My Journey in and out of the Rabbit Hole.

AluminumTheory

Senior Member.
I've been following politics for about the past decade and I was among the many naive hopefuls who voted for Obama in 2008 in hopes for a change. It wasn't long before I began to see that Obama is just a shill with no intentions of bringing real change. This lead to disappointment and a general feeling of frustration with government and so I began to ponder whether something larger is behind all of this. Sometime in 2010, I saw Jesse Ventura's show "Conspiracy Theory" and while I'll admit that even then I thought the show was a little on the goofy side, but I felt that they asked some very legitimate questions and so I became curious about this and I began listening to Alex Jones who made frequent cameos on Ventura's show.

I had known about Alex Jones since 2004 because a friend of mine listens to him, but I personally though he was crazy for obvious reasons. But this time around I decided to listen for a while and see if I could see past his persona. While I wasn't sure about H.A.A.R.P and the chemtrails stuff, but I was convinced of 9/11 false flag, and that other terror attacks were staged events and all that nonsense. So no matter how you slice this, I thought Alex Jones had credibility and yes I was a kool-aid drinkin tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist.

But then last spring, I began to notice things about Alex Jones, and the first thing that made me begin to doubt him was his constant embellishment and exaggerations. It seemed like he would always tell his listeners "This is the most important show we have ever done" or "we have bombshell breaking news to cover today", but he usually just ends up rambling on about various things and never gets to any of this "urgent news" that he claims he has to go over what he ends up talking about is usually the same crap he's been going over for years. So in my mind, I made the correlation between that and how advertisers try to sell stuff. It's basically like how every sale is always the biggest sale ever and how you'll never find a better deal, and right now is always the best time to buy, etc etc etc.... So yeah, it really is just a ploy to get people to stay tuned to his 3 hour long show everyday because I doubt alot of people do actually listen to every minute of every broadcast because most of us just don't have time for that. I even remember one time when he said he had 400 articles to go over in his show and I remember thinking to myself that means you would have to cover more than 2 articles every minute to allow enough time to cover them all with no commercials.

The next thing that I began to notice was how he's always predicting that something bad is going to happen and that it's just around the corner. He usually is just vague enough and never gives specifics to that he can basically say that he predicted something after the fact because he never has to go back too far to find out when he predicted something bad. It would be like if a weather man predicted a bad storm every single day knowing that odds are a bad storm will one day come, and using this method as a replacement for his lacking ability to predict storms with meteorological data. Or a more simple metaphor would be the old broken clock adage. A clock flashing 12:00 will be right twice a day because it will inevitably be 12:00 at some point in the near future. And the same thing goes for anything else like school shootings, terror attacks, storms, or whatever. Odds are crazy people are going to do crazy things, and storms are going to occur in places that are prone to storms. It's quite simply the weight of circumstances that cause things to happen. And of course we can look at the products that he sells and figure out why he always predicts disaster.

It didn't take long for me to start seriously questioning Alex Jones, but what sealed the deal for me were these two videos.


Like I said earlier, I've been following politics for about 10 years now, and so I'm pretty knowledgeable about the election process, exit polling, and how states vote in general and there is just a plethora of lies and half truths in these two clips. So much, that it would be another discussion in of itself just to go over them all. But to make it brief, Alex Jones tells his listeners that Mitt Romney had a lead in every poll and in every battleground state and that is completely false.
Real Clear Politics aggregates polling data from all of the major polls and posts them to their website www.realclearpolitics.com, and if you check these links you can see that what Alex Jones said is not true (link1 link2)
In the video with Bev Harris, they ramble on about the mysterious election process ass if the exit polls determine the winner and that the entire fate of the country is based on them. But at no point do they explain what exit polls really are and how they have nothing to do with the electoral process.

It was at this time that I realized that what conspiracy theorists do is ask a bunch of easily answerable questions while providing highly irrational conclusions based on lies and half truths that depend on their audience's lack of specific knowledge regarding the subject matter.

After all of this, I happened to catch Alex Jones' infamous interview with Piers Morgan, and I made another interesting observation.
Alex Jones has been a guest on other shows before, and some of you might be aware that he was on the daytime talk show "The View" a couple of years back, and seemingly unprovoked Alex Jones just goes crazy for no apparent reason (clip). When I first saw this, I thought it to be rather funny, but didn't think much else beyond that.... Until I saw his interview with Piers Morgan. Both of these interviews were broadcasted live with Alex Jones in the studio, and they are coincidentally the only two interviews where Alex Jones goes crazy. If you watch other interviews that were pre recorded or live via skype where they can basically cut the feed if he flies off the handle, Alex Jones manages to restrain himself and stay rather calm. Now this is just speculation on my part but I find it hard to ignore this coincidence. If your interests are persuasion than acting hysterical is not a good idea. But if your interests are increased website traffic, ad clicks, and thus generating revenue. Than making a complete fool of yourself might not be a bad idea. It's just an observation on my part so take it for what it's worth.

I recognize that some conspiracies are real, but the lesson I learned here is to only concern myself with what I can prove. While I realize that the news this day and age is far from perfect but are the conspiracy news outlets any better? The biggest question for me is; why do they need to lie so much? And the only logical answer to that is because the facts obviously do not support their claims.
 
Thanks AluminumTheory. I think for some people your account would support the conspiracy theory that Alex Jones is a Government shill, paid to discredit the Awake movement. :)

If you don't mind me asking, how have your opinions about 9/11 changed over the years?
 
Thanks AluminumTheory. I think for some people your account would support the conspiracy theory that Alex Jones is a Government shill, paid to discredit the Awake movement. :)

If you don't mind me asking, how have your opinions about 9/11 changed over the years?

Personally, I've had questions regarding 9/11 since before I saw Jesse Ventura's show or began listening to Alex Jones.

My intoduction to the 9/11 conspiracy was the video titled, "911: In Plane Site". I was around 20 years old or so when it came out and I was naturally intrigued by it. And for a brief time I felt that it the "controlled demolition theory" could be valid. This was until I got around to reading the popular mechanics article which came shortly after. Then I saw Ventura's two episodes about 9/11 which re-ignited my curiosity. While I wasn't so convinced about the "thermite theory". But I did find it odd that none of the black boxes were recovered and that it is supposedly the only time in history when investigators have been unable to recover the black boxes. Other things I found curious were the ignored warnings and that Dick Cheney gave a stand down order while one of the hijacked planes were still in the air. Looking at this along with The Heritage Foundation's Project for a New American Century which contains the following quote
PNAC said:
Section V of Rebuilding America's Defenses, entitled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force", includes the sentence: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor" (51).[14]
Coincidentally, the members of this think tank were later appointed to positions in the Bush administration which obviously lends credibility to the "government let it happen" theory.

On one side, we have Dick Cheney who is not exactly a man of character, and while allowing 3,000 people to die in order to pursue a neo conservative agenda is a lofty charge; I'm not sure if I can dismiss this "government let it happen" theory so easily especially given the administration's reaction to the attack by going after a nation who had nothing to do with 9/11.

But on the other side we have George Bush who is not exactly a competent leader by any stretch of the imagination and it's not hard to believe that he would fail to respond to the warnings, and go to war with Iraq even though they had nothing to do with 9/11

But aside from all of this, I have come realize that I need to fully research something prior to forming an opinion. Going back to what I said in my last post about the conspiracy theorists tactics by exploiting the listeners lack of general knowledge of a given subject. And with events like these it is very important to understand the context of the situation at the time it occurred. An example would be The Pearl Harbor Conspiracy Theory as conspiracy theorists often cite the fact that radar was available at the time of the attack so they must have known in advance. But upon further investigation you'll find out that the radar station was still under construction and not fully operational and the staff received little to no training. When the operators informed their superior officer, Lieutenant Tyler of the inbound targets, he thought it was just a flight of B17s known to be inbound on that same course.
This is just one of many examples where specific knowledge and context of the situation is very important, and should be important when investigating conspiracy theories.

That being said, I havent had the time to fully re-examine 9/11 and I only know part of the story, but I do plan to re examine 9/11 in the future. At this point, I categorize anything that I have ever heard or will hear from conspiracy theorists as speculative fiction until I can prove otherwise, and 9/11 is no exception.
 
To be more clear about I how I felt and currently feel about 9/11, I guess you could say I went from being a truther in the controlled demolition sense to not being a truther and then back to a truther in the sense that I felt that government elements were involved in 9/11 in some way but was undecided on whether it was allowed to happen or perhaps even remotely controlled jets (which would extremely difficult to prove) and this was based on reports that amateur pilots could not have maneuvered these planes like we saw on 9/11.

As for how I feel today, I don't think that 9/11 was an inside job, I know the tactics of the conspiracy theorists and I have many many reasons to doubt their claims, but I prefer to view evidence based on it's own individual merits and not judge it by it's source (when possible). And that being said, 9/11 is a huge subject and I prefer to have all of my facts before I can say with certainty that 9/11 wasn't an inside job. IMO if there is any conspiracy about 9/11, it is most likely that the Bush administration was just very very incompetent at responding to legitimate threats both before and after the fact.
 
To be more clear about I how I felt and currently feel about 9/11, I guess you could say I went from being a truther in the controlled demolition sense to not being a truther and then back to a truther in the sense that I felt that government elements were involved in 9/11 in some way but was undecided on whether it was allowed to happen or perhaps even remotely controlled jets (which would extremely difficult to prove) and this was based on reports that amateur pilots could not have maneuvered these planes like we saw on 9/11.

As for how I feel today, I don't think that 9/11 was an inside job, I know the tactics of the conspiracy theorists and I have many many reasons to doubt their claims, but I prefer to view evidence based on it's own individual merits and not judge it by it's source (when possible). And that being said, 9/11 is a huge subject and I prefer to have all of my facts before I can say with certainty that 9/11 wasn't an inside job. IMO if there is any conspiracy about 9/11, it is most likely that the Bush administration was just very very incompetent at responding to legitimate threats both before and after the fact.

As 'reformed' conspiracists go, I think you make a lot of sense. Where I would differ is, that I don't see that just because there are some things put forward which are questionable or even wrong, that they invalidate everything. I know you didn't say that but it was something which I felt was an underlying core message and concern.

Personalities don't come into it for me. AJ is way over the top but that is just his style. I guess it does appeal to some, hence his popularity but i guess it does come down to marketing for him and a few other. I would dispute that financial gain is a key factor for him and suggest that he uses a significant amount of revenue on overheads, including staff wages. Really he can't win. If he is media savvy he gets kicked and if he wasn't and was making yt videos from his spare room, (like most yt truthers) he would still get kicked.

As I said in another thread... he could probably make far more money by doing something mainstream.

Like he says, it is up to the individual to research and come to their own conclusions. And conclusions do not mean the end of it, new information needs to be constantly sought out, tested and evaluated so it is an ongoing thing.
 
As 'reformed' conspiracists go, I think you make a lot of sense. Where I would differ is, that I don't see that just because there are some things put forward which are questionable or even wrong, that they invalidate everything. I know you didn't say that but it was something which I felt was an underlying core message and concern.
This is why I try to view evidence based on its merits, rather than judge it by it's source. But we can't always do that. For example, you might find an article detailing an event, but none of the data presented can be corroborated or verified outside of that article or source website. In which case you're left with the credibility and reputability of the source. Haw often have these guys been right? Have they been caught lying? etc. Other things to look at would be for inconsistencies within the article itself. Also do a google search on selected text to see if it is copied from someone else's work and altered to fit a different narrative.
Personalities don't come into it for me. AJ is way over the top but that is just his style. I guess it does appeal to some, hence his popularity but i guess it does come down to marketing for him and a few other. I would dispute that financial gain is a key factor for him and suggest that he uses a significant amount of revenue on overheads, including staff wages. Really he can't win. If he is media savvy he gets kicked and if he wasn't and was making yt videos from his spare room, (like most yt truthers) he would still get kicked.

As I said in another thread... he could probably make far more money by doing something mainstream.
I think that any possible future mainstream presence of his would be temporary and he knows it. Any network willing to broadcast his show would have the sole intention of building him up just to tear him down kinda like Glenn Beck.
 
I think many of us go from belief to disbelief regarding the information and motives presented by the mainstream and alternate media . . . governments are notorious for withholding requisite information so inquiring minds speculate to fill in the gaps . . . personal agendas are always part of the release of new information and manipulation of public opinion . . all parties and administrations are guilty of this so I find it interesting that there are not more crazy ideas than already exist . . .
 
I think many of us go from belief to disbelief regarding the information and motives presented by the mainstream and alternate media . . . governments are notorious for withholding requisite information so inquiring minds speculate to fill in the gaps . . . personal agendas are always part of the release of new information and manipulation of public opinion . . all parties and administrations are guilty of this so I find it interesting that there are not more crazy ideas than already exist . . .
Because there is a lot of withheld information about say ufo's, 9/11, the Kennedy assasination there is a lot of room for the so called experts to fill in the gaps. Alex Jones is interesting because I have heard him say the most brilliant things in interviews then follow them up with complete rubbish.
The chemtrail stuff is different I think because a lot of weather modification info such as the patents and cloud seeding are public. Somehow a lot of leaps of faith get added to create the overall scenario they promote.
As far as the rabbit hole goes, I know a few people that are into it big time and just couldn't buy their claims. I decided to investigate it in depth and after finding the contrail science website and then this site and then reading a lot of the scientific information I decided not to go down the rabbit hole. And I also read a lot of the stuff churned up daily by Dane and others and considered the testimony of the "insiders" which I find to be an emotional message based on no real facts.
With all the info out there on the internet it is easy to just read whatever reinforces your own world view and start to create your own rabbit hole based on a mix of facts and semi truths. I make it a point to read opposing view points to what I may believe.
 
Because there is a lot of withheld information about say ufo's, 9/11, the Kennedy assasination there is a lot of room for the so called experts to fill in the gaps. Alex Jones is interesting because I have heard him say the most brilliant things in interviews then follow them up with complete rubbish.

OK...stop there. (Please). Threads new. There are (likely) already threads to discuss just those topics within. A simple search may find them.

Sorry to interrupt, but this segment that I "quoted" veers onto and into many areas, each equally worthy of investigation.
 
While I realize that the news this day and age is far from perfect but are the conspiracy news outlets any better?
Exactly, the CT sites always claim to be bringing you some inside information that the main stream media won't, for whatever reasons..but when you dig just below the surface, you realize that there is not much factual evidence to back up the claims. Networks like CNN, MSNBC FOXNEWS ect.. are more of a sensationalized, dramatic entertainment venue for the general public, while CT news broadcasts are for those small number of people that are into CT's, or can be easily persuaded into CT. Heck, even the weather channel is getting to be sensationalized, I guess because they want more viewers so they can get more advertising dollars.
 
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