When Willie first discovered the conspiracy theory rabbit hole he was a young man living in the Pacific Northwest. His hometown was, as he puts it, “a very liberal, hippy-dippy kind of community.” He listened to Art Bell, an apocalyptic conspiracy theorist on short-wave radio, and he’d “wake up every morning thinking the world was going to end.”
Willie got his information about what was going on in the outside world from a variety of sources. The most significant was What Really Happened, a website with the tagline, “The history the government hopes you don’t learn!” Here’s Willie:
So I started every morning, reading “the news” on What Really Happened. It was all just that kind of conspiracy thing, and every once in a while they would link to one of those other sites, like Alex Jones’ Infowars … And, as with a lot of people, I was just like, “Oh my God! Look at all this news that no one else has ever seen before, and I’m seeing it!”
Willie was an avid consumer of this special type of news, reading about all kinds of conspiracy theories. He read the theory that TWA Flight 800 was shot down by a missile, and conspiracy theories about the Waco siege and the Oklahoma City bombing.1 He read how the government was planning to shepherd people into concentration camps, and how they added fluoride to the water to keep us weak. He read about the JFK assassination being a CIA plot and how the attacks on 9/11 were an “inside job.” He read and believed many theories in the years he spent down the rabbit hole.
He’d heard about the Chemtrail theory early on, but he didn’t pay much attention. Generally speaking, the theory says that the trails that planes leave behind in the sky are not, as science tells us, just condensation clouds, but are actually some kind of deliberate toxic spraying. These theories date back to 1997 when the focus was on the health effects of the supposed chemicals. These concerns didn’t resonate much with Willie, a healthy young man, so he didn’t really look into it.
What eventually drew him deep down the Chemtrails corner of the rabbit hole was a photo of “Chemtrail tanks” on a plane. A popular example of evidence used by promoters of the Chemtrail theory is photos of suspicious looking metal barrels on planes with tubing coming out of them. These are actually just photos of the interiors of test aircraft. The barrels contain water, used as ballast to simulate the weight of the passengers for flight testing. But if you don’t know this then these photos could easily look like evidence of some kind of spraying campaign.
The Chemtrail theory was in the background for quite a long time; I believed that ‘they,’ the government, or somebody, was capable of something like that. But I never said, “I’m feeling health effects from Chemtrails” or anything like that. The smoking gun for me, in support of Chemtrails, was the barrels thing. When I saw that I was like, “Oh well, that proves it, oh my God.” I was somewhat devastated because it confirmed that it was true.
Willie stayed down the rabbit hole for years, consuming all the information he could find about conspiracy theories, and occasionally sharing the information in the comments section of his local newspaper. We often think of conspiracy theorists as ardent campaigners for what they think is the truth—evangelical proselytizers who harangue everyone with their alternative ideas. But many of them largely keep their theories to themselves.
I didn’t really go around proselytizing, but I did sign my comments on the local newspaper website with a little blurb about 9/11 being an inside job. But it wasn’t like I was standing with a microphone. I was in a band, and I never said this onstage or anything like that.
When I asked Willie how he dealt with people around him who tried to dissuade him from his conspiracy beliefs, it turns out the situation was remarkably infrequent. He was living in something of a cultural bubble.
No, no one argued! Where I live there’s a lot of people who believe in this stuff; I guess that says a lot about how I have a limited group of friends, or whatever. But I never really got any pushback. It was like I got radicalized online.
Maybe one time someone challenged me, and I gave them the sarcastic line, “Sure, governments always tell the truth.” He came back to me with, “Well, no that’s not true. Yes, governments lie, but in this case, there isn’t really convincing evidence of what you say.” The people on the local newspaper website comments section who were always commenting to me, I thought of them as way too rational. Not enough “feeling,” you know? They were just too data-driven, mostly Apollonian in thinking rather than Dionysian, you know?
Apollonian and Dionysian refers to two Greek gods. Apollo is the god of rational thinking, prudence, and purity. Dionysus is his opposite—irrational, chaotic, a risk taker, driven by emotions and instincts. He’s the fun guy. The devil-may-care Dionysian worldview was more appealing to the hippies of the Pacific Northwest.
Not only did Willie get very little critical pushback from the people around him, he wasn’t even really aware that there were any places he could go to get information that countered the conspiracy theories he was hearing from his own “news” sources.
No, I wasn’t aware of debunking websites in the beginning. In the beginning I was looking at my local news and eager to discuss world views with people, but I didn’t know about Snopes, or … what others are there?
But, years later, it was the very same evidence that pulled him down that helped him escape: the ballast barrels.
One day, I was on Above Top Secret a conspiracy forum, and somebody debunked the ballast barrel thing. When they gave me the information, a link to the aviation site where the image was from, I looked at it and thought, “Oh my God, the other thinking was the wrong thinking.” I immediately recognized that the person who was doing this debunking on ATS was way smarter than me, more intelligent than me, way closer to being an expert on this subject than me. It was like an “aha, eureka!” moment, like “wait a minute.” Somebody has been lying about these ballast barrels, to make it seem like the whole Chemtrail thing is real.
This “aha” moment, triggered by a friendly poster online, led Willie to my debunking forum, Metabunk, where I have a long thread that discusses and explains all the photos of ballast barrels that get passed off as “Chemtrail” barrels.2 After this experience, Willie gradually shifted away from his unquestioning belief in alternative accounts of “the news,” and began along a more skeptical, Apollonian path of questioning both sides of what he was being told. After he figured out that Chemtrails were not real he started to question other theories he had assumed were true, like explosives being used to destroy the World Trade Center. He’d made a U-turn deep down in the rabbit hole and was finally returning into the light. It had taken nine years.
About 2003 is maybe when I started believing all the weird stuff, until about 2012 or so. I was into all that stuff for a long time. Now I check out Metabunk all the time, just to see what the new thing is. I’ve been posting stuff on Facebook for my friend. I’ve adopted this skeptical frame of mind when looking at anything. I really … it’s definitely changed my life.
I don’t really think any conspiracy theories are really plausible. Even with “who killed Kennedy?”—there’s these new documents just released, and there’s no smoking gun, so I just don’t give it much time or energy. I’m pretty satisfied with the official story. There’s some weird stuff, but I’m pretty satisfied with it. Even the global warming hoax theory doesn’t do it for me. I put it this way: I used to be entertained by conspiracy theories, but now I’m entertained by seeing them debunked.
In my circle people are confused by me now, they are like, “Are you a Republican now?” Because I don’t believe 9/11 was an inside job now people can’t quite figure me out.
“Are you a Republican now?” his friends asked him when he stopped thinking 9/11 was an inside job. Conspiracy theories often have a distinct partisan flavor, which we shall discuss later in the book.
And, you know, I really do appreciate the politeness aspect of Metabunk, there’s so many debunking resources out there that belittle people and call them stupid and stuff.
The conspiracy thing was a worldview. I was testing that worldview out. It was entertaining. It also feels good because you think you have the truth and nobody else does … But yeah, that’s how it happened for me, and then one day, it might have been you on Above Top Secret, the ballast barrels, totally changed my life. Thank you.
If it was me on Above Top Secret I was probably one of several people who posted the correct information. There were many skeptical types on ATS back then, debunking Chemtrails, unaware at that moment that they had changed someone’s life just by showing them some information they had been missing.
Willie’s story demonstrates that people deep down the rabbit hole can still escape. But it also shows us just what a different world it is down there. Willie did not simply reject the conventional explanation of things. He was, in many cases, simply unaware that a conventional explanation existed, except as some kind of abstract, too-rational lie that he instinctively stayed away from. For Willie the first step was not being persuaded that his position was wrong, it was being shown that other positions even existed and that good, intelligent people actually took them seriously.
Willie stayed down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole for so long because he was surrounded by like-minded people. Exposure to missing information gradually altered his perspective on the world and helped him escape. He found this missing information piecemeal via online interactions, but people get out much quicker if they are helped by a friend, someone who could introduce them to new perspectives in ways a stranger on the internet never could.