Yes, conspiracy theories and conspiratorial narratives. I'll break down both of those separately.
With Lizard People, if we try to hammer it down to specific originating 'sourcing' (can be hard with conspiracy theory narratives) or what the claims are based around as identifiable sources, it generally tends to be about someone's personal appearance.
I'll actually use an example right from here;
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-obamas-reptilian-secret-service-spotted-at-aipac.1323/
The truth here being, the person simply looks as the conspiratorial narratives claim. That does not make them true.
Specific claims:
"Even though at first sight he looks just like the average Secret Service spook" - Laying the ground for assumptive reasoning. What does "the average secret service spook" look like? Is it their clothing? Or their body? They wear similar clothing, BUT, the entire claim rests upon his physical appearance, not his clothing.
"a series of odd features on his head, face, and lots of very strange behavior and creepy movements" - What are "odd features?" Well, the "odd features" are pointed out in very specific timeframes, when the shots are taken from angles which alter appearance (among other factors). As Mick laid out in his debunk of the video "The apparent distortion is just because it's dark, low resolution, on a black background and he's out of focus." (this can be true for all the portions re physical appearance). The "strange behavior and creepy movements" is again, assumptive reasoning, it's said when the guy is looking around a lot and swaying back and forth. Rather than recognizing this could just be normal body language, mixed with actively participating on a protection detail, it piggy backs off the assumptive reasoning and leads into the below
"But due the low lighting and half the ampitheater, he would pass unnoticed or unguarded as a normal human being by the crowd. And everybody who watched this video, if it was not by the camera of the Jewish news one, which caught him from another angle apparently shape shifting into some reptilian non-human form" Here, the ground work for the actual conspiratorial narrative is laid out. This, mixed with the above, are all vocally presented at times when the camera is in angles in which the factors in which Mick laid out exist.
The root of this all being, to someone who hasn't seen someone with facial and bone structures as the guy above, with similar facial features, and similar body language? Watching the video, and listening to the other person lay it out, without actually exercising critical thinking; is going to lead, in a lot of cases, to your brain unconsciously filling in plot holes with what it hears.
This is where things get deeper, and the "rabbit hole" can start. Some people, will just take away what they heard the first time and run with it, that's usually the case with younger audiences or audiences that don't exercise as much err, I don't know a nice way to say it so I'll just say audiences that are easier to influence (as an example, someone who already believes in lots of conspiratorial narratives about the government, might be a bit more likely to believe similar narratives just because they exist and it already confirms their beliefs). Others will take it and go deeper into it.
Some of those will exercise critical thinking, and try to seek out legitimate sources, or alternatively, have the ability to try and actually solicit legitimate sources.
Some of those others may fall down the rabbit hole for varying reasons. Maybe it's because it's just another narrative that confirms their beliefs, so they end up weighing it more against the evidence. Maybe the way they use search terms brings up biased results, that, confirm their opinion, or alternatively, brings up more conspiracy theories (for example; if you look up "sandy hook", you'll get everything, but if you look up "sandy hook truth", first up to bat will be a bunch of conspiratorial narratives. a lot of people trying to find the "truth" might throw "truth" into their and sour their results, but not realize this). Maybe they ardently believe that most sources and the government just lie to bullshit the public, and it feeds into helping confirm their opinions that the government is hiding something. A lot of it loops back into self-confirmation, but in this example, we can see *all* the physical features they point out *do exist*. They just add a causation to the existence- that false causation being that they're a "shapeshifter" rather than them just being a human, and like any other human, having unique physical features or body movements.
With the election example, it's much simpler and I can save a lot of writing space. Election fraud AND accidents *do* happen, just the conspiracies, which we can also see from the framework above, branch outside of that truth (election fraud simply exists), and begin to add causation, further happenings, and reasoning. "election fraud" turns into "election fraud / by Biden and the democrats in conjunction with (insert random foreign countries that make no sense anyways) / to steal the election and push Trump / republicans out".
We can see with this example, the conspiratorial narratives tend to stray towards specific types of political or ideological beliefs. It just so happens that the disconnect in this example, internal to the narrative, is directed *towards* perceived adversarial ideological beliefs and political actors, *because* of believed intent. This example also has a dual side to it (narrative split), where the other narrative pulls off incidences of accidental errors, and ascribed intent and causation to the result, without any actual data or information of any sort to back it up, but rather personal opinion.
I'm not looking for a fight, Phil. You implied something
