Conspiracy and Control

Allow me, briefly, to irresponsibly speculate on what you might think about American politics today. You feel that the system is broken, rigged in favor of a tiny elite, but also under attack by an ignorant public that wants to tear everything down. You feel that deep-rooted systemic forces oppose, in their very constitution, the change that would bring about a better society. Though the power of the system is pervasive, it often acts invisibly -- and is thus all the more insidious. The "other side" by turns upholds (the bad parts of) and recklessly undermines (the good parts of) this system. They claim not to see the system, even as they uphold it. You cannot agree with them about basic facts.

Some version of this story likely resonates with you, whether you are on the political right or left. Even if you consider yourself a moderate, you are surely confronted by many people who feel this way when you log onto a site like Twitter. It is much lamented how heavily conspiracy theory features in our politics today, fueled as it is by online echo chambers and abundant information. From the outside, the perils of conspiracy thinking are obvious, such that the label of "conspiracy theorist" has become a kind of epithet. Distinctions of evidence and parsimony generally make clear which theories are defensible and which are not. (One narrative about a ring of powerful pedophiles is false; another seems increasingly likely to be true.) But what I'd like to explore today is how, even on mainstream social media, the line between conspiracy theorizing and ordinary political thinking has become increasingly nebulous.

For comparison, consider the following account of conspiratorial politics from the historian Richard Hofstadter, written some forty years before the advent of social media:

“As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated–if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.”

It is not my intention here to comment on the truth or falsity of any particular narrative, nor to claim that Hofstadter's description applies to one side of our contemporary political spectrum or the other. Rather, I'd like to argue that his account of the "paranoid" represents a kind of basin into which we are all at risk of being drawn, specifically and especially on social media. 

A widely cited paper on the psychology of conspiracy theories argues that three kinds of motives drive us to adopt such theories: epistemic, existential, and social. Epistemically, they give us a sense of understanding and certainty. Existentially, they provide meaning and a sense of control. Socially, they provide community and connection. When any of these is lacking, we become vulnerable to conspiracy thinking.

Consider, now, the condition in which each of us finds him or herself when struggling to make sense of the world through social media. We are presented with a tangled array of sources, motives, and incentives, all of which mediate between us and an increasingly complex world. Understanding is hard to come by. Each of us is, for the most part, powerless to impact the course of events. In the case of the COVID pandemic, we can practice social distancing and wear masks; but, in the face of widespread uncertainty about the future, these measures can do more to increase our sense of impotence than extinguish it. And, of course, they leave us atomized, isolated from the very community that could ease our anxiety. We are consigned to using our screens as windows on the world.

The dimensions of understanding and control mutually impact each other as well. Because we all have an innate need to feel in control of our surroundings, we seek out patterns that allow us to act. Patterns in the world afford control; if everything were chaotic, we'd be powerless. But this also means that when we feel powerless, we are more likely to hallucinate patterns that aren't there. To regain a sense of security, we take a complex, overlapping set of forces and simplify it into an intelligible narrative. In other words, we become conspiracy theorists.

To avoid this trap, we have to take care not to place ourselves in environments that simultaneously demand action and inhibit understanding. And yet this is precisely the kind of environment we find ourselves in on social media. These sites drastically expand the scope of our attention and perception, putting us in touch with remote forces and events. To lessen the existential unease of being confronted in this way, we are given "choices" to like, share, or contribute to the stream of discussion. These choices can lessen our discomfort in the moment, but unless we have large and influential followings, the control they provide is often illusory. Moreover, they condition us to respond to complexity in the wrong way. Instead of recalibrating our understanding, we are induced to make simple judgments: do I like this or not?

While such decisions become formidable as aggregate forces, they are inconsequential from the point of view of an individual agent. The reflexive reactions of the masses serve only to feed the algorithm, another invisible and pervasive force acting on the minds of everyone around us. Thus, like the paranoid, we are never satisfied, and never could be. Each impotent expression affirms our sense that we are at the mercy of vast and unthinking systems. We formulate more and more radical demands and expressions, simply to move the system. And indeed, the more outraged and outrageous our expression, the more likely it is to attract engagement (a petty substitute for impact). But the result, in aggregate, is an information sphere in which we all become raving conspiracy theorists, affirmed in each moment that we are sane, while everyone else has lost their minds.