Conspiracy Theory ('CT' in Daily Kos Parlance) is one of those endlessly fascinating and maddening things. Why do people insist on perpetuating implausibly complicated explanations while refusing to accept the overwhelming evidence for simpler and much more believable and likely scenarios?
At Daily Kos we are mostly spared the nonsense of the birthers, although we do have to play constant whack-a-mole with the 9/11 truthers, anti-vaccers, Khazar hoaxists, and USS Libertyists, among others. In each of these cases, people are forgoing the overwhelmingly likely explanation (e.g. 19 Islamist hijackers from Al Qaeda and financed by OBL smashed planes into buildings) in favor of a highly implausible one (e.g. many thousands of people across several agencies of the US government were able to keep secret a plot to attack their own nation).
What amazes me is the persistence of these CTs in the face of overwhelming evidence against them. Follow below the fold to one I've encountered from Korea which might just be the strangest of them all.
I suppose it says something about the future relative strength of nations that in South Korea even the rappers are expected to have elite college and professional degrees.
But such are the high standards that were met by one Daniel Lee aka Tablo, who dutifully completed both a bachelors and masters from Stanford before moving on to a career as a hip-hop star.
Lee regularly appeared on Korean television shows and was asked about his credentials. He said that he had not only graduated from Stanford in 3 ½ years, but that he also had received a master's degree in that time. He said he had written his book, Pieces of You, while he was an undergrad and that he had received a creative writing award for one of the stories from author and Stanford professor Tobias Wolff.
And this is where we come to the strange CT in this case. Just like some people can't see how perhaps Jenny McCarthy could possibly be a liar who is less of an authority on the science of vaccines than a bunch of MDs and PhDs at the CDC and World Health Organization, some can't see how someone who claims to have a degree might just have actually gotten it:
In May 2010, a group of Internet users created an online forum titled "We Request the Truth from Tablo," better known by its Korean acronym TaJinYo. The group didn't buy Lee's story. (snip)
To his detractors, it mattered a lot. "What is it good for in rapping? Nothing," says Hyungjin Ahn, a vocal critic. "But Koreans still said, 'Wow, he is great. If we listen to his rap, we could get in touch with something genius and holy.' Mothers in Korea worshipped him. He was a role model for every child in Korea at that time."
and it took off like wildfire
As the members of TaJinYo began to dissect Lee's public statements and dig further into his past, an elaborate conspiracy theory took hold. Forum members were willing to accept that a man named Dan Lee graduated from Stanford, but they weren't willing to accept that the rapper they knew as Tablo was the same person. They argued that Tablo had taken over Dan Lee's identity in order to parlay a Stanford credential into fame and fortune.
"He just paid a lot of money to do this, lied about it and still became famous," one forum member told a Korean TV crew, who blurred her face. "It represents a total loss of hope for people who work hard."
And just like the birther nonsense, one single piece of evidence should have put the whole thing to rest once and for all
(Stanford Registrar) Black issued an official letter.
"Daniel Seon Woong Lee entered Stanford University in the Autumn Quarter of 1998-99 and graduated with a BA in English and an MA in English in 2002. Any suggestions, speculations or innuendos to the contrary are patently false. Daniel Seon Woong Lee is an alumnus in good standing of Stanford University."
But, as you might have guessed, it didn't. Lee and his family even began receiving death threats.
Eventually Lee attempted to clear the air with a two hour documentary that aired on national TV, following him on a trip to Stanford and his old haunts, and the registrar's office.
Still, Lee is obviously a smart person because he recognized the way that conspiracy theories are the energizer bunnies of idiocy - no matter what overwhelming evidence they don't stop, and they are like fly paper for every lax brained person out there:
"The people who are doing this to me will never stop," he said. "They just won't believe me no matter what I do."
Exactly.
For his part, Lee has sued some of the worst conspiracy mongers, and even the president of South Korea weighed in, calling the situation a "witch hunt". Still, given the idiot zombie-like nature of CT, I don't have high hopes for this one going away.
Why do people love CT so much? My theory is that it is a way for powerless and less intelligent people to feel temporarily more powerful and intelligent. They see themselves as sticking it to the 'experts' - "those experts aren't so great when my awesome common sense tells me otherwise." Of course once one goes down this road it is hard to admit that, yes, other people were indeed more informed than you - hence the staying power of CT.
Whereas in America a rapper might receive death threats for having had an elite education, in South Korea it works the other way around. Don't you dare embark on a pop music career without the proper university credentials! Like I said, this is probably not unrelated to the current economic trajectories of the two societies...
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As a public service, I have collected some of the common CT notions into a handy table. If you beleive anything in the right hand column, you are an idiot:
CT |
OVERWHELMINGLY LIKELY EXPLANATION |
IMPLAUSIBLY UNLIKELY EXPLANATION |
Birthers |
President Obama was born in a hospital in Hawaii in 1960 like all of the doctors, the local newspaper, and his birth certificate say |
For some unknown reason, Obama's 18 year old mother travelled to Kenya in 1960 in order to give birth there, while simultaneously laying the groundwork for an elaborate paper and witness trail indicating the birth had been in Hawaii |
Truthers |
19 Islamist hijackers from Al Qaeda and financed by OBL smashed planes into buildings because they were nihilist assholes |
Many thousands of people across several agencies of the US government were able to keep secret a plot to attack their own nation |
Anti-vaccers |
Vaccines don't cause (fill in the blank) because there have been extensive longitudinal studies over decades showing no such thing |
Jenny McCarthy is the real authority, and the CDC, almost every doctor, the World Health Organization, and the professional medical societies of every nation are covering up some extremely important information |
Khazar hoaxists |
All genetic, linguistic, and historical evidence agrees that Ashkenazi Jewish people are descended from groups who left the Middle East and mixed with local Mediterranean and German populations |
Israel has engaged in a giant plot to invent the science of genetics in order to hide the real history that Jews are descended from Central Asian horsemen |
Lee diplomists |
South Korean rapper Daniel Lee attended Stanford University and graduated with a BA and MS in English Literature, as attested by the records of the University and many witnesses and photographs |
Lee's family and record label, along with high level administrators at Stanford, have conspired to create a large and elaborate paper and photographic trail of forgeries in order to confer a fake degree on someone |