MSM lies about “pandemic”

[Creampuff]

OP it's because journalism is dead. Very few of these news agencies send someone to the hot spots to take pics, most of them are now just writing stories from home and use whatever pics they can get.

It's Lazy News, in some cases Fake News. Is it a conspiracy? Probably not. Are the libs/globalists using this crisis as a power grab? Certainly!

Yes, I agree, the media is rehashing stock videos and stock images, thinking no on will notice. Pre social media, even if someone noticed, it wasn't easy to show to the world their laziness. Now with social media it is quite easy to reveal their laziness.

[Grouchy Bear]

Yes, I agree, the media is rehashing stock videos and stock images, thinking no on will notice. Pre social media, even if someone noticed, it wasn't easy to show to the world their laziness. Now with social media it is quite easy to reveal their laziness.

Criminal...unscrupulous...deceitful are the words that come to my mind, not lazy.

[FireCloud9]

Go on... fill in the gaps for 1,2 and 3. Some conspiracy theorists are as lazy as journalists - they leave out purpose / objective, etc. lets hear the details.

Our economic system, and those of many countries around the world, relies on the premise that people are selfish and greedy by nature. Ultimately, everyone is after the money. Tell be about 1,2 and 3 in that context.

1. Hate to break it to you but virtually all nations suppress dissent and regardless of the types of government, control human movement through economics, law, taxes, etc.

But I really want to hear the link, in your mind, between COVID and #1. Purpose, objective, mission, background players, global coordination, etc.

Oh come now OP, #2 is entirely optional. Everyone in America is free to not vaccinate and die of any deadly disease at home. Sure there are some employment exceptions, but like I hear many on this forum say, "If you don't like it, quit and get another job".

Noone is going to kick down your door and provide you with healthcare. Just tell them you're broke and have no health insurance and they'll go away. And just stay away from any healthcare facility. Yes, there is home health, but you can decline.

#3 Please, go on... I want to hear all the benefits of crashing the economy of every country on earth. This is a wonderful opportunity for everyone to inject their favorite conspiracies.

Personally, I hear that Shane Dawson is all the rage with the younger generation. I've seen a few episodes with my kids. I find them entertaining.

I have to admit, at least Shane Dawson comes up with some theories as to why the conspiracy is taking place. You've left us hanging. Very disappointing.

[bagman]

[theLBC]

let's not pretend the media isn't trying to destroy the economy to hurt trump's chances at reelection.

"the planet depends on it."

[Grouchy Bear]

Go on... fill in the gaps for 1,2 and 3. Some conspiracy theorists are as lazy as journalists - they leave out purpose / objective, etc. lets hear the details.

Our economic system, and those of many countries around the world, relies on the premise that people are selfish and greedy by nature. Ultimately, everyone is after the money. Tell be about 1,2 and 3 in that context.

1. Hate to break it to you but virtually all nations suppress dissent and regardless of the types of government, control human movement through economics, law, taxes, etc.

But I really want to hear the link, in your mind, between COVID and #1. Purpose, objective, mission, background players, global coordination, etc.

Oh come now OP, #2 is entirely optional. Everyone in America is free to not vaccinate and die of any deadly disease at home. Sure there are some employment exceptions, but like I hear many on this forum say, "If you don't like it, quit and get another job".

Noone is going to kick down your door and provide you with healthcare. Just tell them you're broke and have no health insurance and they'll go away. And just stay away from any healthcare facility. Yes, there is home health, but you can decline.

#3 Please, go on... I want to hear all the benefits of crashing the economy of every country on earth. This is a wonderful opportunity for everyone to inject their favorite conspiracies.

Personally, I hear that Shane Dawson is all the rage with the younger generation. I've seen a few episodes with my kids. I find them entertaining.

I have to admit, at least Shane Dawson comes up with some theories as to why the conspiracy is taking place. You've left us hanging. Very disappointing.

you might as well stick your fingers in your ears and go “WHAT LALALA I CANT HEAR YOU”

[SPUTTER]

Yes, there media is lying about the virus. They want the country shutdown til at least November. That's the agenda.

[FireCloud9]

Well, if you're not going to make it a fun conspiracy thread by filling in the gaps, I may as well inject some research to inoculate the thread.


Analytic thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories
Swami, V., Voracek, M., Stieger, S., Tran, U.S. and Furnham, A. 2014. Analytic thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories. Cognition. 133 (3), pp. 572-585. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2014.08.006


Connecting the dots: how personal need for structure produces false consumer pattern perceptions

"...the development of beliefs in corporate conspiracy theories (study 3)"


Who believes in conspiracies? New research offers a theory

People with certain personality traits and cognitive styles are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories


A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Psychological Research on Conspiracy Beliefs

Predictors of Conspiracy Beliefs

A multitude of studies view conspiracy beliefs as a symptom of an underlying psychological disorder, the prodromal phases of a psychological disorder or the traits associated with them. Amongst those, paranoia (Bruder et al., 2013), paranoid ideation, and schizotypy (Darwin et al., 2011) were prominently found to harbor connections with conspiracy beliefs. Paranoid ideation and schizotypy share similar traits, including suspicion, magical thinking, and odd and unusual beliefs (Barlow and Durand, 2009). In paranoid ideation, people are harboring thoughts that external agents have an intention of hostility toward them; this hostility may be in the form of physical or verbal threats and, relevant for conspiracy beliefs, fearing deception, exploitation, and disloyalty (Freeman et al., 2005; Darwin et al., 2011).

Personality Traits

Fear and anxiety were reported as positive predictors of conspiracy beliefs (e.g., Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013). As people are anxious, fear a threatening situation, or have low perceived feelings of control over situations, they tend to conspiracies. Both state and trait anxiety are positive predictors of conspiracy beliefs (Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013; Swami et al., 2016a). The need to exert control over one's social environment, operationalized as feelings of control (Leiser et al., 2017; van Prooijen, 2017), desirability of control (Lobato et al., 2014; Rose, 2017) were all stable predictors of conspiracy beliefs. Coupled with the desire to have perceived control over the environment is the general concept of making sense of the world. Such sense making-motivation is central for conspiracy theories, as it provides explanations for events and, most of the time, an entity to blame (van Prooijen and van Dijk, 2014).

Paranormal belief, a construct related to paranoid ideation and schizotypy, operationalized as the acceptance of processes and phenomena that are scientifically impossible (e.g., precognition, psychokinesis, extra-sensory perception) was positively linked to conspiracy beliefs as well (Darwin et al., 2011). Paranormal belief also includes magical, superstitious, and religious thinking (Lindeman and Aarnio, 2006). People with pronounced paranormal belief doubt orthodoxies and scientific knowledge (Ramsay, 2006), and this led to the assumption that if orthodoxies are doubted in one area (such as the belief in ghosts); they are doubted in other areas (such as official explanations of events or catastrophes) as well, thus explaining the path to conspiracy beliefs. The proneness to statistical errors and failures in probabilistic reasoning is a key element of paranormal belief (Dagnall et al., 2007). This holds true for the belief in conspiracy theories as well, as participants with susceptibility to conjunction fallacy errors were more likely to believe conspiracies (Brotherton and French, 2014; Dagnall et al., 2017). The same is true for illusory correlations, confirmation bias, and hindsight bias (Shermer, 2010, 2011). Conspiracy beliefs may be, at least in part, a product of bias or shortcuts made when searching for explanations (Brotherton and French, 2014).

The role of self-evaluation was also found to be an important link, people with a high amount of narcissism, an exaggerated feeling of self-love, were more prone to believe in conspiracies (Kumareswaran, 2014; Cichocka et al., 2016a). Narcissism is positively associated with paranoid thinking, as narcissists are perceiving the actions of others intentionally targeted against themselves (Fenigstein and Vanable, 1992). Such perceptions, again, are linked to conspiracy beliefs. Self-esteem, the positive self-evaluation without narcissistic components (Paulhus et al., 2004), seems to be negatively associated with conspiracy beliefs. Conspiracies are appealing to people who lack confidence and excess self-promotional characteristics, such as self-esteem (Cichocka et al., 2016a; Galliford and Furnham, 2017).

Social and Political Factors

A second branch of the literature argues that investigating only clinical or subclinical correlates of conspiracy beliefs is insufficient. These studies tried to connect socio-political, value related, and religious attitudes to conspiracy beliefs. Given the high prevalence of the endorsement of conspiracy theories, a disorder-centered view could never fully explain the support and acceptance of them (Oliver and Wood, 2014b; Mancosu et al., 2017). Socio-political variables, e.g., political cynicism (Swami et al., 2010; Swami, 2012) and negative attitudes toward authority (Swami et al., 2011; Cichocka et al., 2016b), were investigated. Anomia, the concept that describes the perception that the complexity of modern societies has become unintelligent (Goertzel, 1994; Bruder et al., 2013), was positively associated as well. A high level of anomia is an indicator that a person feels alienation and disaffection from societal systems (Goertzel, 1994) and thus endorses conspiraciesblaming an external agent for their low social-political power. The same association is true for persons who feel alienated because of unemployment or perceived status of their in-group (Uenal, 2016). Ethnic minority status was associated as well, as members of minority groups reported stronger beliefs (Wilson and Rose, 2013).

Religious individuals are more likely than non-religious to believe in conspiracy theories Political extremism, either to the left or to the right, is associated as an attempt or thinking style, aimed at, once again, making sense of societal events (van Prooijen et al., 2015). (Imhoff and Bruder, 2014; Richey, 2017).

Closely related to right-wing authoritarianism is social-dominance orientation, a measure of preference for hierarchical social system (Swami, 2012). Imhoff and Bruder (2014) argued that persons with high amounts right-wing authoritarianism endorse conspiracies that involve deviant, high-power groups (e.g., anti-Sematic conspiracies), that threaten the status quo. Social dominance-orientation, on the other hand, leads to an endorsement of theories involving the deviance of low-status groups (e.g., homosexuals, ethnic minorities), as they are thought to threaten the status quo as well. Conspiracy beliefs, right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation operate as system-justifying functions, as a defense system to protect the socio-political status quo (Goertzel, 1994; Imhoff and Bruder, 2014).

Several studies have stressed the negative relationship between scientific knowledge, rational thinking and conspiracy beliefs. People who are more used to analytic thinking are not as prone to fall for the logical fallacies inherited in conspiracy theories Lower intelligence was also associated with conspiracy beliefs In general, people with high education are less likely than people with low education to believe in conspiracy theories (van Prooijen, 2017).

[harbormaster]

OK

While I can buy this theory it is just a theory. Now if you were to carry that theory out further what is to stop antifa or other radical socialist democrats from spreading the virus further to promote that cause? How do you stop them;

On the left we have people that so hate our capitalist way of life they promote the agenda as you noted; on the right we have people who think any form of rules are the beginning of the end of the constitution and going to lead to a police state. Anyone in the middle is some kind of statist.

let's not pretend the media isn't trying to destroy the economy to hurt trump's chances at reelection.

"the planet depends on it."

[small hole shooter]

While I can buy this theory it is just a theory. Now if you were to carry that theory out further what is to stop antifa or other radical socialist democrats from spreading the virus further to promote that cause? How do you stop them;

On the left we have people that so hate our capitalist way of life they promote the agenda as you noted; on the right we have people who think any form of rules are the beginning of the end of the constitution and going to lead to a police state. Anyone in the middle is some kind of statist.

And if you live outside of the above boxes you are in a Bunker or in a nudist commune. One has bare arms, the other is bearing arms.

[zhyla]

This corona virus nonsense is being used to:

1) suppress dissent/control human movement
2) push mandated medicine
3) crash the economyextra-national entity(s)

Crashing the global economy benefits approximately zero people on this planet. You can tell exactly how far in the deep end someone is by whether they think there is a global conspiracy to make the rich get poorer. It's just not the way the world works my dude.

[newbutold]

If there weren't WH lies and media lies, all the lies from China and Russia would be lonely

[Grouchy Bear]

Crashing the global economy benefits approximately zero people on this planet. You can tell exactly how far in the deep end someone is by whether they think there is a global conspiracy to make the rich get poorer. It's just not the way the world works my dude.

[harbormaster]

Looks like history will think fondly of da GrouchyBear.