That at best, they are consumed passively and have very little effect on the world.
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I think this is kinda your motivation for the thread Luka - conspiracies as entertainment. They're a great, weird laugh etc. - and a lot of conspiracy material is consumed in this manner tbf.
the pogroms, as far as i can recall, were not contemporaneous with internet conspiracy culture
my stance on them, and ive hinted at this numerous times, is that they are instructive in all sorts of ways, not necessarily that they are entertaining in themselves, as has been pointed out here they are more often than not tawdry and depressing
But this is: http://rrsoc.org/node/866
1st casualty of war is truth etc etc nothing new there
That's just lazy though.
these are terrible examples,