Confessions of an Accidental Conspiracy Theorist
Article by Anonymous, art by Sanders Greene
There are dangerous connotations to the label “conspiracy theorist.” The word suggests someone potentially anti-government or anti-science. It conjures an image of a pale, greasy person in a dark room with only their beady eyes lit up by a computer screen. Or an image of January 6th, 2021, the news footage of those sneering and costumed masses swarming the Capitol, chanting delusionally. Mostly it just brings to mind a fear-filled person, a skeptic who has trust issues. The kind of troubled and cynical mind that stretches their fingers to contaminate and taint everything they see or hear. But honestly, it doesn’t take much to go down a mistrustful rabbit hole; all it takes is misplaced faith. In my life, I’ve struggled with misplaced faith. And sometimes I’ve felt like a naive, scared conspiracy theorist when my gullibility has gotten the better of me. In moments when I realize I’ve strayed too far from reality. The thing is, I used to purposely stray too far because I believed it would help me. I didn’t know entirely what was real. I’ve learned now that I can get farther in life and be happier by just going deeper into the immediate reality around me and mundane simple pleasures, rather than the obscene and nearly unbelievable. You’ll see what I mean.
When I was bored at home during the pandemic, I began to research astrology. Of course, my foundational knowledge comes from semi-sketchy websites or blogs written by unknown astrologers. But I find it really interesting. I think it can be a fun tool. Ancient Mesopotamians began the crude versions of these studies and the unwavering stars encouraged worldwide civilizations for millennia. My belief in astrology stems from my belief in cycles, in the gravitational pull that connects humans to the planets, as well as the gravitational pull that connects people to one another. We are small, and the planets are insurmountably colossal, and their orbits around Earth affect us and how we live.
I took my imaginative beliefs a step further than personal, halfhearted research about a month ago, when I paid $70 for an astrology reading. Okay, hear me out – I particularly admired this one astrologer. She had a really interesting podcast and seemed to take an objective and academic approach. But after the reading, an hour-long Google Meet video call going over my natal chart, I began to feel uneasy. A lot of what the astrologer told me was affirming and inspiring about my life, my skills, and my future. I cannot deny that she observed things about my passions, hopes, and personality traits that were very specific and resonated with me. But I couldn’t shake the negative messages I had also received, the ones that lingered in my head and kept poking at me: “people will not be afraid to be mean to you in this life...” “this life is going to be a hard one...” “relationships are always going to be difficult for you.” Several of my friends reassured me that these messages were very vague, not nuanced enough, and too harsh to possibly be believable or true. Nonetheless, the call made me realize that I need to be more careful where I place my faith. My personal faith in astrology had been loose, glittery, and dreamy. When another person imposed limits, absolute truth, and heavy prediction onto my natal chart, I hated it.
Last year, my freshman year, whenever I faced a crisis, I would pull out my Tarot Reader app, which would present me with a singular card with a few sentences of explanation. I took these messages to be advice from a divine force, about if I should pursue a situationship (it indicated that I should, so I did), if I should take the summer camp job (the card said I would get new opportunities and grow, and then I took the job). This faith in the tarot app was similar to my astrological research – fun, lighthearted, helpful. But if I received a bad card when I asked the app about something I was excited about, I got annoyed. So really, I didn’t want to be told what to do. I didn’t believe in the powers of digital tarot strongly enough to change my mind or my decisions. I was just looking for affirmation of what I already thought. But best believe, on the occasions when the app told me that fulfillment and success were on their way, I ate it up.
So now you see that I am imaginative, I choose what I want to believe, and am perhaps a little gullible. Maybe you can relate. But now I need to make a confession. When I was 17 and on TikTok a lot, I accidentally bought into the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. This conspiracy theory has dangerous connections to the Alt-Right, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I saw a few videos made by young people on TikTok who claimed to have ‘shocking evidence’ of Hollywood corruption. Then, as though in a whirlpool, my TikTok algorithm fed me small nuggets of other information, tame enough that I got sucked in. So, I fell prey to aspects of the Pizzagate conspiracy. Not the Donald Trump stuff, not the Hillary Clinton stuff, but a more niche ideological branch of the conspiracy that focused on Jeffrey Epstein, Epstein Island, and cult-like behavior of celebrities and high-up government officials. Now, allegedly, Jeffrey Epstein was connected to Pizzagate, but what I didn’t know was that Pizzagate was literally just Q-Anon. I was observing and genuinely respecting the swirling foam bubbles that lay at the top of a horrific poison cesspool. Now, I didn’t spread Pizzagate ideas, nor discuss them with my friends or post about them, and my political beliefs are adamantly far left. But for a few weeks, in the secrecy of my mind, I casually and lightheartedly believed that Jeffrey Epstein was connected to high-up democratic officials running a child sex-trafficking ring. I was gullible.
I did not entirely care if my TikTok feed ever told me the truth. During that time in my life, if it entertained me, that was enough. Delusion was okay. I do my best to not let it be okay anymore. Falling for a conspiracy theory was embarrassing but was not out of character. It is one of the dangerous consequences of living in your imagination. Luckily, after a few weeks of buying into some of the above-the-iceberg ideas of Pizzagate, I discovered an article from the New York Times about Pizzagate and its connections to Q-Anon. I was shocked and appalled that I had been tricked into even slightly buying into something that was so clearly ridiculous. But sure enough, the ridiculous soon turned into the nightmarish and horrific. About 6 months after my dip into the cesspool, I watched the news, stunned, when on January 6th, 2021, Q-Anon worshippers among other idiots committed an act of domestic terrorism and complete sinister delusion. Misplaced faith can turn so dark, so fast.
I don’t know what to make of genuinely trusting a spiritual system and then realizing something has turned dark. Like when my experience with astrology went from fun and esoteric to foreboding and anxiety-inducing. Or when things are going well in my life and then a set of tarot cards I own tells me, when I lay a few of them out on my soft carpet, that someone will betray me soon or that now is a time for large changes to come. I don’t know what I believe at this point. The truth is that I went to Catholic school for 10 formative years of my life. Then I grew to hate Catholicism for its insistence on extreme shame, for its dated homophobia, for its insistence on ancient scriptures that are irrelevant and prevent a person from being sovereign and expressing themself. When I was eight, I used to cry while I prayed to Jesus, because I loved him. Now I am moved to tears by daily notifications from CoStar, my astrology app, weird messages that are sometimes funny but sometimes manipulate me into thinking my day is worse than it is, or sometimes tell me dark things like “You are not meant to live a normal life” (July 2022) or “You are a constellation of sadness” (March 2022). Believe me, I wish these weren’t real quotes.
Since 8th grade, the year when I knew that I loathed Catholicism and was done trying to agree with it, I have been floating around a strange place. In this new place, I still believe in a higher power and energy and connection and divine purpose. I still believe in destiny. But it’s translated in weird ways. I make the rules now because I didn’t like the rules my teachers made.
Honestly, it was always less about me being anti-Bible and more me being anti-Catholic schoolteachers who make it their life’s mission to shame kids, especially young girls. I’m not anti-Bible – the text is incredibly rich and meaningful. What wasn’t rich and meaningful was when my male P.E. teacher gave our 4th-grade class a sex education talk. He told the boys to leave the room. Ten wide-eyed nine-year-old girls sat facing him. He held up a pink rose made of tissue paper and asked us if we liked the rose, if we thought it was pretty, if we wanted it. We said yes. He began to tear the petals off, one by one. After each tear, he asked us if we still wanted the rose. His tone increased in aggressiveness as he spoke. Finally, the rose had only a few petals left. He held it up and gave some awful spiel about how the rose was now damaged, how no one would want it because it had been touched and ripped. He said that the beautiful, untouched rose represented someone who had never had sex, and that they could give their whole self to the person they married. I knew that what he was saying was wrong even at nine. But I was young and he had authority, and as much as I tried to shake the image, it lasted.
You’ve heard of Catholic guilt, maybe you haven’t heard of corrupt thought paradigms inscribed like a tattoo into the hearts of nine-year-olds. Or maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about. The only way for me to escape it was to create a new world where I could make the rules. Where I decided what I was proud of, and what mattered.
But I am a devoted person – I was born to be passionate, and I am bound to be devoted to something; I’d be empty without some kind of worship. It’s just a matter of where I decide to channel it. One manifestation of this devotion was an over-obsession with love. Deep love, loyal love. Over the past few years, I have worshiped the ideals of true love, of true friendship. I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ve just recently been able to break free of the self-sacrificial chains that I gave myself so that I could be subservient to an all-knowing lover, to the all-knowing tremors of my own heart. If, for example, I developed a crush, it was all-consuming, and I believed the person was put into my life for a reason. If I was dating someone, I put them on a pedestal. I believed that love meant giving everything, that you would be willing to give up your own pleasures for the sake of keeping the relationship going. Notice any similarities to Catholic teachings? I believed that love was sacred and on multiple occasions, over the span of about five years, I became so confused by my feelings of lust and devotion that I couldn’t see straight.
When my grandmother passed away a few years ago, when I was in the initial throes of physically pulsating grief, I believed I could see her memories. I believed she could talk to me and that she liked the smell of the fall candles I lit for her. I believe that all butterflies are sent from her. Of course, this is a sweet example, and you probably think it’s cute; it’s the least problematic of the things I’ve told you. The part I’m not saying is that I don’t really believe she ever died. I won’t let myself think about it. I refuse.
At my high school graduation, the valedictorian told us that it’s best to romanticize life, because no one else can do it for you. This is how I wish to live and what I tell myself I am doing, but when I examine things logically, I can see that I am not romanticizing. That would imply that I am happy, that my methods make things more beautiful. Instead, I am spiritualizing, existentializing, making everything a symbol. I have trouble letting the past go. That’s putting it lightly. In my mind I am still friends with everyone who has left or moved away. In my mind I still get to be a child. In my mind my ex-boyfriends will always love me. I am so scared of change that I have become skeptical that it’s ever occurred. Like the conspiracy theorists who think they are prophets who can see the truth, I am convinced that I am intuitive, that my dreams can tell me the future if I want them to, that I can manifest things. Can you see how scared I am? You can laugh, but what if this was your mind? What would I have if these beliefs were not true?
Well, let’s see. There’s plenty of time for life to prove me wrong. There’s time for me to become okay with change and to be happy in the present. There’s time for me to get a Religion minor and maybe find solace in some ancient text I’ve never read, some room of humming people chanting in pews, singing songs I have yet to hear but that will sing right to my heart. I think I need some kind of faith. I don’t know what the right one is yet.
There is an essence of a laughing, talkative, smiling girl that is still here without those beliefs. Right now, she is running around crying because she’s trying to build a religion of herself, all by herself. She’s convinced she doesn’t need help, either. If religion fails you, forsake it and do it yourself. If your life keeps changing and the tide keeps moving forward, refuse to go with it. Stay in the murky sand at the bottom and scream. But I see that there is still time for me to stop holding on, to close my eyes and let the tide envelop my small body with the trash and salt and tears that fill everyone’s ocean and allow it to violently keep me moving onward. I can see a future where I trust every decision I make. My trusted friends can give me advice instead of the tarot cards. CoStar can stop being one of those trusted friends, can stop being The Bible. Repeat after me: I trust in the chaos; I’m not going to question it and rebel against it. I’m going to laugh and keep moving through it. Say it, then write it, then look up.