I’m not a psychologist, but I’ve met a lot of conspiracy theorists/ general paranoids in my life and they tend to have to same profile: pretty smart people, natural intelligence and curiosity, who:
1) Didn’t prioritize school as kids, whether they dropped out, cut class a lot, didn’t go beyond high school, whatever;
2) They’ve done a decent amount of drugs in their time (not qualifying this, just saying)
3) They read a lot, but again, reject establishment so what they eschew classics and popular literature for more fringe stuff;
4) They have antisocial qualities. They believe they are smarter than people around them and are a bit bitter about their marginalization. They get off from thinking that they are “in the know,” whether that takes the form of, all those underground bands that are so cool you’ve never heard of or thinking that the government is trying to sterilize the population with flu shots…
TLDR; these types tend to be smart, with less formal education than they should have for their intelligence level, impressionable, anti-establishment, marginalized and a bit bitter.
You would never think in your wildest dreams that rapper B.o.B and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson would get into a rap battle against each other, let alone getting into a rap battle about whether or not the earth is flat or round, but that is exactly what occurred this week in pop culture news as B.o.B hit the social network with his poorly chosen public claims tweeting about the earth being flat. After getting a response from Tyson on twitter with a pithy dismissal, the situation got extremely heated causing B.o.B to call out Tyson in a recently released track named “Flatline.”
The lyrics clearly dissing the physicist “Freethinking got the world at my neck” he raps “Neil Tyson gotta loosen up his vest/ They probably write that man one hell of a check/ I’m over here on this side of town/ Come on over over over over here and try to clown/ I will never pipe down.” Other key lines include “Use your common sense, why is NASA part of the Department of Defense, and Indoctrinated in a cult called science/ And graduated to a club full of liars/ Heliocentrism… EFF you and your team, you can sit on the bench with ‘em.”
I really believe that this ‘Flat Earth’ silliness is a type of false flag, a type of misdirection technique inserted into the public discourse as a ‘look over here’ trick. Used to cover up deep state topics (Snowden revelations, etc.)
From theintercept.com:
“Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums. Here is one illustrative list of tactics from the latest GCHQ document we’re publishing today:”
Cass Suntein would be proud (From Salon.com):
“In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-“independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists.
Or there’s also an album that he’s releasing, so some could bre hoping that this is some kind of long-form troll for free publicity.
Spoiler- The Earth is not flat.
-Dagobot
Get at me on twitter: @markdago
Like me on THE Facebook: facebook.com/markdagoraps
Download my latest EP for free: markdago.bandcamp.com
Listen to MY podcast http: http://poppundits.libsyn.com