I used to eat that stuff up too. I remember as a kid around 12 reading 'Chariots of the Gods" and getting my dad to take me to some movie playing in the theater about subjects like aliens and the Bermuda Triangle (may have been a re-showing of the Chariots of the Gods movie).
As others have said, I don’t think that having an interest in mysteries and fantastical beliefs like these when you’re young, before you’ve fully developed critical thinking skills, is the same as believing in conspiracy theories at all.
Grown, adult people who believe in conspiracy theories have a particular psychological bent, I think. They feel disenfranchised by the rest of society in some way, and believing in CTs makes them feel like they have ‘insider knowledge’ that the ‘sheeple’ just don’t get, and are part of an exclusive club.
My sister got into the moon landing conspiracy theories for a while (thank you Fox). She parroted some of the photographic “evidence” that was cited in a TV special, talked about the Van Allen radiation belts, etc.
We actually set up a couple of experiments on the kitchen table at night to show that, for example, reflection off a light-colored surface placed in front of a doll being backlit would reflect some light back onto the visible side of the doll, and thus (for example) you would be able to see details of the spacesuit in the famous Buzz Aldrin photo. We also talked about radiation in the context of medical or dental X-rays and compared that to the Van Allen belts.
I think she still believes that crap, but at least she’s humored us ever since by not talking about it.
CotG came out in 1968. I suspect darn near all of us of the age to be tweens or teens then (so most Dopers) had the same experience. I sure did.
For many of us CotG was our first exposure to deliberately misleading supposedly factual books written entirely of BS. To which we then applied our BS filters that had been trained on textbooks and fiction writing for kids. Which filters were promptly overwhelmed and clogged, letting lots of BS leak through into our impressionable brains.
At least until we encountered a debunking and flushed it all as nonsense.
I remember being fascinated by that Chariots stuff – then I came across an article that looked at the famous “runway” photo in von Daniken’s book, put a known-size object next to the feature, and used the resultant photo to point out how uselessly small the supposed runway was.
Although believers in the Ancient Astronaut mythos may not be racist themselves, it seems that von Daniken was (or maybe still is, since he is still alive).
I read the book, too, as a kid, and at some point watched the movie.
Von Daniken made a big deal out of the Nazca Lines in Peru and particularly the fact that the patterns were only visible from the air, from a high altitude. He thus concluded that they must have been made for, or by, alien astronauts in the distant past as landing sites for their spacecraft.
Apparently von Daniken was not familiar with the Occam’s Razor principle. If the Nazca culture created patterns intended to be seen from the air, it doesn’t mean that there were airborne entities that they made them for. It only means, at best, that they thought that such entities or gods existed, just as civilizations through time immemorial believed in magical deities and catered to them.
If the conspiracy theory were that Jews were conspiring to control Hollywood in order to make really good, entertaining movies, sure, but “Jews control the media” is inevitably part of a larger theory about them using the media to cover up various crimes they’re allegedly involved in.
Here’s a little morality tale that’s probably been posted here before. Some people are Bad Jackie, but others are Good Jackie. I’ve known both.
As the author of that piece often says, conspiracy theories are fun, man. Believing in them can make you feel really good. Not necessarily because you want to feel superior, but because you want to feel excited, you want to feel fascinated. It’s hard to let go of that.
By the way I know of one Covid denier who got Covid, damn near died of it, and absolutely repented. Not sure if he took down the old Facebook posts though.
I had the privilege to fly over Nazca low and slow for a good long look back around 1984 (Good gawd, that was 40 years ago!). The locals had/have aerial tours for tourists, but this was USAF, so we did our own tour our own way. Thank you US taxpayers; ya done good.
Some of those features are plausibly-sized dirt runways for modern aircraft. Others, as you say, not so much. I can’t speak to Von Daniken’s specific example.
Sadly, in years since, and despite the government’s best efforts to limit the damage, a lot of contemporary jeep trails and such have appeared on that once-pristine surface. And given the slow pace of weathering, the modern “pollution” will last down the millennia just as well as the ancient symbols have.
If modern civilization falls and re-rises later, far-future archaeologists will have a hell of time sorting out the origins of features with knobby jeep tire prints made by partying drunks from those made by ancient moccasins and crude brushes for religious reasons.
I gotta say that cruising around in a $30 million flying supersonic sports car for free, and getting paid to do it, sounds like a nifty way to spend one’s youth!
I knew a guy who believed in JFK conspiracy theories, based in part on that stupid movie. He thought it impossible that Oswald could make the shot. Then he went to the book depository and thought “Shit, I coulda made that shot.” The rest of his beliefs fell apart soon after. He still believes in UFOs though.
The Kennedy assassination is one that is particularly rife for many numerous conspiracy theories, most of them completely nuts, as most of them are. What continues to fascinate almost everyone, I think, is why Oswald did it, why he himself was so promptly killed, and who, if anyone, was behind the whole thing. I think there’s a bigger story there that may never be known.
It was, although in this case my “sports car” was the decidedly unsexy Cessna O-2 Skymaster - Wikipedia. It was a far superior airplane to an F-16 for low level aerial touring.
Which is why we used it for permissive CAS, chasing drug runners and insurgents, and other unsexily muddy entertainments in the perennial low level conflicts in Latin America during the Reagan era.
So in addition to giving you $30 million supersonic sports cars to fly, they also provided you with slow-flying minivans for tourist-y type excursions over exotic locales, all at taxpayers’ expense!
I’d join the USAF right now except that (a) I’m not a US citizen, (b) I’m a dog, and (c) I’m approximately 500 years old in dog years, and my vision and reflexes are not what they used to be.
I left out the part about traipsing through the jungle with my face painted green carrying an M-16 while looking for clandestine drug airfields so we, the US Army, and the host country army, could round up the drug workers and capture umpteen tons of drugs. And maybe even an airplane or two.
Oddly enough, the drugistas were never very happy to meet our party. And often shot rather a lot of ammo back at us. The Communist guerilla encampments bent on overthrowing the host country government were similarly unwelcoming.
I came out of all that mostly unscathed physically and mentally, but that was far from guaranteed at the time. Not all of my coworkers can say the same. Not everyone even survived every encounter.
