Ronan, you can't help these idiots. I've been trying for years. They don't want to know the truth. Please don't confuse them with facts. It would shatter their reality.
This applies to you as well. Just like Ro you think you know some deeper truth
Those who share conspiracy theories argue that it is usually naïve to believe in the official version of events because governments and corporations are Machiavellian manipulators of the media who often try to keep people in a state of ignorance and fear. Those with a “cover-up” as opposed to a “conspiracy theory” mindset accuse others of demonising them and being close-minded, whereas what they are doing is actually holding those in power to account and reclaiming history. They are often motivated by strong socio-political and religious ideologies (Byford, 2011).
It has been argued that conspiracy theories are psychologically functional in that they help individuals attain or maintain a sense of meaning, control and personal security (Newheiser et al., 2011). Miller (2002) suggests that conspiracy theories fulfil two essentially cognitive roles: an argumentative role and a social critique role. Shermer (2010) argued that in general conspiracy theories are held by people with four traits: patternicity (the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise), agenticity (the beliefs that the world is controlled by an/many invisible, intentional agent(s); confirmation bias (the strong preference to seek/find conformational evidence for what they believe) and hindsight bias (tailoring after-the-fact explanations to what they already know happened).
