Thank you, r/conspiracy subscribers.
29 2012-05-04 by [deleted]
Whether you submit, comment, vote, or just peruse the frontpage. Your diversity and participation here are what make this reddit great. You don't often get enough credit (and we all know how much abuse we get).
6 comments
8 kris_lace 2012-05-04
I want more.
An organised transparent unbiased force which specialised in objective based - demographically targeted awareness spreading.
These are the people who (when someone posts some link to this or that) will comment with their input. I've seen a number of first hand or just research based specialists who will comment on certain stories with a compelling addition sometimes backed with sources and links. If we can get an infrastructure of experts who we can utilise to provide useful input on a variety of areas we can help cut the disinfo blog spam from the smoking guns.
With any awareness spreading - as well as internal relations. We need /r/Conspiracy to have the reputation we want to have. If we have consistency then when we do venture out say.. in ask-science and someone brings up /r/consp... and mentioned we had a thread on a related topic - and we came to this conclusion .. For the people then to recognise that not as a tin foil hat situation - but instead have faith in our ability to genuinely provide informative input.
people know anonymous for their hacktivism
people know AMA as one of the interfaces with celebrities and the internet
people know Wikipedia as a massive library
people know Wikileaks for their leaks and privacy promise
I'd love for there to be a place like that for conspiracies a house-hold name and I think that's something this sub reddit could aspire to. By a singular identity I don't mean we need to all agree to provide a hive-mind. But if we consistently provided one of the better explanations for certain events and offered a fantastic and regular menu of mouth watering conspiracies then - that.
I think if any are, this one could be the most overlooked. Awareness spreading is troubling business, it's hard to cater for all demographics - I've been trying it for a long time. But we can't just target the masses and people looking to know more, we need just as many more researchers - people who know information. We need to attract and adapt an infrastructure where people with specialist information can find a voice and be heard. If I was a UFO specialist - I'm not going to join a forum or website that has aliens and stars/planets as a background image with a small ufo as a mouse pointer with glitter text.
One of the reasons I am here and one of the best attributes for enlightenment is something this sub-reddit provides very nicely. Inspiring people to do their own research! If the subreddit ever got to a point where we relied too much on the experts, it has a dangerous and real chance to turn into something like the r/science and the respective sciences. My meaning is, people see a cool topic, immediately check the first comment to see what the posts misses and may read other comments. But risk taking others word for certain topics. If information is too accessible people will quickly pass over it without getting to personally involved. Here, there's rarely ever such simply explained or convincing views posted with enough conviction that people feel they can take the commenters word on the matter. Ergo people if interested will go about looking into the matter themselves.
A key point to understanding this is, some of us who might feel they're at a certain level of enlightenment may actually be able to explain everything they know in a tl:dr 30 minute - 2hour talk. But the real interesting thing is, we're not what we know, we're the journey we took in finding it. Every video we watched, every line we've read, every piece of dis-info we fell for, didn't fall for, every strand on the complex web.. It's our experience and relationship we have with information on the web which makes us who we are, not the conspiracies we believe and the links we've seen.
Even mainstream science has huge resistance when they propose controversial things. Even with backed up repeatable scientific data and experiments, such as the recent matter of particles exceeding the speed of light at the LHC. There's no way we can effectively address the scrutiny we'd receive with our claims. We therefore need zero defence. Zero back and forth chatter with others who question and accuse us. We should answer our own cynics and our own reason inside our posts and awareness spreading or not at all. If we bite the first community who fish in our waters we'll forever spend our time trying to back ourselves up. Compare that to ignoring most cynicism, but answering it indirectly in more posts and consistently bringing out the very best objective based observations we can - is the best way. We'll find people will defend us themselves.
7 kris_lace 2012-05-04
If someone wants to start a thread about how they think the universe originated from Carl Sagans arm-pit then we'll hear it out. But we need to distinguish what we think is:
Assumption
Fact
A genuine scientific professional makes a number of suggestions throughout their work. So long as we state assumptions, there's no problem. So, if the topic of UFO's came about and someone wanted to suggest they were made from another world then for the sake of that topic which is mainly about UFO's that person will make an assumption that Aliens exist. Whether aliens exist or not is separate as the topic at hand is about UFO's - any topic of aliens will be a separate topic. But for this topic it is assumed. I observe many a argument which starts from something like this. Someone may be talking is r/Meditation about a genuinely awesome technique or experience. Someone may fish, and ask for more information, in the reply the poster may go on to say that they use god as a way to attai.. see right there that person's made an assumption God exists. This other person may be a strict atheist who will now be less attuned to the posters views and also distracted by the digression. Subject may even turn to the existence of god and so forth. If we state our assumptions then it helps topics but it also paints a more professional image for when people visit our lair.
I don't mean 'the media' I mean media technology. We need to either create or back the production of excellent media to awareness spread not only to new people but to each-other to help explain information.
If an organisation coff wikipedia coff is fucking excellent and deserves our blessing we should help them. Likewise if a whistle-blower, blog, politician, corporation or whatever do good, we should try to recognise that. If we in any way can effect what the ethical standards are or are portrayed to be - we can literally make tangible change.
This is a lot down to the mods, of whom I have no gripe. But the solid facts are and always have been that reddit isn't some huge innovation, it isn't a super power. It's a website. The resource, the beef, the real stuff is the people who post. If a better website or subreddit offers better catering to our cause, people will move on. So it's not too much of an issue, but we need to have pressure always on people with power. I'm sure they wont mind.
I know we have /r/conspiracyfacts, but that existence in itself assumes somewhat the invalidity of this sub reddit. Which importantly has more subscribers. This idea may span over a number of sub reddits or just one. Maybe we post facts on facts and assumptions here, maybe we post ufo stuff on /r/UFO's, vetting on /r/Vetting, 9-11 on /r/911truth etc. If we can encourage a culture which outgrew even reddit and overflowed into other sites that's awesome.
We know that 'conspiracy theorists' is a proud name because a close and unbiased historical examination will reveal that conspiracies have shaped the course of history. And we also know the taboo and social smudge placed upon the words. I don't know how to properly address the issue. But I think that it's not through acting too defensive, that it's not through having too many inside jokes or egotistic views. If we make it as open and accessible as possible with always a emphasis on allowing individuals to seek their own truth and interpretation of the facts. Then there is no 'us' between them and the data. Just a solid link between them and the data. With no 'us' there's no 'conspiracy theorists'... 'foil hats'.. We don't need to claim ownership of truth, we can leave it on the floor and feel genuinely happy knowing someone will pick up the box of secrets. Being right is awesome, but being in right company is awesome too.
This is literally ignorance. If we can tackle ignorance, and encourage real definitive information to thrive then - even if we're wrong. That's great - we'll know the truth, which is what we want. The target, the goal is to get the information and share it. Ignorance not only allows conspiracies to survive, but it's also responsible for most of the suffering in the world. That statement is so powerful, they'd be no religious wars if people weren't ignorant of each-other or deluded. They'd be no 'war on terror' if we all knew there wan't actually all that much terror in the first place, or at least WMD's. One can only be ruled if one first doesn't rule themselves. We'd not be the 99% if we knew as much as the 1%.. My personal opinion is macro and micro illusions need to be lifted - through what could be interpreted as either spiritual progress or mind-organisation or pyschology or whatever. Ignorance and the production of ignorance is imo a main threat and needs to be addressed.
We should always strive to improve and we do so by putting ideas together, so I don't mind posting mine. Though if I could pass on one thing which people were guaranteed to read it would be this. View usernames, view the usernames of interesting informed people you see comment. Go through their history, whenever I am bored or uninspired by the pages of this subreddit I'll sieve though the people I chose to follow. It's one of reddits best kept secrets there are some very interesting posts people may have made. Also by viewing individuals comments you may see their angle what beliefs they have. This may translate to their cognitive dissonance or illusions they may have. If you see others and their illusions you may be more able to see your own - which is extremely important when considering conspiracy theories.
2 9000sins 2012-05-04
Yes thank you all for keeping up on current events and being the best, most informed person you can be. Keep it up and hang loose.
1 Shatterer 2012-05-04
The worst abuses happen in secret.
0 bugeyedbaggins 2012-05-04
Not sure if sarcasm or legitimate thanks....
5 WokeSmeed 2012-05-04
He is one of the mods, so I'm sure it's genuine.
Anyawy, look at the top comments on this. Fascism, divide-and-conquer, human rights, who's pulling the strings - it's all there. The message some of us have been 'preaching' for years is now becoming a rather popular opinion. It may not be such a diverse crowd on this website, but still. To see so many upvotes for things like that is a step in the right direction if you ask me.