People Want to Blame Others for Things They Can’t Explain

Human beings like to blame people for events in their lives that they can’t exactly wrap their heads around.  One thing we tend to do is follow patterns, following the  patterns that pop up in our everyday lives. Naturally we follow patterns for our own comfort especially in times of desperate need. They can be the littlest things that we connect. A person can make many connections in their lives and especially when something they can’t explain happens. They turn to the patterns to make these crazy assumptions that someone is connected to the event. They use these patterns to explain certain events after over interpreting them to explain something that they think is more logical than what actually happened.  Unanswered questions cause people to gain paranoia and anxiousness, especially when the government doesn’t have the answers themselves or the answer the public is looking for. People turn to social media in times of crisis and desperation, and that’s where judgment is forgotten. “Conspiracy theorists—and there are a lot more of them than you may think—tend to have one thing in common: they feel a lack of control over their lives.” http://time.com/3997033/conspiracy-theories/  Tragic events causing desperation and curiosity for unanswered questions lead people to turn to media and unofficial sources making them vulnerable to conspiracy theories.

September 11, 2001, one of the biggest national crisis we have ever seen in the US. Not only is it the biggest national crisis in United States history, but also one of the most significant acts of terrorism in the world. Many lives were changed. An abundant amount of lives were lost that day, thousands were injured, and the dignity of America was challenged. When tragedy hits us like this people lose reason and heavily rely on their natural patterns. They turn to the patterns that they think of as “unnatural” and start to piece them together. These patterns then end up turning into a conspiracy theory.  It can be the most random facts that don’t necessarily add up to what the public sees. Some of the most famous conspiracy theories that came from the 9/11 attacks were, 9/11 was an inside job, planes didn’t make the towers fall bombs did, the pentagon attack doesn’t add up, and the last most compelling one was that flight 93 was staged. There’s many websites on these conspiracies, many compelling articles to read, you can even find them in video form. One website even states “Many 9/11 Truther pundits drop the “nearly” and say simply that the collapses were at free fall. Truthers then insist that free fall acceleration indicates a complete lack of resistance, proving that the structures were demolished with explosives.” http://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_9_11_truth_movement_the_top_conspiracy_theory_a_decade_later It’s crazy how many different things people come up with when they doubt some thing. The facts and the patterns people find when they’re on a mission to explain what happened and they want a different explanation from what the government has told them.  

Another problem that fuels the obsession with conspiracy theories is social media. Walter Quattrociocchi and colleagues from Northeastern University stated that “Conspiracy theorists are drawn to alternative news sites as they are more likely to believe that mainstream media outlets are themselves manipulated by government. The consequence is that the desire to avoid “manipulation by mainstream media” makes people “more susceptible to false information”. http://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-conspiracy-theories-spread-on-fb Social media has a huge impact on today’s world. When we see something on social media we have a tendency to believe that it’s true why do we believe it’s automatically true? Especially when we are already in doubt about the information being fed to us. All it takes is one person to challenge it and to make a compelling argument, and make some sort of social media post about it, to get attention. Even if you watch a documentary about how 9/11 was an inside job, they make the argument so well put together that you start to believe it, even when you know it’s not an inside job. The things they can make you believe is crazy over social media. When a lot of people make arguments about the same thing it also helps with the argument. It helps when people think that many people think they same way they do doesn’t make sense, and everyone nowadays are using social media, so it’s the perfect place to get it out to millions.

Conspiracy theories are a way for people to comfort themselves when they are in doubt of the government or the facts they are being told. When tragedies strike and they don’t have anywhere to turn they tend to try and piece the missing pieces together and make them come together in ways that turn to theories that aren’t right. It’s just human nature that when we have the sense of danger or unsettlement that we turn to our minds, that wander and think of many different things that could’ve happened. Whether conspiracy theories are always correct or if it’s just coming from social media or our brains making assumptions due to the fact that the patterns seem to match up, we will always have conspiracy theories in our lives, and they will always be interesting to the human race.