The 9/11 rabbit hole

Bruno D.

Senior Member.
I am a member of Metabunk since 2013. I think I started visiting 1 year before that. Curiously it was not Metabunk that brought me out of the rabbit hole, it was YouTube. YouTube made me go both ways. ;-)

I am from Brazil (now living here in US), and as it sometimes happened to many foreigners, there was a strong anti-america feeling all around. It always looked like US wanted to be the sheriff of the world, attacking countries against UN advise, trying to solve all conflicts, and so on. I was 23yo, still in college, with a lot of irrational feelings and trying to find someone to blame for everything wrong that happened in my life. It could be the teachers, the ex-girlfriend, the president or US. Anything would fit.

Then the 9/11 happened. It was very clear to me that someone out there got really really angry about this US arrogance, and decided to do something about that. I was shocked for days. I couldn't leave my home for a week. It was just too much. I read a lot about it online everywhere, even reading some primitive conspiracies, but it was so obvious that all that anti-america hatred transformed into this attack that I always instantly ignored that.

After 4y +-, I was navigating through YouTube, and eventually got to those strange places there, and started watching "the truth" videos. I learned and understood it all. How could it be true that someone outside US would have the power to attack and damage them? They always bragged about being the most powerful nation, and it only made sense that only they could attack them.

Then I learned about how they did it, how they had the guts to kill their own citizens only to invade "oil" countries, only to get more funding for weapons research, only to be able to find a new enemy face after the cold was was over. I became an expert on the Whys and Hows. Poor me, thousands of miles away, internet detective, knowing it all.

And then I started reading the debunking comments in YouTube. Man, I was so disappointed with them. All facts were there, how could they say it was wrong? I never thought that people that didn't believe the truth were part of the conspiracy. I always believed that they actually didn't understand what I understood, and that I had a privileged position as an outsider to help them all (who is the arrogant now? ;-) )

I am a very organized and rational person (how ironic, huh?). One of the arguments that stuck into my mind was the one that said: "The amount of people needed to participate in that conspiracy is so high that it's impossible to have happened. Watergate had only a handful of people, and they couldn't cover it.".

I decided that I was going to calculate the amount of people involved in 9/11 scheme with high accuracy, document it and publish it. I decided to organize all the different versions of the conspiracy (man, there was a LOT) and calculate the crew for each one of them. I started analyzing each one of the "facts" ... and then, I found it ... THE theory that changed it all.

One of the theories claimed that all 3000 deaths in the towers were actors, showing pictures of at least 50 of them, comparing with alive people. It really blew my mind. I would need to factor in at least 100 people (a small social/professional circle) for each one of the 3000 in order to cover for this theory. It made absolutely no sense, so I decided to ignore this theory. As I needed to ignore this theory, I started deciding which one of the other theories I should ignore in order to make my job easier:

- Fake holographic planes? I will not bother with this one.
- Remote controlled planes? No, also too big to cover for.
- Judy Woods Space Beam? Ok, I'll pass this one also
- Mini Nuke Devices? No no, not at all
- A missile for Pentagon? Plausible, put too complex. Let me park this one.
- and so on

And then I started questioning all of them, trying to understand how to accomplish it. Eventually I got to a couple of debunking videos to support my decisions to disregard one option or another. It was at that point that I realized that all the conspiracy idea was not only impossible to plan and execute (I am an IT Project Manager today, managing everything from the conception of a project up to the delivery, analyzing all resources [human and not], risks, alternative plans in case of deviation, etc), but the science was also incorrect. I realized that I was only believing the opinion of unknown YouTube users instead of using my own rationality. Those 1h videos are planned to brainwash you. Why the conspiracy videos are 1h long while debunking videos are 5min long? They are not created to educate, they are created to alienate. And they got to me, and I was angry and ashamed.

It took 3 years between the time I was sure I understood it all and the time I was ashamed of myself for being a dumb mindless resourceless senseless pawn. The only good side of it is that I never discussed that with anyone. It was my little internet secret.

I spent some more years trying to put my shit together, trying to convince others that any of that made sense.

Since I arrived here in US (what a life plot twist) I could see it happening over and over again with a lot of people: Sandy Hook, Boston Marathon, etc. I have no energy to debate anyone in YouTube anymore.

As many others, I eventually got here through Infowars, and up to today this is my little sanity spot in internet. Thanks guys for that. :)
 
As many others, I eventually got here through Infowars, and up to today this is my little sanity spot in internet. Thanks guys for that.

Thank you very much for sharing your story! I think there are a lot of people who went through similar things, and lots of people who continue to go through it when they are young, and then some people who never get out of it.

I'm interested in you saying you "got here through Infowars" - do you mean you got to Metabunk via Infowars? How did that happen?

And it seems you figured out a lot of the problems yourself. Do you think your path would have been similar if there were no debunking sites at all?
 
Wow!
Quite a journey for your brain.
The fact that you would critically assess all the various theories (holograms) etc.
served you well...I wish more people would/could do that. Thanks for sharing.
 
I'm interested in you saying you "got here through Infowars" - do you mean you got to Metabunk via Infowars? How did that happen?

I don't remember exactly what I was reading in infowars, but I was already going through my "understand all sides" strategy. Today I try to read Liberal, Republican and Nonsense opinions about each topic. Eventually one of the comments in InfoWars trying to refute absurd claims and linking to Metabunk got my attention. Of course this comment was followed by dozens of "shills" and whatever. ;-)

And it seems you figured out a lot of the problems yourself. Do you think your path would have been similar if there were no debunking sites at all?

Well, in my case the debunking videos in YouTube helped me. The ones that people sometimes post as "answer" to the initial video and gets tons of lovely comments. After that I started researching debunking material and I eventually found a couple of debunking sites, but I was kind of convinced about the nonsense already. They helped me understanding the details.

So, when we decide to post an answer in YouTube, Facebook, InfoWars or wherever with a link to Metabunk, even if we get a lot of "don't go there, they are shills" or things like that, I am sure people click on the link and people start understanding the real world.
 
Wow!
Quite a journey for your brain.
The fact that you would critically assess all the various theories (holograms) etc.
served you well...I wish more people would/could do that. Thanks for sharing.

I think everyone that is going down the rabbit hole and is able to come back has a particular moment, a particular event, a particular person that slaps them right in the face and they are able to think clearly again. Like you were in a thick fog and suddenly you saw a clear path out of nowhere. A lot of CTer think clearly, but they are so overwhelmed with the theories that everything gets kind of mixed up.

I am particularly sure that Metabunk helps a lot of people with that, even though they don't take the time to post it here.

Statistically less than 1% of the people visiting a site, comment (sorry, no evidence for this claim ;) ) . That means that from those that took the time to share the story here, multiply it by minimum 100, and there you have a closer picture. And then these guys go out there and explain it to others, and so on.

It's quite a chain-of-goodness :)

And, of course, this is why the politeness in Metabunk is so important. If we trash the people that come here with a different opinion, we will only make things worse.

That's also why I don't comment a lot. Sometimes it's difficult to stay calm and answer the most outrageous comments. I prefer not to answer if I don't have anything relevant to say. And I really don't like when someone comes here, politely share their thoughts, and a lot of members gang-up the person saying the same thing over and over. It's the same thing that happens in CT's forums: gang-up, trash, overwhelm and wait for him to go away. It doesn't help.
 
And I really don't like when someone comes here, politely share their thoughts, and a lot of members gang-up the person saying the same thing over and over. It's the same thing that happens in CT's forums: gang-up, trash, overwhelm and wait for him to go away. It doesn't help.
Unfortunately that's usually a back-fire effect of good-intentions - we each have a certain way of explaining things of varying levels of technicality, so we each want to give our version in the hope that one of them gets through because one person's way of putting an argument may not be the right one but another's might.
It's an unfortunate dynamic if it results in a 'pile on' effect, hopefully a visitor can see through that though.
 
Thank you very much for sharing your story! I think there are a lot of people who went through similar things, and lots of people who continue to go through it when they are young, and then some people who never get out of it.

I'm interested in you saying you "got here through Infowars" - do you mean you got to Metabunk via Infowars? How did that happen?

And it seems you figured out a lot of the problems yourself. Do you think your path would have been similar if there were no debunking sites at all?
Interestingly, I got here originally from the Blackvault and Pilots for 911Truth, in similar fashion to how Bruno got here. As did his journey, mine has stops along they way. Though I began from this side of the tracks.

I was a Blackvault member arguing with 911 Truthers early on, though my original discussions were related to the supposed Apollo hoax) One of them told me to look at the English Pravda forum where I encountered even greater nonsense. One supposed pilot there told me to check out the "experts" at Pf911T. There I really found an even greater level of nonsense and was harangued as a "gov't loyalist" an agent from the "gov't loyalist site". After many times asking what that meant, they just assumed I was faking innocence, Balsamo told me about JREF. Skip ahead after a few years on JREF and a poster there referred to Metabunk. (there was a stop at Apollo hoax.com and BAUT as well but I forget the order of where they fit in.

So one sees that it was truthers who pointed me to forums where rational thought is prominent after first pointing me to deeper realms of woo. Though it was actually a debunker who referenced this forum, iirc. (econ perhaps) I suspect there are few who come here as their first internet forum choice but are referred here or see it referenced elsewhere.

BTW, the pilot who pointed me to Pf911T is the one who divided height in feet by number of minutes it took to descend that height (AA77) and proclaimed the result as a descent rate of feet per second.

Truthers are often, it seems, their own worst enemies.
 
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Unfortunately that's usually a back-fire effect of good-intentions - we each have a certain way of explaining things of varying levels of technicality, so we each want to give our version in the hope that one of them gets through because one person's way of putting an argument may not be the right one but another's might.
It's an unfortunate dynamic if it results in a 'pile on' effect, hopefully a visitor can see through that though.
The fact that there is less of that here than say at Internationalskeptics, is one thing I like about metabunk. Though I do have problems sometimes with my penchant for sarcastic bastardery.
 
The fact that there is less of that here than say at Internationalskeptics, is one thing I like about metabunk. Though I do have problems sometimes with my penchant for sarcastic bastardery.
and in fairness, we pile on each other too if the topic is interesting. But with an older core membership, i agree there is probably a bit more "can you believe this lil whippersnapper?" mentality :rolleyes:
 
As for my own story of how I got into 9/11 trutherism, here goes:

My first real exposure to the whole thing (aside from brief viewings of the Infowars site) was in mid-2005 when a friend of mine gave me several of copies of a 9/11 conspiracy DVD. I forgot what the name of it even was, but it had Ed Begley, Jr. as one of the commentators.
I watched the DVD and a lot of the points they made seemed to make sense, especially the part about WTC 7. And the way it was such a boon to the chickenhawks, it was almost easy to swallow that it was an inside job.

My eventual disillusionment came once I started getting deeper into it. I encountered the people who believed "the Jews" did it, that the planes were holograms, or that the phone calls from the towers and hijacked planes to loved ones were all faked. I once had a guy tell me with a straight face that no Arabs were involved in 9/11. (Then why even focus on the bin Laden family members being flown out of the country that day, then?) Plus, I found many of the conspiracy theories contradicted each other.
So I gradually drifted away from the truther thing entirely. But I do feel bad about potentially poisoning the minds of others by passing out the truther DVD's, particularly to people receiving mental counseling. (I was recovering from clinical depression and a nervous breakdown at the time).

I should also note that I never bought into the other big conspiracies, either. I've always thought the anti-vaccine thing was stupid, and I don't know what's with the moon truthers. As for JFK, it's possible that the Mafia did it, but I don't get too worked up about it because I reject the Kennedy hero worship.
 
Suddenly the 9/11 conspiracy thing is becoming an item in both conspiracy- and debunking-sites here in the Netherlands. This is caused by a "lecture" on april 16 by Richard Cage (http://sg.tudelft.nl/event/911-its-time-to-talk-about-it/) It is a Studium Generale lecture at the Technical University of Delft. Cage is invited by a TU/Delft collaborator who is known as a CT-believer and UFO-adherent.
I encountered various threads here dealing with all kinds of claims around this topic and although I consider myself to be reasonably well informed on this topic, I would like to know if anyone could give me a general overview of these threads, so I can use them in the discussions I am already involved in and others that I am anticipating.
 
I have never really believed in any of the conspiracy theories, but I did find the anti-semitic conspiracies compelling because I could not find any answers to them most of time. DA JOOZ were allegedly complicit in every major event in modern history, and in particular Israeli/zionist involvement seems to be a recurrent theme. I never knew how to respond to such wild claims, such as that the dancing Israelis brought down the twin towers (lol). It's just a mindset that gets imposed on you by the age-old jew hatred in this world, and I think the jewish conspiracy theories are the most harmful around, especially since they are held by opposing parties, such as black nationalists, Neo-Nazis and muslim fundamentalists.

@Henk: adherence to conspiracy theories seems to be gaining momentum in the Netherlands, what with this employee of the ministry of Justice who claimed ISIS was a zionist conspiracy and was temporarily sacked and other weird stories. As for TU delft, I hope they will show the video of their own building collapsing as a result of fire back in 2008. LOL
 
for my sins I have had a look at the Icke site, and wow

these guys have gone so far down the rabbit hole, the can no longer see any light at all!!!!!

they have in effect gone over the sanity "event horizon"

I suppose it is inevitable because of the hydra headed nature of CT theories - in that they have to morph/adapt/change to cope with the rebuttals, comprehensive de-bunks, common sense and simple logic, that they get more and more absurd. This then drives inconsistencies in the previously held beliefs between adherents - which then leads to arguements

so I have looked at threads where "no planers" that believe it was all CGI "fakery", but the towers fell - vehemently argue with "no planers" that believe in space weaponry and something called "dustification" - and it is a veritable link fest to youtube videos and animated gifs - their posts look like websites from the mid 90's (I admit to laughing now)

their debating points deal with the most infinitesimally small details, that you have difficulty working out their actual viewpoint, and you have to tether yourself to your chair to stop yourself getting too close to the "event horizon" and joining them

one post had a guy give a long "reasoned" argument why thing happens they way the happed, so far so wacky - but then he just casually makes some statement about how "they" used a giant "obscurity curtain" to cover the whole of Lower Manhattan, with not even a link to an "obscurity curtain" patent

I mean I was right with him till that point, but without a link to a patent - no dice

madness!!!!
 
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I may have one foot still in the rabbit hole but I believe I'm working my way out. I was going to explain some of the incredulous things I believed last year from spending too much time on youtube but I'm too ashamed at my gullibility. I just discovered this site yesterday because someone placed a link on one of the CT videos. This site seems to be what I was looking for all along. Even though I may not contribute much, as I am not as well versed in Rhetoric or science as I would like to be, I would just like to thank this site for existing and encourage you all not to give up on trying to help some of the more pathological CTers see the truth not from belittling, but what I have seen so far from here, sound argument. Thanks again.
 
I may have one foot still in the rabbit hole but I believe I'm working my way out. I was going to explain some of the incredulous things I believed last year from spending too much time on youtube but I'm too ashamed at my gullibility. I just discovered this site yesterday because someone placed a link on one of the CT videos. This site seems to be what I was looking for all along. Even though I may not contribute much, as I am not as well versed in Rhetoric or science as I would like to be, I would just like to thank this site for existing and encourage you all not to give up on trying to help some of the more pathological CTers see the truth not from belittling, but what I have seen so far from here, sound argument. Thanks again.

Welcome Eskimo. Holes can be easy to fall into, but with the right tools (like metabunk), it can be easy to climb out again. Enjoying your readings here, and remember, if you ever decide to comment or contribute, someone will always be there to help :)

edited for grammar.
 
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