Forgive me for the lack of a clear title and if you can think of a better one, please suggest it.
I want to know if there is a name for the type of behavior that I am about to describe. I see it most often associated with things involving disease or nutrition. Some individual will come out with a book making some health claim like eating foobar is bad for you and the only reason that you don’t know that is because you are a dupe of the International Foobar Manufacturers’ Association. What do you call the phenomena of the way this becomes a religion?
I feel really stupid and frustrated trying to articulate this in a coherent way, but are there any labels associated with this?
Sounds like the typical conspiracy theory mentality. “There’s a 200-mpg carburetor but Ford and GM and Big Oil are conspiring to bury it.” That’s in the same league as “weiners and McD burgers are nothing but filler and chemicals, and that “100% beef” label is a government-sanctioned lie!”
I guess what I am getting at is that for the believer as opposed to the shill, there is no incentive other than, I guess, pride or self-justification for believing whatever is being peddled. It is akin to religious belief, particularly a cult (in the pop culture sense of the word). Is there a name for this?
I don’t know a single word for the mindset you’ve described. Ignorance, gullibilty, and a sense of persecution seem to factors in it, but none of those completely describe it.
Other than that, I don’t have any sort of GQ answer to your question. It seems to involve a desire to believe, and once the person believes something, they have a vested emotional interest in maintaining that belief. They need to be right more than they need to know the truth.
Does that describe what you are talking about? It certainly seems to apply to religion for many people, but religion is a little different. There is no way to prove or disprove it; it depends on (irrational, IMHO) faith, which many people are able to exercise without compromising rationality in the rest of their lives. The types of crackpot ideas you are quoting seem to me much more concrete, and probably are capable of factual disproof if one has the resources.
Psychologists or Psychiatrists may have a technical term for your phenomenon; as far as I know, I’ve never heard a popular one.
Roddy
Bandwagon? Cultishness (or other variations of cult, used metaphorically)? It is not entirely clear to me which aspect of the complex situation you describe is the one you are seeking a word for.
Furthermore, are we to take it as incontrovertible fact that eating foobar, even in large quantities, is not bad for you at all, and that the International Foobar Manufacturers’ Association is a reliable source of unbiased information about the stuff? It seems to me that claims to the contrary might quite often be true, and, if so, it is virtually inevitable that the problem will initially be recognized by one person, or a small handful of people, who will initially attract only a small group of believers. Labeling all such situations as products of delusion, paranoia, ignorance, “conspiracism” or whatever, as many people in this thread are being quick to do, seems to me to be close to being ignorant and delusional itself. Sometimes bad things do occur, and sometimes bad people, even groups of bad people conspiring together, are responsible for them. Sometimes (actually, rather often) the interests of social institutions, particularly privately controlled ones constituted to serve the interests of particular groups, do not coincide with the interests of humanity as a whole or of most people as individuals.
Situations like that described in the OP need to be judged on their individual merits. It wold be very dangerous and foolish to dismiss claims just because only a few people as yet believe it. Sometimes bandwagons arrive at useful destinations. (So far as I can tell, the OP is not saying otherwise, but several other people in the thread do seem to be.)
Anytime someone presents dubious information to you in a matter-of-fact way (especially of the sort that presumes your immediate acceptance, otherwise your just as blind as everyone else!) demands immediate and healthy skepticism.*
Respond politely, and say… “huh, I’ll look into that.” Then do so.
You do have a point: It’s always tempting to outright dismiss something that sounds like quackery, and 99.9% of the time you’ll be right, but you have to acquiesce to humbled ignorance, and look into it until your satisfied in reaching a now informed opinion, using rational, critical thinking and of course common sense.
*Assuming it’s even merits your time or interest.