[Editor’s Note: This article is written by Kosmo, our staff writer. If you didn’t know me better, you might think I’d apply this to some other financial fraud that I often write about, but I won’t do that.]
By now, almost everyone has heard of Pizzagate. If not, here is it is in a nutshell. Someone spun up an incredible tale that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were running a child sex-trafficking run out of pizza restaurants in the DC area. People noticed that the owner of one pizza joint had corresponded with Podesta in emails leaked by Wikileak (the restaurant owner had held some fundraisers for Hillary, hence the emails). Even more damning, the emails contained words like “pizza”, which were obvious code words for pedophilia (alternate theory: it’s a code word for “pizza”). Even in the universe of conspiracy theories, it’s pushing the envelope of credulity. Even if you believe that Hillary would be running a pedophilia ring, why would she run it out of locations that are very visible to the public? In the words of Bill Engvall, here’s your sign.
In early November, that restaurant began being targeted by conspiracy theorists, including death threats that arrived via text, Facebook, and Twitter. On December 4, a man from North Carolina walked into the restaurant with an AR-15 and fired shots. He was there to “self-investigate” the claims, since law enforcement was obviously involved in a cover-up.
Clearly, these types of conspiracy theories present a very real danger to the public – someone could easily have been seriously injured or killed as the result of a theory that was simply created out of thin air.
I believe there is also a more subtle secondary impact. Conspiracy theories allow financial fraudsters to more easily target victims. In the past, the most naïve among us had their naïveté shrouded in a cloud of relatively anonymity. Unless you interacted with a person on a fairly regular basis, you might not realize how gullible a person was. As a result, you might know who the most gullible people in your immediate social circle were, but you wouldn’t be able to pick them out of your broader circle.
The internet has changed that. I’m friends with 355 people on Facebook. Some of them I know very well; some of them I know more casually. I can scroll down my feed and look for friends/acquaintances who are sharing bizarre conspiracy theories today and make a list of names. A few days from now, I can repeat the practice. After several iterations, I can compare notes and find the names that pop up repeatedly. These are the people with a high gullibility index. If I wanted to run a Nigerian Price scheme, these would be the people I would target. Instead of casting a broad net, I could target people who had shown an inclination to believe utter [Editor’s note: bovine poop] and probably have a much higher success rate with my scams.
Naturally, I’m not actually going to do this. While I won’t claim to be a saint, my moral compass isn’t far enough askew to commit financial fraud. However, I am quite sure that there are people who would do this. In fact, I would expect professional fraudsters to start spinning up conspiracy theories for the sole purpose of serving as bait – assuming that they aren’t already doing this. They’ll set a theory loose into the wild and then track the people who share it. The moral of the story – use your critical thinking skills before sharing something. If it sounds too crazy to be true, the most likely explanation is that it simply isn’t true.
I have to genuinely disagree with this article. There is much more to pizzagate than was described, and there probably should have been more research conducted on the subject.
I suppose you can call me gullible, but quite honestly I find myself doing more reading and research than most.
Does pizzagate seem crazy? Absolutely! So did Sandy Hook, 9/11, and JFK’s assassination. That’s why we need to do as much research as possible and get to the bottom of these issues.
The e-mails are completely bizarre, and one could say, far from actually being pizza related. Maybe there was some bad grammar in “Going to get pizza for an hour”, but a handkerchief with a pizza-related map? Nobody has been able to explain away this incredibly bizarre e-mail, or the one involving playing dominos on pizza or pasta…what else could this possibly mean?
Could this all be quackery? Again, absolutely…but to not have good thorough investigations from our government, and rather have weird fake news articles popping up everywhere with absolutely no research or substance is extremely concerning.
Cecilia Kang wrote a piece for the New York Times that said absolutely nothing except fake over and over, and she is not an investigative reporter. The Washington Post made a strange article with nobody taking responsibility for it, and Snopes (completely left wing news) posted another article by a woman who uses fake quotes and again did not explain away the concerning facts.
Before we make assertions that this is fake, or BS, or something else, it is important to get all of the facts out. Right now, it would seem the media and government are doing their best to not explain anything and just make this disappear, which again, is utterly concerning.
link this to the article on the macedonia kid who is an expert of FB fakery, origins. so yes if it sounds ridiculous it probably is. consider the current brouhaha over the fisher price bar set.
and then there’s bill cosby and jared of subway and sandusky. how crazy are each of these?
should we say that a conspiracy on pizza napkins is absurd? i would.
should we say all conspiracy theories are absurd? not willing to say that.
do i fact check everything? yep
I wouldn’t call Sandusky, Cosby, and Jared conspiracy theories. For example, a well-placed individual came forward with allegations against Sandusky, in spite of the risk of being blackballed in the industry. That’s a far cry from someone taking an email and translating words into a secret code.
The premise of this accusation is so ridiculous I have no idea what to comment except to say that it’s ridiculous! Honestly, what other nonsense will we see on the media about this! The financial fraud is way more believable!