsense.
I knew a guy who claimed his grandad shot Hitler. Hitler was not his grandfather.
Next you'll tell me that they planned several Matrix sequels... Imagine that...
These are the kind of adolescent, batshit insane takes that I miss from my teen years
Man, that rumor may have spread nationwide, or else I think I knew that guy.
Joe Rogan is one of the biggest knuckledraggers our society has ever produced.
The fact that he has millions of listeners is a testament to our declining society.
The guy makes apes look like particle physicists.
Everyone thinks their lunkhead is the Worst Lunkhead in History.
But I watched my parents' generation proudly proclaim themselves to be "Rush Babies / Ditto-Heads" (terms the host eagerly appended to his annoying fan base) and paid out the nose to listen to Howard Stern on Satellite Radio. Before that, we had coast to coast shameless shill Wolfman Jack and the perennially getting-fired Don Imus.
They all had the same schtick. They all mainlined fad diets and new age spirituality and quasi-legal drug abuse. They desperately wanted to be sports broadcasters, but failed to fully break in because of their inevitable fit of racism or sexism. Its the same bullshit decade after decade, complete with faux-libertarian toxic masculinity and hawking magic beans in a six hour long sales pitch.
Before radio we had thousands of independent Carnies. After radio we've consolidated and monopolized the job of Carny under the job title of DJ or Talk Radio Host or Podcaster, take your pick. But they grow these assholes in a vat under the Pentagon. They aren't unique.
Lol there's a conspiracy theory I want to see pick up. Joe Rogan is a synth grown under the Pentagon, meant to divide the people
>Be me, 27 with enough money to afford pot and cool posters
>Enjoy conspiracy theories
>Little brothers friends come over
>am high af
>Little bros friends awkwardly come into my room to smoke uninvited
>themorethemerrieriguess.pcx
>dont know what to talk about, figure I'll tell them some dumb shit I read to make them laugh
>they leave
>later go downstairs to make a sandwich
>overhear them calling me a loser
>mfwSee, now we're starting to say "when I was your age" and "back in my day..."
I paid a couple kids to shovel my sidewalk. That's when I knew I reached the "back in my day" milestone.
bruh we have kids now. we're old, and busted. my wife was trying to calculate what years our BTTF shit would happen, it's over.
Well, you know, that pot-smoking, black-light-loving loser is actually Joe Rogan. He's just gotten a little older and expanded his audience. He's a winner now in terms of money, but he never really matured.
I never saw the appeal of Joe Rogan
His stand-up was terrible
I understand the reason. He is basicaly how your dad would imagine himself talking with a rich/famous dude. The problem is that the pepole that are there probably shouldnt be taken as seriously as they seem to be taken.
so is his sit-down
I saw one stand up of him and he had a bit where he was ranting against books. That bit says so much about him.
He can't even fight back against science. He has no idea what that is. He just likes talking.
Edit: Mean but fair, if you got this far, check yourselves out for personality disorders.
Joe Rogan's gimmick started out as a knucklehead layman who would just have casual water cooler discussions about things they didnt understand, and he was upfront about how he was an idiot who didnt know anything.
the problem was that other knuckle dragging idiots started thinking that because they agreed with him because of confirmation bias, that he was right and eventually he noticed he had a huge following of people, and started to think that his own dumb opinions must be correct
I still struggle to understand how someone like that could even get traction because every time I've ever looked at a joe rogan podcast he's usually just sitting there agreeing and brownnosing whoever his guest is. "Thats crazy, thats really interesting huh I didnt know that".... 90% of the time
The other 10% of the time he's screaming into the microphone saying shit like "Fuck you Ukraine, you're going to cause WW3 for defending yourself from an invasion"
You had cell phones when you were a kid?
They're obviously Mayan, so yeah.
Maybe you just set the wrong language during the last update.
My parents got a cutting edge bag phone when I was a teenager
Yeah. I think the first one was a GSM phone; the NMT ones were too expensive to be handed to kids. But it was before Nokia became dominant.
In Ireland you just go to the pub and you'll be sure to find some asshole ready and willing to talk shite to ye the whole night. People seem to think the Net invented this kind of wankers...
The net elevated them from being a drunk wanker at the pub, into a multimillionaire celebrities with cult following, dictating the future of the world.
Every village had a village idiot, now they network.
No, now the village idiots connect on social networks, exchange conspiracy theories and think they are the majority.
James Mayans proposed the T23 shortwave transmitter that later led on to the first car based telephones largely thought to be the forerunner to modern mobile phones so he was right.
Coast to Coast AM was fun to listen to before the 2010s
Look here younguns that guy would tell us the Mayans invented cassette tapes.
Yup thenCortez beat them with the CD
Mini disc is what i always heard. Nobody knows what the hell they are anyway
In 2010 -2011 I never heard or saw any Mayan or Aztec person imply that their calendar indicated a doomsday. It was only Rogan and his guests.
On the one hand it let Mesoamerican scholars make some money and get some attention which helps interest and funding in a VERY neglected field. On the other hand it was complete pap. Total nonsense. They had 4 MAJOR calendars and plenty of minor ones. The long term calendar just hit 0000 in 2012. What this ment to The Classical Maya isn't clear, if this ment a new era philosophically or actually some kind of doomsday, who can say. We know they wouldn't celebrate certain holidays if there was famine or drought, they'd wait till a good harvest then celebrate, they weren't THAT beholden to the calendar.
I can't tell you how accurate this is.
— Millenial
The only motherfucker we needed to hear back then was Space Ghost. And he had his own dual-celled cohost.
I was a loser smoking pot in a room with black light posters when I was young (17/18ish) but I never believed in conspiracy theories. And Rogan is a fucking idiot.
When I was a kid, Joe Rogan was hot and either he wasn't crazy back then or we weren't connected enough for me to know the truth about him.
He was a really good MMA commentator when I was younger
I miss those days.
Democrat logic: Marijuana should be legalized.
Also Democrat logic: People who smoke pot are fucking losers.
Democrat logic: You should be able to follow your dreams.
Also Democrat logic: Being worth millions & having one of the most successful podcasts is being a loser.
