Edited to address this section
But my main thought was if by debunking the whole thing am I facilitating it. It was mentioned in a previous thread and by entering in debate are we not giving validity to the claims? I feel a real moral outrage at the claims, especially over the feelings of families involved, yet there is an irony that by analysing the image myself to debunk I am paying little thought to their emotions by continuing the debate. So my main point is should we attempt to debunk such claims or just detach ourselves? Given that there is very little chance of changing the mind of a truther and these conspiracies seem to be on the fringe, what is the gain? Without the attention will they die off?
I understand the outrage to these conspiracies and the moral delema with countering them. Obviously if the relatives of the dead see the websites, blogs and youtube videos it's obviously going to cause hurt, anger, frustration etc. That's a problem I had considered over the Woolwich murder. I absolved myself by imagining the police lieason officer telling Lee Rigby's family to stay away from Youtube. To me that seems a practical thing the police would do but on my behalf it's pure speculation. I simply do not know that the police would advise that. I also couldn't imagine a family member torturing themselves by reading the comments. Some of which are vile and way beyond morbid.
I do feel guilty for my actions.
My first thought was to say to you "No! leave em alone". Here's why. Like many others I thought I'm not going to let these conspiracists get away with this. It's a no brainer, up front, in ya face, Islamist motivated murder. Firstly, I started out with rage and name calling. Then I got into pointing out their psychological fail (I'll get to that later) which was just another form of insult. Then I took em on with the visual evidence. Many claimed there wasn't enough blood. No blood here there and every gory where. Looking at the images on Youtube it was obvious the lack of visual blood was caused by the light source (sun) bleaching it out. Like a flash photo taken too close. I compiled various video's that demonstrated this by one of the killers blocking the sun which in turn revield visable proof of the blood trail on the pavement (sidewalk). This had several different effects on the CT guys.
A) They believed I had proved the blood was there but hadn't disproved the government hoax false flag plot.
B) Total outright denial to the visual evidence. Therefore no change.
C) Accepted the visual evidence but came up with a different reason for it being there i.e still planted.
Out of the many hundreds of CT'ers I had commented to only 3 "fence sitters" changed their mind and agreed, via reply comment, it was a real murder. Other silent readers may have changed their mind but obviously that can't be verified.
I had been onto the Woolwich incident from the get go. That's a little over 3 months now. Unfortunatly I've had to post lots of links to prove the blood issue and many CT'ers didn't have qualms about posting links to actual beheadings (Lee Ribgy was not beheaded). I had a sense of a goul fest from some CT'ers. My Youtube comments weigh on my conscience with regards to friends and family of Lee Rigby should they see any of them. It is only this last week to 10 days that the comments on the Woolwich conspiracy videos have dried up. News does eventually become old news. Tomorrows chip papper. I feel my rage and discust has gotten me exactly nowhere. If anything I've only prolonged the comment section. This is why I would advise not getting into debates / battles with these bottom end CT'ers. They will go away....eventually.
Psychology
Some time ago and recently I've read, watched and listened to some psychology regarding "Conspiracy Bias." Apparently it's a fairly unexplored BIAS which is slowly being investigated. From what I have gleamed one size does not fit all. Forgive me if I'm trying to teach you to suck eggs....as it were. In a very abbreviated and a layman way of explaining things, they (conspiracists) suffer from to much scepticism and paranoia. We all have these attributes as it's part of our survival instinct. However, these people have it in varying degrees to the point of some of them being clinically ill. (I've actually had oneguy trying to convince me of legalees being part of black magic) These imbalances affects the sufferers reasoning, intuition and logic. Critical thinking isn't a possibility as the foundation of their thinking is ...biased. Typically they will believe in many types of conspiracy which, when boiled down, revolves around being controlled or death. By "types" think government controlled plans, illuminati, big pharma, oil, Haarp, chem trails, NWO, reptilians etc and so on.
In conspiracy bias there is also a lot of confirmation bias. The theorist will only look for evidence to support their claim but never look for anything that may disprove it. The problem here is, that like an STD, conspiracists swap incorrect information between themselves. What's more they prefer to believe that information over that of officials or experts. A lot of conspiracists believe expert opinion isn't trust worthy as they are part of the "plot" (I've had 3 CT'ers tell me they haven't had a TV for years and only use / watch the internet. You could imagine the scope of their search parameters. Others have sighted other CT'ers work as proof)
Some of them think they are providing a service to man kind. That in some way they are special for having discovered these things. In reality they are placating their ego and lack of self-esteem. ( I haven't read this but I believe this in turn perpetuates the fear anxiety in some of them and others, while the whole cycle repeats from one event to another)
Conspiracists also fixate on meaningless anomalies which put into perspective have no bearing. ( It should have done this. Why didn't that happen type. But what about the woman on the left type of thing) They will also, without proof, see hidden connection and use false logic to somehow prove their point. (did you see him laughing) When challenged they will also shift the burden of proof. Their accusation then becomes a point foryou to disprove. (I throw it straight back at em) When proof is irrefutable the theorists will merely change the premise. (Over the last 3 months of Woolwich I have experienced CT'ers consistantly changing the premise of their accusation as I've proved them wrong. It's like giving them ammunition to work with)
As I said one size does don't fit all. You will observe people of low intelligence, generalized disbelief of official story, loathing of authority, CT'ers being less trustful of people and facts, disordered thinking, less likely to engage with society, individual theories less important to CT'ers than generalized rejection of official explanations (hence change of premise), basing belief in disbelief, confuse unexplained with unexplainable, errant date use / belief, depression and allienation of meaning and purpose, use of a theory to enhance own prejudice or sense of insecurity.
The list goes on but there's to much to tar one particular CT'er with all of it. Confirmation bias is a major culprit that and change of premis.
CT'ers only pull apart the official story. It's basically anomally hunting. They rarely if at all put forward their own theory. (They might say the blood is fake or it's a hoax etc but they will NOT explain HOW the fake blood got there or HOW the hoax was set up).