So recently, governments have been using 'conspiracy theorist' to attack basically anyone who does not accept government narratives. If you don't believe in their good will and morality, you are a conspiracy theorist. In fact, a local paper once claimed that people who believe that politicians are corrupt, or that the media is pushing an agenda, are conspiracy theorists. So much for that.
It doesn't matter if it actually involves a conspiracy or not. For example, if you believe that 9/11 was an inside job, then you are a conspiracy theorist. However, if you believe that the Nord Stream sabotage was NOT an inside job, you are a conspiracy theorist. The only thing those two have in common is that you are not a conspiracy theorist if you say the US government did nothing wrong.
Regardless of the double standards, the problem is the conspiracies do happen. Now, what actually is a conspiracy theorist? Because there are a good number of totally whacked people out there, who believe in wildly implausible conspiracies.
My best way to explain it is as follows: people who exclusively or preferentially explain things with 'conspiracies' are conspiracy theorists.
Conspiracy by definition is simply that people wish to conspire to do something in secret, usually illegal. It's quite obvious that modern society has many people conspiring to do many things. Even in GamerGate there was the GameJournoPros which was a secret group deciding on what narratives to push, that goes up to every level of society of course.
They say that the term "conspiracy theory" was used to deflect from people suspicious about the Kennedy assassination. And has since been used to cast doubt on people being skeptical of anything going against the mainstream narrative.
And in the modern globalized world with instance communication and fast travel for the well off, conspiracies and shared ideologies - like everything else - are naturally becoming unified and global. The idea of a world conspiracy of bankers, wealthy families, and other groups trying to push us towards dystopia may have sounded far-fetched in the 1800s but it shouldn't today.
OK, but what would one call people who believe really weird and wildly implausible (but not refutable) things like "aliens control the world" or "Biden does not really exist"?
Either they are legitimately schizophrenic, or they are grasping at straws when they know they aren't being told the truth and just can't tell what's actually real or not. I also would not dismiss disinfo campaigns even if that's not always the case.
LOL! THAT MEME FUNNY.
Unfortunately, I don't think humanity is smart enough that governments have to pay off people to spout retarded crap. They do so on their own. They sure do make good use of it though.
It's less that people are "paid" and more that they are directed. People will "buy in" to things that give them what they want, status, attention, power, etc. I would suggest looking into the MKUltra programs, and do not assume that projects like that stopped at any point. They just stopped admitting they exist.
schizos