How 'alive' is the topic of chemtrails nowadays?

Peter

Active Member
I'm wondering how alive this topic stiull is. When I look at some forums, for instance, it seems to be all but dead.

Here's a nice example:

ATS: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/174/pg1/srtpages

Most recent post is a day ago, then the next topic had it's last post on oct 25, then oct 15, etc. Not exactly very alive topics, even though ATS is one of the biggest conspiracy sites which used to be a lively place for this topic.

Then there's this forum which is actually seeing some activity after I kicked some life in there the last week . But they couldn't tolerate someone being skeptical of chemtrails being so active on their forum, so I got banned. The point is: there are maybe 4 or 5 people still posting there, while this being David Icke's forum you'd expect a busy chemtrails forum with hundreds of people posting:

http://L: www.davidicke.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=21

Chemtrailcentral: http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/forum/forum1.html&sid=

Has one trhread with recent posts, all posted by one guy (Ellyn) who posts pictures of clouds, thinking they are 'chemclouds'. Besides that the most recent post was a month ago. Pretty much another dead chemtrail forum that was once an alive and kicking place.

Global skywatch: http://globalskywatch.com/chemtrails/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=3&page=1#.VFjJMPmG9Bl

Another dead forum it seems

Alex Jones prison planet forum chemtrail department: http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?board=297.0

Most recent post from July 23, 2014

So I don't know.. maybe I'm missing something.. where's the action? I see some activity in the youtube comments and some facebook pages, so maybe they all moved there?

Even on this forum it has become rare to see a chemtrail believer pop in and try to debate the skeptics, even though one would think we'd be the focal point of grief to any Chemtrail believer.

My guess is that chemtrails and forums don't go together very well. My experience is that chemtrails believers don't take to criticism very well, and well.. on a forum you're going to run into lots of other opinions and criticism and skeptics, and lots of in-fighting as well. So maybe that's why it's kinda quiet on those forums now.. too confrontational maybe.

Anyway I wonder what you guys and gals think. Is the chemtrail movement still alive and kicking, or is it petering out with just some fundamentalists left to defend the trenches? What's going on?
 
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It seems fairly alive to me, with the new tack of taking it before local environmental boards and the like.
 
I do suspect that it's losing some steam...

in part because the "definitive evidence" they keep promising never really seems to arrive,

and also because some chemtrailers have figured out that they're made the word "chemtrails"
into a (toxic!) :p punchline, so they've started using different terminology (like "geo-engineering")
that isn't polluted yet (but will be)...just my guess
 
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It's probably slowed down because there are a couple of new flavours of the month, namely ISIS and Ebola. I imagine after this 'scare' fizzles out, people will go back to the old standby...chemtrails/geo-engineering. Heck, they might even combine the chemtrails with ebola...wait...I think I saw a youtube video about that...
 
I think the vast majority of chemtrail believers get sucked into it with the claims of evidence that are very easily refuted. Specifically that "normal" contrails should quickly fade away.

Now people on those forums are very familiar with the actual historical evidence, so when some neophyte comes along, they very quickly get the situation explained to them, and they go off to rethink. ATS in particular has many posters who have been explaining contrails for years now.

In addition, there's a lot of debunking resources that pop up when you google the topic (Metabunk and Contrail Science in particular). So (hopefully) fewer people are getting tricked into believing it in the first place.

The hardcore believers remain, but they are increasingly just people with very fixed belief systems who reject evidence (and largely reject science) without any real consideration or understanding.
 
I'd like to believe it slowed down a little bit after all the debunking that has happened over the last few years, and that perhaps humanity still has some hope when it comes to critical thinking. The past few months has been slow.

That said, I looked up google trends, and it looks like chemtrails is on an upward trend again:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=chemtrails
20141104-085901-9yg2v.jpg


It's actually quite interesting looking up chemtrails on google trends. The regional interest map shows that the chemtrail belief is predominately a first-world problem, specially in 'Murica *elbow, wink wink* :D. It's also largely a west coast thing as well.
20141104-090116-ohf2m.jpg


Edit: Thanks Mick (if that was you) for putting up images from my link. I wanted to do so for the context, but was a bit lazy :oops:.
 
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If you go by attendances at the "Global Marches", then it is waning in most parts of the world. The last Australian March attendances were abysmal.

People like Amanda Williams garner very few views on her videos, generally less than 20 in a month per video, with a few exceptions. Max Bliss grandiosely named "Real Institute" struggles to get double digit "shares" of anything he posts.

Dane Wigingtons move into Facebook started with one pro-forma apocalyptic post per day; now he has a couple per day. Perhaps he has discovered FB's reach can improve the donation rate or maybe he is starting to struggle as well.

It is hard to know, but I get the sense the whole movement is losing momentum at the moment. The infighting is taking it toll. Michael Murphy has "misplaced" the funding for the 3rd movie in his series and Rosalind Petersens admission about jet emissions a couple of years ago took the wind out of a few sails. Max Bliss and Wigington are at each other's throats.

Maybe I am just an optimist. The worldwide bunk-o-meter still remains "off scale high" however. If it dies something will replace it.
 
Dane Wigingtons move into Facebook started with one pro-forma apocalyptic post per day; now he has a couple per day. Perhaps he has discovered FB's reach can improve the donation rate or maybe he is starting to struggle as well.

There has certainly been a shift over time from forums to social media. The Facebook groups tend to be more walled gardens - very focussed groups with no dissent allowed. If you were to post chemtrail stuff on ATS you would quickly have the science explained to you. If you post on https://www.facebook.com/geoengineeringwatch.org then your posts will probably be deleted and you will be banned from even viewing the group.

The geoengineeringwatch.org we site gets a lot of traffic from Facebook, a third of their total traffic.
http://www.similarweb.com/website/geoengineeringwatch.org
20141104-095528-bbi7a.jpg
 
Yes, Geoengineering Watch posts a huge amount of stuff on Facebook, and it is extremely strictly policed. Any comment that is anything less than 100% fawning is swiftly deleted. There's no way that Dane Wigington can believe what he says any more, if he ever did. He is just going through the motions, perhaps because it is all he knows by now.
 
Chemtrail chatter might be dying off on the normal channels, but what about on .onion forums on the deep web?
 
Thanks for all these very interesting posts. So what we can see from the statistics is that chemtrails as a search term is still gaining some steam, on average. I'm not sure if that means that the number of believers is also on the increase.. maybe they look it up and most of them conclude it's bunk.

My experience is that there are still quite a number of people debating chemtrails in the youtube comments. But there too there seem to be just a couple of very vocal individuals, and some more occasional commenters who take a passing interest and then seem to move on.
 
That's just evidence that tptb are suppressing the truth!!
Perhaps, but maybe with the rise of tor, CT'ers feel more secure and free to discuss 'the truth' in places where tptb can't watch them which is why the observable (short term) trend is slowing.

Or people could just be using common sense idk
 
Chemtrail chatter might be dying off on the normal channels, but what about on .onion forums on the deep web?

Sure people can discuss things more anonymously on the deep web and onion forums, but I doubt that would make much of a difference. While this is speculation on my part, I doubt a majority of chemtrail believers would have even heard of the deep webs. The only real perceived benefit of discussing things on the deep webs is if you are worrying someone is going to come get you for discussing a topic out loud.
 
Perhaps, but maybe with the rise of tor, CT'ers feel more secure and free to discuss 'the truth' in places where tptb can't watch them which is why the observable (short term) trend is slowing.

you think TPTB don't know what you're saying on Tor??

Yeah...right.....that's just what they want you to believe!!

See how it works?? :0
 
you think TPTB don't know what you're saying on Tor??

Yeah...right.....that's just what they want you to believe!!

See how it works?? :0

Yeah of course, I understand, I was just asking a hypothetical, but in my experience there is two types of CT'ers

1 - The loud ones who sprout pseudoscience and/or babble on whatever soap box which will support them whether it be facebook, youtube, online radio. These are our favorite because they are visible and we have the chance to help them sort the fact from the bunk.

2 - The quite ones. The introverts who keep their theories to themselves and lie awake at night dwelling on the unfathomable horrors that exist. Paranoid, they stay quite. These ones we don't see.

But with the rise of tor, could perhaps even the illusion of anonymity give rise to a new community of pseudoscience elsewhere on the web? The normally quite ones find a safe place to vent/worry and find kindred spirits there. And the whole cycle starts again.

I'm not saying this is happening but surely you can't just offhandedly discount it without some digging?

Images like this (http://www.legaltechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/The-Deep-Web.jpg) are often bandied around when describing the literal underworld of the nasty deep web. While most of it is trash/porn, as it becomes more and more popular, more CT'ers will find their way there into a place where google trend statistics won't reveal the habits.
 
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But with the rise of tor, could perhaps even the illusion of anonymity give rise to a new community of pseudoscience elsewhere on the web. The normally quite ones find a safe place to vent/worry and find kindred spirits there. And the whole cycle starts again.
isn't the point of conspiracies to expose them to the general public and get wide acceptance? this will never happen if they talk on the dark web.
 
isn't the point of conspiracies to expose them to the general public and get wide acceptance? this will never happen if they talk on the dark web.

That may be true theoretically, but I think in practice there's also a strong social element and ego involved. It probably feels real good to be considered one of the 'awakened' ones, whereas unbelievers are often considered 'sheeple'.
 
Having been away from conspiracy/debunking parts of internet circles for quite a while, I can sufficiently say that the topic definitely remains a fringe topic as no one really cares or talks about them. As far as I'm concerned, the myth is pretty much done/never got started.

If you're talking about the parts of the internet dedicated to these topics, well I have no idea, for the same exact reason :)

I would think how often new threads get posted in our own chemtrail forum debunking new claims would be a good indirect indicator for how hot this theory still is. My guess is not very.
 
That may be true theoretically, but I think in practice there's also a strong social element and ego involved. It probably feels real good to be considered one of the 'awakened' ones, whereas unbelievers are often considered 'sheeple'.

Thing is, I doubt the deep web is really a place to find social acceptance and to make one's ego shine. The deep web is a niche on the internet. One goes on the deep web as presumably an anonymous user.
 
I agree with Kermit.
I've always thought that one of the reasons that so many CTs seem so unwilling
to step towards the light, towards an obviously more sensible alternative,
is that it means coming down off of the "I'm in the know...I'm special" pedestal
(that they imagine themselves to be on)
 
I am attempting that (in a tiny part)...one person at a time.....
I meant the CTs want the conspiracy theory to get wider acceptance. (whether to make more money off the gullible or for the ego support, get governments to look into their claims etc)
 
I agree with Kermit.
I've always thought that one of the reasons that so many CTs seem so unwilling
to step towards the light, towards an obviously more sensible alternative,
is that it means coming down off of the "I'm in the know...I'm special" pedestal
(that they imagine themselves to be on)

Yes. They are tied into the theories on a very PERSONAL level. Letting the theories go means losing a significant piece of their own identity.
 
Yes. They are tied into the theories on a very PERSONAL level. Letting the theories go means losing a significant piece of their own identity.
Agreed...and I'd even postulate that the rise of the social media that we've seen in the last decade,
has compounded this ferociously, because once you've let everyone you know (plus thousands you don't) know
that you believe strongly in x...retreating to more reality-based position becomes more more difficult

(in addition to the sad "walling off" (from reasonable dissent) phenomenon that Mick was talking about in Post #12)
 
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as new to the debunking of chemtrails I did feel the traction was going out of it, thou when last months vid
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/de...-scientists-tell-truth-about-chemtrails.4695/
popped up it troubled me that it would creep back, but this did not seem to happen or least as yet.

I think the general face value acceptance of anything posted is now being lessened and i hope that in time the web soothsayers will find diminishing value of return for effort of bunk placed but also know they will soon look for another click rate revenue stream.
 
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