When my students make me proud!

I was so proud of several of my students who brought a story that I had missed to my attention about flat Earth beliefs and YouTube. This is a link to an article about a new study from Texas Tech University that found that a number of people who believe the Earth is as flat as a pancake seem to have been swayed to this belief through YouTube. Again, I’m kind of embarrassed that I missed this story, but very proud of students who brought it to my attention.

The study adds some interesting points to the conversation about unlimited speech and expression on social media and what to do about the spread of hoaxes, fraud, and fake news on platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and the like. Being a knee-jerk free expression absolutist, I don’t like to limit speech of any kind in any medium. Democracy can only function when we trust the individual and allow each and every person to express themselves without any governmental interference. As I had written here before, even the unadulterated horse manure that comes out of Alex Jones’ mouth should enjoy the same free speech protection as any other American citizen’s opinions and social media platforms like YouTube and Twitter are in the wrong for banning him. I firmly believe in the arguments John Milton laid down in “Areopagitica” for a free marketplace of ideas. To counter ideas one might not believe in, to counter ideas one might even find dangerous, each person has an obligation to speak up, speak out, and criticize. If you don’t like someone else’s speech, you should add more speech to it, not ban that individual from speaking.

And that comes back to the very sensible conclusions of the Texas Teach study. It’s author, Asheley Landrum, does not blame YouTube for flat Earth beliefs. The core of this nonsensical belief system, I am certain, is rooted in much more complex psychological and sociological issues. The flat Earth videos exist because there is a growing number (although I am curious about the exact number of true Flat Earth believers out there) of people who are already given to believe in anything that goes counter to all scientific consensus. And, quite correctly, she argues that the findings of her study should actually be a call for scientists and academics to start adding more of their voices to counter flat Earthers, the conspiracy theorists, the anti-intellectuals on YouTube and other social media. 

So dear academic colleagues, please start producing your YouTube videos right away! 

There's still hope for the future!

Check out this article about the vaccination issue for a very heartening turn of events! It's one of several where we see kids actually being smarter than their parents. A couple of these articles have appeared recently about teenagers getting vaccinated in defiance of their "anti-vaxxer" parents. The kids, it seems, are able to understand such things as logic and evidence-based reasoning. That, of course, is unlike their parents who keep clinging to completely discredited myths and conspiracy theories about "Big Pharma" and "Big government" and big this and big that knowingly poisoning people with MMR vaccine for whatever nefarious reason that make sense only to the minds of conspiracy theorists. In the meantime, of course, we have had measles epidemics breaking out in...wait for it!!...population clusters where parents are refusing to vaccinate their kids. Quite a coincidence, isn't it?

But it is great hearing that young people are capable of understanding science and are willing to reject the dangerous conspiracy fantasies of their misguided parents. This is the power of education at work.

I just hope that when I am teaching my students about the myths and logical fallacies of all the major conspiracy theories, I can have this sort of impact on them as well.

Truth found!

I’m a huge fan of all of Josh Gates’ exploration/mystery/paranormal reality shows like “Destination Truth,” “Expedition Unknown,” and “Legendary Locations.” As I was working on CONFIRMATION: INVESTIGATIONS OF THE UNEXPLAINED, I would often refer to his shows as a shorthand for describing who my main characters are. “They’re the cast members of a paranormal reality show, kind of like Josh Gates’ “Destination Truth,” I would say. When I was watching a marathon of his old “Destination Truth” show (on the SyFy channel originally from 2007 to 2012) recently and spent some of the commercial breaks channel surfing to a couple of other paranormal shows, I was taken by something wonderfully ironic. I almost laughed out loud.

OK, so let me set the scene: “Destination Truth” was oriented much more toward the exploration of supposed paranormal phenomena, whereas his recent programs are about exploration and the examination of legends, historical figures like Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and Billy the Kid, and historical mysteries like lost treasures. In “Destination Truth,” Gates and his team would specifically investigate claims of hauntings, monsters, alien encounters and such around the world. But the most entertaining aspect of each of each episode would be Gates’ droll, tongue-in-cheek presentation of the old myths and his interview with locals who told of their encounters with otherworldly entities with wide-eyed, stunned solemnity. 

Now, mind you, Gates’ winking presentation of these eyewitnesses never came across as condescension or disrespect for the simpleminded yokels who still believe in witchcraft, vampires, and demons in the twenty first century. But it is a lighthearted acknowledgement of how unbelievable this may sound in our rational modern world. “Destination Truth” had a fascinating subtext about old cultural traditions and folk beliefs colliding with a modernizing world. It is interesting to consider the comfort of old belief systems, especially superstitions and mystical belief systems, in a world where science has disproven the existence of the supernatural. 

And then it came to my channel surfing where I would run into the rest of the paranormal reality fare like “Paranormal Lockdown” or “Most Haunted Towns” or other Travel Channel shows like “Ghost Adventures” and “The Dead Files.” The straight-faced, humorless discussions of everything supposedly otherworldly on these shows, the recollections of encounters with ghosts and demons by “average Americans,” looks astoundingly like Gates’ interviewees in the back country of Guam recounting their experiences with blood-sucking hellhounds. Except, again, the people on these other shows are Average American Folks! They are the citizenry of perhaps the most technologically and scientifically developed nation on Earth. 

And, then again, they are the citizens of a country that has an ever-growing number of people who believe the Earth is flat, that Hollywood is run by devil-worshipping Illuminati cultists if you follow lunatic YouTube channels like A Call for an Uprising, or that a vast conspiracy is faking mass shootings. 

We sure are an advanced culture today, aren’t we? And we keep getting smarter and smarter by the day!

Enjoying "Project Blue Book"

And now for something completely different…a few of my impressions of the new History Channel series, “Project Blue Book.” 

I’ve seen the first two episodes of this series and as someone who used to love the X-Files (even as my skepticism of large-scale conspiracies grew), I am so far liking it. It is a good-looking series boasting some nice production values in its recreation of the early 1950s. I also like its quiet, silently menacing tone. It, so far, appears to be a show that wants to reward the patient, attentive viewer who is willing to invest his time in following the unfolding of a complex narrative and layered mythology. I hope the show will continue on this path of low key, subtle mystery and not devolve into ever more garish, hysterical conspiracy theories and over-the-top action. There is a place for action in the proper context, but “Project Blue Book” would be more interesting if it stays on the path of menace, mystery and unease.

The show is a very loose dramatization of astronomer J. Allen Hynek’s side gig as a consultant for the U.S. Air Force’s three major UFO-study projects: “Sign” (1947-49), “Grudge,” (1949-52) and “Blue Book” (1952-69). As the title of the show makes obvious, it focuses in on his “Blue Book” years. Hynek would become famous for being perhaps the most prestigious member of the scientific community to publicly declare that he had come to believe that the UFO phenomenon was the manifestation of something truly unexplained, perhaps extraterrestrial visitations or something extra-dimensional. He would also coin the UFO-encounter classification system of “close encounters of the first kind,” “second kind,” and “third kind.” He even had a cameo appearance in Steven Spielberg’s iconic film, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Interestingly, Hynek was originally a staunch skeptic for decades when it came to the issue of UFOs. Throughout his years consulting for projects Sign and Grudge, he would enthusiastically debunk claims of UFO encounters as misidentifications of natural phenomenon. He had also famously dismissed a series of sightings in Michigan as being caused by nothing more than “swamp gas.” The swamp gas explanation of UFOs had become something of a punchline in the debate of the phenomenon.

But it was during Hynek’s time with Project Blue Book that his view of the phenomenon changed. Prompted by eyewitness testimony he had grown to trust as being credible, made by competent people whose character was beyond reproach – as well as his realization that some 11% of professional astronomers claimed to have seen unexplainable aerial phenomena – Hynek had become a staunch believer in the otherworldly nature of UFOs. He would eventually found the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago.

So I am curious as to the approach this show will take toward the claims of government cover-ups and vast conspiracies. The real Hynek, of course, would claim that the Air Force and top-level government officials also suspected the extraterrestrial nature of the UFO phenomenon but they were set on denying it from the public. But TV shows and movies have already shown perhaps literally hundreds of iterations of the “vast, shadowy government conspiracy to hide the aliens.” I am curious about where this show will go.

It would be interesting to see the show differentiating between a cover-up – the U.S. military wanting to hide that fact that it knows nothing about the true nature of this unexplained phenomenon – and outlandish conspiracy theories about back-engineered alien UFOs in Area 51.

I will admit that I am very much open minded to the idea of intelligent alien life somewhere on other planets. Scientists having detected scores of Earth-like planets over the last several years, it only makes logical sense that life would arise elsewhere in the universe. I am even open minded to the idea that intelligent, technologically advanced alien races have discovered the means to interstellar travel and visited the Earth. A significant percent of UFO sightings have never been satisfactorily explained.

But it is the outlandish conspiracy theories I found completely unbelievable: the back-engineered UFO theories, the alien bases under government installation theories, the claims that aliens made deals with the governments of the Earth to abduct humans for ghastly experiments in return for providing our scientists with fabulous technological secrets…which said scientists have kept secret for some reason. As if incredibly advanced alien visitors would actually need to make deals with the Earth’s leaders.

But J. Allen Hynek himself was the proponent of a very conservative and strictly rigorous scientific analysis of the UFO phenomenon. I am certain that today he, too, would be appalled by what the “conspiracy community” have come to believe as the gospel.

And I’m sure J. Allen Hynek would detest Alex Jones.

And the mystery persists!!

So this article is a quick overview of the legal hit Alex Jones just took from a group of Sandy Hook parents. Apparently he needs to turn over marketing and financial documents in the parents' group's lawsuit against him. This is information that could reveal the deliberate campaign Jones waged against the survivors and parents of the Sandy Hook shooting, accusing them of being a part of conspiracy to stage the attack as a "false flag" event and being paid "crisis actors."

This is the very least Jones deserves in perhaps the most despicable display we have seen from the modern conspiracy community. Still it's interesting, isn't it, that the New World Order of the Illuminati is merely taking Jones to court, rather than making him disappear "mysteriously" from the face of the earth? Such sinister plots, after all, are what Jones has been accusing the "elites" and the "insiders" of, right?  So why is Alex Jones still alive?? I just can't figure this out!

Binge watching! The pleasure...the pain!

We do it, it feels so good, and then we feel so guilty afterward. Right? 

After this post, in fact, I think I will log on to CBS All Access and watch several episodes of "Hawaii Five-0" I missed. Then there's the "Strange Angel" miniseries I started watching and need to get back to. Oh, and then there are the season 2 episodes of "Stranger Things" on Netflix and I already can't wait to see the new season of "Lucifer" when it premieres also on Netflix.

Yup, I can completely get addicted to bingeing TV and I admit it. 

So check out my quotes in this article about the psychology behind binge watching. It covers some interesting material, including mental health issues both in the real world and in the fictional world of all the binge-watched shows. For example, there do seem to be more and more shows where major characters contend with mental problems in ongoing storylines. As I comment in the article, this is commendable. It's good to help lift the stigma off of mental and emotional problems, to show major characters - often heroes and all sorts of admirable protagonists - being able to deal with mental problems and disorders and live productive lives. 

As for whether or not there are dangers in the binge watching trend, I am not entire convinced. The way in which entertainment and information is being consumed is merely changing right now, thanks to streaming technology. To immediately pathologize it, to turn it into the new moral panic of the evil dangers of entertainment, I believe, is unwarranted.

The Internet and paranoid thinking

This New York Times video is quite a good overview of the current phase online conspiracism is moving through in its ongoing evolution. As I have been writing before, the details of the conspiratorial claims are no longer really what scholars of the phenomenon need to focus on and engage with - all the silliness of the Pizzagate and Illuminati New World Order claims have no evidence whatsoever to back them up and they are really not worth the time to argue with - but the dynamics of cyberspace technology and audiences of the disaffected who create communities around the claims are really the most fascinating and troubling glimpses of 21st century culture. As this Times story points out, the core of conspiracism now is no longer to make specific claims about aliens, reptilian "elites," the Antichrist, the New World order or the Freemasons. The new phase of the conspiracy culture had evolved to a state where all consensus knowledge must be denied. The "ask questions" mantra of Alex Jones and all his imitators boils down to a call to reject the very concept of facts and all evidence-based rationality. The modern world of "alternative facts," indeed. The 21st century at its most disturbing.