Fully in the throws of the internet age, it would seem that the world is rife with conspiracies—or at least with theories about them. The past ten years have brought forth many answers of how and why these theories spread, but much less is known about what they do to the minds of their devotees. In order to explore this question, the essay “Conspiracies Are Everywhere” follows the rabbit hole down to the bedrock, sewing the seeds of paranoia and placing the audience firsthand within the mindset of the conspiracist. Benjamin Bachim’s combination of extensive psychological research and subtle manipulation presents a compelling meta-narrative on the nature of conspiracist worldviews while exploring the virology of the conspiracy theory and the spiraling, negative social and psychological consequences of belief.
