Paul Bryant's Reviews > Among the Trolls: My Journey Through Conspiracyland

1) In warfare human beings discover a capability for violence they never knew they had; so long as it’s sanctioned by the state they can bomb and kill with ease. Now social media has revealed something else we weren’t aware of - a propensity in many people for wild untethered beliefs and uncouth speech that has come as a shock. We have all found out that for many people (your son, your dear little grandmamma, the hairdresser, the bassist in your third favourite band) there is absolutely no notion of the objective reality we ourselves always assumed; they actually never did believe in any of these concepts of democracy and liberal government and rule of law that the rest of us have been taking for granted, they think it’s all a puppeteered sham and we are the sheeple being herded about. And it’s never not been a sham.

2) But wait - if the conspiracies unearthed by the theorists are so vast, complex and powerful how are they ever to be defeated? What would success look like to a conspiracy believer?

3) One conspiracy pusher explains the difference between him and Marianna : ”You believe all people are good. I believe almost everyone is bad.”



4) Marianna asks herself why she doesn’t believe in conspiracies:

At the heart of it is a simple answer: trust. I have faith in a system and institutions that have no on the whole let me down, plus a doctor for a dad and a mum who was once a nurse.

OMG, this sounds truly naïve, and I can hear even non-truther readers failing to stifle guffaws. And yet, I agree with her. I believe in double blind clinical trials, I believe in peer-reviewed scientific papers, I believe that the government is real and that I and my fellow citizens can throw the rascals out when we vote, and get some new rascals in.

5) But! If you oppose conspiracy theories you are quite often in the sorry unpleasant position of having to defend the findings of the FBI and CIA etc about such matters as 9/11 and JFK. It’s invidious.





6) The conspiracy believers will take the official version of a particular event and give it unrelenting scrutiny and dismantle it and mock it. The arguments against the official version, however, are given zero scrutiny, they are instantly accepted.

7) You might think that the conspiracy believers get involved in their campaigns in order to feel better, to gain what they call “agency” these days. But you’d be wrong (I was).

The true believers become even more powerless, because ultimately thy can’t resolve the fabricated plot they think they’ve uncovered. They also find themselves exploited by new powerful people – the leaders of this conspiracy world.

That was an interesting insight, on page 46. Unfortunately on page 47 we read :

Conspiracy theories and falsehoods help believers feel powerful in a world where lots of people feel powerless.

So, er, which is it?

8) Isaac Newton was an alchemist and Conan Doyle believed in spiritualism, and also fairies. Some scientists are full of irrational thought.

9) The Russian state conspires to promote conspiracy theories about the West, NATO, Ukraine, etc. A real conspiracy encourages fake conspiracies.

10) The last part of this book is very repetetetive. Marianna sets up a number of fake accounts with the Big Five (Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter/X, Tiktok) using various profiles and checks what stuff their algorithms send to her. No surprise, as, for example, a profile for a fake 14 year old boy, after he clicka and likes some videos, is quickly sent by Tiktok lots of videos glorifying gang life and knife carrying. Or a profile of a concerned 40 year old woman is sent antivax stuff. This is the stuff the companies say they don’t allow. When Marianna shows them proof that their vetting procedures are not working, they refuse an interview and fob her off with a bland statement. “Snapchat strictly prohibits bullying, harassment and any illegal activity…[we] provide confidential in-app reporting tools”.

Marianna is contemptuous in a polite sort of way :

These are the sorts of responses I often receive from social media sites. They are practically interchangeable, and often describe policies that my reporting contradicts or reveals to be inadequately enforced.

11) Conspiracy theories rely on the belief that many many people are almost superhuman, capable of plans that would be incredibly difficult or even impossible to pull off. When backed into a corner, conspiracy theorists afford magical powers to the cabal of powerful, corrupt people they believe are pulling all the strings.

12 ) Between 1 January 2023 and the end of June that year the BBC received 14,488 warnings about abusive social media posts relating to their personnel. Of this number, 11,771 relate to me.
Because Marianna has been exposing online conspiracy trollers for a few years. They know who she is and they hate her.

FURTHER READING

I have already read :

Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and its Human Fallout by Ginger Gorman

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture by Whitney Phillips

The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball

These are all well worth it, but of course the conspiracy theories of yesteryear begin to look quaint.