Have you noticed how much time conspiracy theorists spend (or waste) “researching”? They will spend hours combing the internet, producing long, detailed posts – yet still miss the point, avoid the question, or rely on obviously questionable sources? It’s not because they’re doing better research. It’s because they’re doing something else entirely. Most of this behaviour is driven by psychology, not logic. Conspiracy theories offer certainty in a messy world, a sense of control, and the appeal of being “in the know” while everyone else is supposedly clueless. That’s a powerful mix. Online, it becomes a group activity. People build narratives together, reinforce each other, and reward the most dramatic claims — not the most accurate ones. They inhabit echo chambers from where “evidence” is crowdsourced, but only if it supports the belief. Of course we now recognise that there are some very basic thinking errors at play: time and again we see confirmation bias, i.e., only looking for what agrees with them, and pattern-seeking, finding connections where none exist. A distrust of real sources — while trusting random ones and self-sealing logic, e.g., any contradiction becomes “part of the conspiracy” So the long posts and endless links aren’t a sign of rigorous thinking — they’re often a sign of the opposite: starting with a conclusion and working backwards to justify it. In short: It looks like research, but it’s actually belief maintenance.
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