Conspiracy

“I believe wholeheartedly that I captured, that night, an angel on film,” Colette Reynolds said in a recent TikTok shared with her 2.2 million followers. Behind her was a photograph of a tree, at night, with a gauzy white shape visible on a branch. Reynolds, a professional-looking woman with glasses and curled blonde hair in a black turtleneck sweater, identified it as a seraphim, the highest order of angel in Christendom. She had taken the picture years ago, she said, at a low point in her life, explaining that…

Jesse Watters recently suggested that the agency's psychological operations unit once pitched the idea of turning the singer into "an asset for combating misinformation online" There’s no shortage of conspiracy theories surrounding Taylor Swift. In fact, she often encourages them to dig for clues about her upcoming music releases — like whether the snake print boots she was photographed in this week were hinting at a return to her Reputation era. But recently, the conspiring has gone a little off…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Liberal commentators frequently condemn conspiracy theories that threaten public safety. The US mainstream media exploded in 2016 when an armed man harassed diners in a Washington DC pizzeria, allegedly because he subscribed to the QAnon online conspiracy theory claiming that a Hillary Clinton-connected pedophile ring was operating from the restaurant. …

Taylor Swift — is there anything she can’t do? Not according to a legion of online Swiftie conspiracists who think she’s involved with the movie Argylle. To understand what all those Swifties are on about, one must first understand Argylle‘s origin. Purportedly, the Matthew Vaughn film is based on a spy novel by an unknown author named Elly Conway, which hadn’t even been released when the story was optioned. After several delays, Conway’s supposed debut novel is set to come out Jan. 9, 2024. The movie version, meanwhile,…

The Miami police showed up in force to respond to a disturbance at a downtown open-air mall on New Year’s Day after reports of teens brawling and setting off fireworks, ultimately arresting four individuals between the ages of 14 and 16. But with footage of the chaos and dozens of cop cars lined up alongside Bayside Market making the rounds online in the following days, it wasn’t long before a cohort of conspiracists had invented a very different story befitting The X-Files.…

A desire to disrupt the established political system is a strong motivator for sharing conspiracy theories, new research suggests. This is regardless of if the sharer believes the theories they're sharing or not.Researchers even have a term for this hunger for sabotage: a 'need for chaos'.While we all engage in conspiracy thinking to a certain degree, some of these beliefs can become dangerous. The increasing propagation and power of misinformation online, some fueled by vested interests, has created a strong motivation…

2023 was a busy year in science. Here are 10 stories worth revisiting as we wind up the year.1. Canadian Jeremy Hansen chosen to fly to the moonA Canadian astronaut was selected as part of the crew for NASA's Artemis II mission to the moon.Jeremy Hansen and three crew mates will fly in an Orion capsule that will orbit the moon and fly farther into deep space than any humans have gone before.Hansen will not land on the moon, but the planned 10-day mission will be the first of a series of missions expected to culminate with…

Prominent conspiracy theorists — including Gen. Michael Flynn — are promoting an unfounded theory that pedophiles have been using Etsy to distribute child porn, sold under the guise of wildly expensive digital downloads of images of pizza. This new conspiracy theory has emerged from the fecund muck of QAnon and Pizzagate — both of which hold that the world is run by an unaccountable cabal of satanic child sex traffickers, and both of which thrive on decoding of supposed secret messages. The fixation with pizza…

Elon Musk has reinstated controversial conspiracy theorist, gun-violence denier Alex Jones on X following a poll on the social media platform. Jones is known for accusing Hillary Clinton of murdering, mutilating and eating children, denying the Sandy Hook school shooting among other things…

Alex Jones is back on X five years after then-Twitter made the decision to permanently ban him and his show, Infowars, for violating the site’s policy on “abusive behavior.” Elon Musk — who last year said he wouldn’t unban Jones because of the conspiracy theorist’s insistence on calling the Sandy Hook massacre a hoax — created a poll on X over the weekend asking users to vote on whether Jones should be reinstated.The poll closed with a majority vote for “Yes.” As of Sunday, Jones’ personal account was once again active,…