“The more you know, the crazier you look.” ― Unknown
We are all, by now, well equipped with quite a fulfilling experience that 2020 has brought our way. The world is ‘locked’ due to COVID-19 and with the ‘Work from Home’ and ‘Social Distancing’ culture, an old, oft-forgotten breed of web dwellers has suddenly come to the fore yet again. A digital revival of sorts, we are talking about the much-maligned and often scorned community of Conspiracy Theorists.
Perhaps one of the oldest communities in the world, the foundations of conspiracy theorists can be traced back to the creation of religion itself. To look for a reason when things get rough is a natural human tendency. However, man’s quest for reason has not always led us down the road most taken. Every time an issue or an occurrence has been beyond explanation, there’s been a small community of individuals that has shouted “Conspiracy!”.
Now, it does sound a lot like what modern-day religion is all about, but it’s not. The primary element that separates religion from conspiracy theory, is the presence of a tangible source of blame and perhaps bias. It’s one thing to say that God is cursing you for not visiting the temple on Tuesday by making you ill but a whole other to say that you failed your exam because the teacher does not like your mom and this is your teacher’s elaborate scheme to embarrass her.
All of us have our favourites, be it Area 51 or the plot to assassinate Kennedy. The community has however been the one that lurks in the shadows but this lockdown has united conspiracy theorists and ‘believers’ like never before. Never has such a large majority of population spent so much time doing nothing. The mass unemployment, strict lockdowns, and ease of access to the internet in our country have driven this community to the mainstream.
Let’s look at every news outlet’s darling, Donald Trump. His brazenly whimsical statements about the coronavirus being created in a lab and ‘planted’ across the world by China have been the news content for months now. To this day, Trump is often heard using the moniker ‘China Virus’ while referring to COVID-19. There is still no evidence that China released this virus. Yet, the theories only get stronger and the voices shriller (thanks to fake news and the algorithms that push them?).
The alleged suicide/murder of a famous Bollywood star, for instance, has long been the perfect opportunity for content creators (including the prime time media) to float conspiracy theories and provide alternative evidence to that which is brought forth. This has constantly provided the emotion-driven audience a chance to spew hate on the eternally-mysterious-now-busted-film community while quietly and strategically putting the important issue of mental health under the rug. But never before has the mainstream media so vociferously marketed alternative investigation and screamed conspiracy like they do today.
Another example of this is the long-standing theory of a world government dictating everything around us. The ‘Illuminati’, so to speak. This theory has found a strange new link to the 5G project and how it’s simply an exercise to ensure mass surveillance of populations. The plot starts to thicken though when the link between 5G and the COVID outbreak in Wuhan is made. This is another big theory that’s been talked about by everyone from Fox News to our very own Aaj Tak.
The point here is that humankind has never had a crisis of confidence like the one it faces today. Never have we woken up and not known what the coming week holds for us as a collective race. The fear and uncertainty have led to our belief systems being rattled and, in many cases, reset. This time of isolation has led many of us to believe, what if the truth is still out there? It is this rewiring that has slowly drifted even the sanest of minds towards the shadows of doubt. In times of crisis, we often turn to what we fully don’t understand (hello, dopamine!). Maybe all this is man’s way of coming to terms with our reality today.
As Arthur Fleck wonderfully puts it in the 2019 masterpiece of a film Joker, “I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realize, it’s a comedy.”