This goes to the heart of the mentality of full-time conspiracy theorists.
They aren't interested in conspiracies. They are largely marginalised lonely people looking for a hobby which provides status, an addiction, and a sense of control/power.
Conspiracy theorists engage in the free association of concepts which "Seem Important" and derive entirely uninformed connections between them for the sake of creating "insider knowledge".
The "boring conspiracies" all require you to be in the system, and fundamnetally, not marginalized. Broadly, you probably have to: have gone to university, understand recent political history, are across the news; have been familiar with the operation of business, governments and nation states. Probably have either met, or know via (eg., university): journalists, politicians, business leaders, etc. Or today, eg., listen to podcasts by these people.
If you dont have this knowledge, you really have very little idea of how the world works.
"Real Conspiracies" are "boring" in the sense that they are a result of obvious incentives that people have in highly complex systems which require quite an elite level of understanding to fully parse.
Conspiracy theorising, "chasing the addiction" through hours of youtube videos, blogs, -- connecting the dots -- etc. is really just an erzats video game played by people unable or unwilling to actually participate in the complex really-existing social world.
The "theorist" is a lonely player looking to fill their time with rewarding objectives that give them a sense of accomplishment. It isn't about actual conspiracy.
For example we had this guy in Australia James Ashby who was the chief of staff for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party.
They play to a lot of the fake conspiracy types that also fall into the “basket of deplorables” from which other conservative governments globally garner their support.
However all the outlandish shit that PHON either spread directly or nurture indirectly (such as NASA doctoring climate change data) is far more interesting than the actual conspiracy they were alleged to have perpetrated which was James Ashby pressuring candidates to use his signage company:
I guess my go-to ideas of "conspiracy theories" are things like MKULTRA, Gladio, COINTELPRO, Stargate Project, ECHELON etc. Which seem extremely interesting, to me anyway, and I think we can say those things are "real". Whereas I find the QAnon, AntiVax etc stuff fairly tedious (although I do find the sociology behind them interesting). Maybe it's more about my relationship with these things, rather than than the theories themselves.
Yeah I guess those things don’t really strike me as conspiracies, like I guess they fit the technical definition in some ways especially if they’re deemed illegal but just because a program is covert doesn’t make it a conspiracy. It might just be a dumb or poorly executed idea (although I suppose also “harm” may be in the eye of the beholder)
Maybe it's an age difference thing (I'm old), but to me MKULTRA feels like the absolute archetype of "conspiracy theory" material. I'm fairly sure that's how it was regarded before the Church Committee investigation, and to a large extent afterwards. I think if you were applying the "real conspiracies are boring" heuristic you'd have dismissed it pretty quickly.
Edit: There's a bit in Jon Ronson's Them: Adventures with Extremists, where he hangs out with Alex Jones, who tells him about secret events where powerful men don robes and perform weird rituals. Which sounds outlandish but Ronson goes along with Jones to infiltrate Bohemian Grove, and sure enough there are powerful men in robes, performing weird rituals. At that point, Ronson notes that it no longer seems outlandish, it just seems like some middle aged men letting off steam. I think perhaps things just seem inherently more boring when there's no mystery attached.
Take your pick. As soon as I mention one your lack-of-interest meter will immediately shut it down.
How about campaign finance? How about the fact that it is against the interest of the two American political parties to solve any politicized problem? Immigration, for instance, will never be solved because as long as it remains a political issue it brings in money to both parties. Nobody will harm that golden goose. It's the same reason that nobody inside Facebook will solve the problems with Facebook. Because those very problems are what fund the income of everyone who works there. Ergo, it will never be solved, at least not from within.
I just wasn't sure if they were saying fake conspiracies are more boring or real ones are more boring. I could imagine it being either. I suppose the ordering of the sentence implies it's the former that are more boring.
