At Sea with America's Largest Floating Gathering of Conspiracy Theorists
February 29, 2016 7:35 AM   Subscribe

It’s an experience that may not appeal to everyone—a seven-day cruise at sea, with the aim of “taking back power from corrupt and greedy institutions, attain true self-authority, and realize our genuine Self behind the masks … discovering the truth, taking command of our lives, and attaining genuine inner realization” —with every odd belief you can think of listed as entertainment: GMOs, Monsanto, bee colony collapse, ecology, global warming, climate change, fracking, HIV, autism, Big Pharma, medical suppression, vaccinations, fluoridation,… electoral fraud, identity chips, 2nd amendment, and so much more. Anna Merlan writes charitably yet unflinchingly for Jezebel about her experience joining them

Colin McRoberts also writes about his experience,
"Do you believe in acupuncture, alien abductions, ancient aliens, chi, crop circles, entity possession, “forbidden archaeology” or “forbidden religion,” homeopathy, near-death experiences, occult Nazi super-weapons, planet x, poisoned vaccines, spiritual channeling, the new world order, or illegal immigrants from Zeta Reticuli? Do you go to bed worrying about the New World Order, the Vatican, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, NASA, the WHO, the CDC, the UN, space aliens and/or demons conspiring against you and all right-thinking people? And are you convinced that the world is ruled from the Bohemian Grove, a secret bunker under the Denver airport, Bilderberg meetings, the Council on Foreign Relations, Buckingham Palace, alien worlds or other dimensions?

Probably not. But thousands of people do believe those things, and other things stranger than you can imagine. This January, dozens of experts these fields will gather together on a cruise ship called the Ruby Princess. It’s called, honestly and cleverly enough, the Conspira-Sea Cruise. They’ll spend seven days explaining, discussing, and even demonstrating their beliefs. Some of them are fairly famous, like Andy Wakefield and Sherri Tenpenny, who will be sharing their theories on vaccines. Others are relatively obscure, like Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, great-granddaughter of the former president, who claims to have been recruited for a secret Mars colonization effort and that stargates began opening around the Earth in 2012. For a full week, conspiracy theorists, dreamers, and snake-oil salesmen of every stripe will be preaching and peddling their wares."

Particularly notable are his account of being singled out for Andrew Wakefield's ire during a presentation (Part 1) (Part 2)and a later interview with Andrew Wakefield

Here he is interviewed by Kylie Sturgess on the cruise
For a look at the Journalistic contingent through the looking glass, Leonard G. Horowitz and Sherri Kane mentioned in the article have published their ...thoughts in two posts
Big Pharma Propagandists Expose Protection Racket Destroying Whistleblowers’ Reputations, Defrauding Voters, Poisoning Consumers, and Aiding-and-Abetting the Global Drug Enterprise Profiting from Genocide

California SB 277 “Activist” Larry Cook Sells Out as a Concealed Double Agent Pushing Passage of the Mandatory Vaccination Law
The ConspiraSea on metafiler previously before sailing
posted by Blasdelb (119 comments total) 38 users marked this as a favorite
 
...the FBI, the CIA, the NSA....

I see what you did there.
posted by nzero at 7:40 AM on February 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


I've heard about this before, and it still sounds like the premise for a particularly risible reality show--get these people on a boat (that's loaded up with hidden cameras) together, take them out to the middle of the ocean, develop "engine trouble", and record what happens.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:42 AM on February 29, 2016 [15 favorites]


How much cognitive dissonance does it take for any individual in one of these sorts of things to look around and say "Man, there's some crazy shit here... but my shit ain't crazy."?
posted by Etrigan at 7:43 AM on February 29, 2016 [22 favorites]


"I see what you did there."
Could Colin McRoberts indeed be ...in on the conspiracy? Just because the FBI, CIA, and NSA have indeed done fucked up shit worth policing with public attention does not mean that a bunch of bored pensioners and their exploiters on a boat will have good ideas about what that shit is.
posted by Blasdelb at 7:45 AM on February 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


get these people on a boat (that's loaded up with hidden cameras)

Oh, the cameras are there, especially when someone tells you they're not. We're all being watched.
posted by Fizz at 7:46 AM on February 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


..if they're that paranoid and convinced they're right and believe the forces against them have that much power ...

Why would they agree to all be in one place at the same time on something easily sinkabke?
posted by The Whelk at 7:48 AM on February 29, 2016 [54 favorites]


Surely some of the conspiracy theories oppose others. What happens when two believers in contradictory conspiracies come into confrontation? Are there fistfights?

"I'm telling you there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll!"
"And I'm telling you Kennedy faked his assassination to spy on Russia!"
"Oh, that's adorable. You two actually believe there's any such place as Dallas."

posted by Faint of Butt at 7:52 AM on February 29, 2016 [28 favorites]


Conspira Sea? This is one of those things where someone came up with the name first, right?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:55 AM on February 29, 2016 [17 favorites]


I imagine being on that boat was like being in George Noory's head.
posted by charred husk at 7:58 AM on February 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


Anything that keeps them away from Trump rallies is good by me.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:01 AM on February 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


I seriously considered going on this, but could not bring myself to mount a convincing argument to my wife after seeing the level of antisemitism lurking beneath the surface of many of the speakers. I love conspiracy theories and it makes me sad when the Them is invariably reduced to "The Jews." It's just plain hate and what's worse, it's lazy hate. Give me some new group to shake a fist at.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:07 AM on February 29, 2016 [13 favorites]


Bee Colony collapse isn't a conspiracy, this is something that is an actual problem. There was even an FPP about it. It is also occurring all over Europe.

One thing that's interesting is that for all the conspiraloon/wake up sheeple, jokes, the amount of things they were right about is amazing: a global elite who own and run everything, wage slavery, debt slavery, banking cartels, citizens being spied upon, government experiments on their citizens, and so on. It's not hard to see why people get carried away with this stuff.

And on the other side: there was thread on Mefi a few years ago, some conspiracy related thing, and someone actually commented "There are no conspiracies, things just happen", a comment which got a quite a lot of favourites. This is such a naieve viewpoint I couldn't believe it got so many favourites. So, ghettoisation of black people, incarceration of black people, the rise of corporate power, the destruction of the unions, the rise of the 1%, the banking crisis and financial scandals, stuff like that, it all "just happened", there were no active actors involved in making it happen? This is such a ridiculous thing to believe, that these things just happened, there was no thought or work put in by certain people to ensure a particular outcome that was beneficial to themselves in some way. And for a lot of people who have lost out due to these sorts of things, it is easy to see the allure of certain conspiracy theories.
posted by marienbad at 8:07 AM on February 29, 2016 [29 favorites]


Bee Colony collapse isn't a conspiracy, this is something that is an actual problem. There was even an FPP about it. It is also occurring all over Europe.

Well yes, HIV, the second amendment, vaccinations, Monsanto, etc all exist too. I just took it as maybe something was clipped out of the FPP text. It's obviously referring to conspiracy theories regarding these things.
posted by ODiV at 8:10 AM on February 29, 2016 [11 favorites]


That the people who have the power don't care who they stomp on, is real. That this reality evades trust coming from sources that are supposed to be trustworthy, is real. There are so many abuses of power that fueled the breech of trust in those who do science (who have literally tortured, experimented on, killed, and abused REAL people!)...

there is so much REAL injustice by those in positions that claim to be the established "science" the established rightful ruling power... that I'm finding it hard to focus anger at these sad confused people, when there are so many people with real power abusing it that focusing our attention on these scapegoats assists in creating the idea of the laughable woo and the unquestionably superior elite "realists" who have their own biases and false understanding woven into their version of "truth" that is all the more unquestionable if you can simply point to any questioner, compare them to a laughable woo conspiracy theorist and thereby render their concerns meaningless.
posted by xarnop at 8:15 AM on February 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


There's a middle ground between "there are no people who make things happen" and "all the bad things are a plot", though - a belief there's a conspiracy isn't just a belief that fraud and wrongdoing happen and cause untold damage, it's a belief that a number of apparently unrelated things are actually planned and executed by a single group. I'm prepared to believe that the global financial crisis was the result of a cascade of bad, self-serving and sometimes illegal decisions made by politicians and companies over a decade. I'm not prepared to believe that it was a plot, brought about by the same people who brought us racism and ISIS and the NSA.
posted by Aravis76 at 8:18 AM on February 29, 2016 [19 favorites]


Ah, Monsanto. Sailing that fine line between conspiracy and business model since 1901.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 8:19 AM on February 29, 2016 [5 favorites]


Thought and action coupled with nefarious intent does not necessarily mean a conspiracy is taking place. A conspiracy is a long-term effort, in which multiple different people and the institutions they represent, collude in secrecy to make gains in their self-interest.

Incarceration of black people, the rise of corporate power, the destructive of unions: these are just really bad things, but not conspiracies because the maliciousness is conducted completely out in the open, for everyone to see. There is no secrecy, there is no need for secrecy, because the majority of people simply don't care that these terrible things are taking place.

True conspiracies are incredibly rare. People in general just aren't very bright, or good at secrecy, and the institutions that they work in are even slower and dumber and more prone to pettiness than individual interpersonal relationships. Most governments and corporations are simply too ineffectual to maintain a conspiracy for any extended length of time.
posted by scantee at 8:20 AM on February 29, 2016 [39 favorites]


The broader point about conspiracy theory is that it also obscures the policy questions raised by all the different bad things that happen. We can address the causes of the financial crisis if those causes are inadequate regulation, perverse incentives, and an absence of transnational cooperation in controlling the behaviour of companies. We can't solve it if it's the outcome of a shadowy elite who are in charge of the world. It's a fundamentally defeatist model of the world, even though I can see its psychological appeal.
posted by Aravis76 at 8:22 AM on February 29, 2016 [16 favorites]


How much cognitive dissonance does it take for any individual in one of these sorts of things to look around and say "Man, there's some crazy shit here... but my shit ain't crazy."?

what makes you think that? why can't they be looking around, and seeing things that scare them, and that raise questions, and then they still go through with it, because they don't see anything better, and because these people are their friends, and this seems like the only way out, the only escape they have?

i suggest you prefer your question because it makes these people seem like fools, while you're the smart one. and just perhaps they're actually human and fragile and imperfect. and you are, too.
posted by andrewcooke at 8:27 AM on February 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


Conspiracy theories also negate the nagging feeling of personally resonbility in a democracy, I wasn't a bad citizen! These things where out of my control!
posted by The Whelk at 8:27 AM on February 29, 2016 [8 favorites]


Seems like a lot of upfront noise about anti-vaccine loonies, homeopaths and anti-semites, and then these articles slip in multiple references to the CIA, NSA, big pharma, etc - which we have all seen many times over are indeed engaged in conspiracies to hide things from the people, over and over again.
posted by colie at 8:28 AM on February 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


True conspiracies are incredibly rare.

Not really. Not if you aren't applying the extralegal, magical-thinking/totalizing sense of the word it's taken on in recent decades. Criminal conspiracy, as defined in statutes and other law, happens all the time--anytime two or more people collaborate on committing a crime like a bank heist, for example. It feels like some people are really heavily invested in the idea people never carry out secret plans with nefarious purposes and like to point to these sorts of conspira-sea folks to discredit the idea people ever collaborate successfully to pull off scams and crimes. But obviously they do. Even 9/11 really was a conspiracy in the legal sense of the term. It was a conspiracy planned and carried out by terrorists led by Bin Laden. Everything that happens is not purely random and accidental either. That idea's just as crazy as anything these more confused people believe.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:31 AM on February 29, 2016 [16 favorites]


Seems like a lot of upfront noise about anti-vaccine loonies, homeopaths and anti-semites, and then these articles slip in multiple references to the CIA, NSA, big pharma, etc

That's just the Illuminati manufacturing fake conspiracies to discredit the real ones. Wake up!
posted by FJT at 8:31 AM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


Could Colin McRoberts indeed be ...in on the conspiracy? Just because the FBI, CIA, and NSA have indeed done fucked up shit worth policing with public attention does not mean that a bunch of bored pensioners and their exploiters on a boat will have good ideas about what that shit is.

I don't think you get it. See colie's comment.
posted by nzero at 8:33 AM on February 29, 2016


“One in two children will have autism by 2032,” [Andrew Wakefield] told us, to horrified gasps.
See, just look at this trendline!

Was he this stupid when he was doing his vaccine-autism studies (thus explaining the results?), or has he gone into full-on pander-to-the-stupid mode because it's his only remaining source of income?
posted by clawsoon at 8:36 AM on February 29, 2016 [7 favorites]


Of course real criminal conspiracies take place all the time - that's why it's so improbable to believe that really enormous-scale global problems could be criminal conspiracies. It just seems so unlikely that the level of coordination and intention needed for a real conspiracy - e.g. A and B agree that they will waylay C in the street and kill him - could efficiently function on such a scale. Even massive criminal gangs, with a global reach, focus on specific crimes, committed by particular people, and that can be predictably organised. Conspiracy is a weak model for understanding complex multi-causal events, involving millions of agents, across a huge range of contexts, precisely because these events are so unlike the crimes that the conspiracy concept does easily explain.
posted by Aravis76 at 8:38 AM on February 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


How much cognitive dissonance does it take for any individual in one of these sorts of things to look around and say "Man, there's some crazy shit here... but my shit ain't crazy."?

what makes you think that? why can't they be looking around, and seeing things that scare them, and that raise questions, and then they still go through with it, because they don't see anything better, and because these people are their friends, and this seems like the only way out, the only escape they have?


I genuinely don't see the difference between those two explanations.
posted by Etrigan at 8:44 AM on February 29, 2016


Grand overarching conspiracy theories are comforting for a lot of people, they remind me of something from a Stanley Kubrick interview in one of the vintage Playboys my girlfriend collects: "The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent".
posted by [expletive deleted] at 8:44 AM on February 29, 2016 [10 favorites]


That Jezebel piece was awesome. Sounds like the moon lawyers all got indictments against them once they made landfall. And in the comments section where the author, Anna Merlan was asked "did you have fun?" Was answered with a decided "fuuuuuuuck no" was the perfect capper to a great piece of reporting.
posted by valkane at 8:45 AM on February 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


e.g. A and B agree that they will waylay C in the street and kill him

The really big players in this sector, the intelligence agencies, prefer not to do too much of this. Instead they spend years meticulously setting whole groups of people against other groups, who then automatically do the required killing and control of interests.
posted by colie at 8:45 AM on February 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


I don't think governments or officials partake in a lot of conspiracies. Collusion, on the other hand...
posted by lmfsilva at 8:48 AM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


The best part of this, IMO, is the part where Sean David Morton and his wife got arrested for tax fraud immediately on their return.

Yes, I believe there are bad people in this world who are working with other bad people to do bad things. But I'm pretty sure people like Morton are actually among their number.
posted by Sequence at 8:49 AM on February 29, 2016


in one of the vintage Playboys my girlfriend collects

I'm seeing conspiracies in this very thread!
posted by valkane at 8:50 AM on February 29, 2016


I had a college professor who studied (among other things) conspiracy theories, and did seem to believe a handful of them while disbelieving most of them. Made perfect sense to me, why wouldn't you decide for yourself that this one seemed plausible and that one didn't? That's not cognitive dissonance.

He also talked a lot about environmental destruction and peak oil, which were pretty fringey when he first started caring about them and are much less so now. I totally buy that, in amongst all the wacky, there could be some perfectly valid stuff being discussed on that boat. Hard to sort it out from the mountains of chaff though.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:51 AM on February 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


"Bee Colony collapse isn't a conspiracy, this is something that is an actual problem. There was even an FPP about it. It is also occurring all over Europe."
Colony Collapse Disorder is a real thing, but the wildly hyped and eagerly awaited BEEPOCALYPSE is not: Call off the bee-pocalypse: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
posted by Blasdelb at 8:53 AM on February 29, 2016 [7 favorites]


The allure of the conspiracy theory is the idea that (some) humans are powerful enough to purposefully puppeteer global events, across different corporations and governments, over a period of many years, decades or centuries. It's an enticing belief, because if that kind of superhuman power could be harnessed for good it could potentially end a great deal of human suffering.

The reverse idea, the one I believe, is that we're all just sort of bumbling our way through this life and no one really knows what's going on or how to control even the tiny little part of the external world they directly interact with. People, and the systems the represent, do indeed do terrible things, but they mostly do terrible things from a place of base emotion (fear, spite, sadness, anger, habit) and not because they have the forethought or power to engineer massive deceptions.

But that's a much more frightening prospect for many people to contemplate than the world of the conspiracy theory.
posted by scantee at 8:56 AM on February 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


Like, real conspiracies are stuff like ALEC, where businesses get together to draft legislation to aide them (the endangered species act is evil! We shouldn't have to regulate baby food!) and sell it to lawmakers and that's all perfectly open and public and upfront and organized.
posted by The Whelk at 8:56 AM on February 29, 2016 [20 favorites]


Also CCD is most likely a combination of lots of different factors related to the way bees are factory farmed in the US and other developed countries.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:56 AM on February 29, 2016


(By which I mean, it's not some sort of mysterious unidentified supervirus we have no cure for.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:59 AM on February 29, 2016


"Like, real conspiracies are stuff like ALEC, where businesses get together to draft legislation to aide them (the endangered species act is evil! We shouldn't have to regulate baby food!) and sell it to lawmakers and that's all perfectly open and public and upfront and organized."
Seriously, its almost diagnostic, real conspiracies that do serious harm are incredibly boring.
posted by Blasdelb at 8:59 AM on February 29, 2016 [19 favorites]


I don't think governments or officials partake in a lot of conspiracies. Collusion, on the other hand...

Corporatism isn't a conspiracy, it's a business model.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 8:59 AM on February 29, 2016


Relevant SMBC (though I bet there are others)
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 9:00 AM on February 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


Yeah it's like, if you're in a Holiday Inn conference room you're probably doing more evil than even the wildest conspiracy theory can imagine
posted by The Whelk at 9:00 AM on February 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


Do they sail into the Bermuda Triangle???
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:02 AM on February 29, 2016


“In 40 years,” Morton added, “as many people will believe a bunch of Arabs knocked down the World Trade Center as will believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.”

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

“One in two children will have autism by 2032,” he told us, to horrified gasps. “We are facing dark times."

And a clock that runs backwards is right FOUR times a day. (If you extrapolate that trend line, by the year 2092, 5 out of 4 people will have autism. By induction, that means fully 25% of the population will have SUPER-AUTISM.)
posted by Mayor West at 9:03 AM on February 29, 2016 [14 favorites]


...every odd belief you can think of listed as entertainment: GMOs, Monsanto, bee colony collapse, ecology

And yet again, the subdiscipline of biology that studies the relationships among organisms and between organisms and their environment is maligned. ::sob::
posted by hydropsyche at 9:06 AM on February 29, 2016 [7 favorites]


Are there fistfights?

Included in the VIP "Illuminatus" membership package is a special event on the last day where they bring in Buzz Aldrin to smack you around a bit.
posted by The Tensor at 9:08 AM on February 29, 2016 [5 favorites]


"And yet again, the subdiscipline of biology that studies the relationships among organisms and between organisms and their environment is maligned. ::sob::"
Hey, while ecology is a perfectly respectable discipline, we all know those guys with some very interesting things to say about some very low R2 values. < /hamburger>
posted by Blasdelb at 9:12 AM on February 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


And in the comments section where the author, Anna Merlan was asked "did you have fun?" Was answered with a decided "fuuuuuuuck no" was the perfect capper to a great piece of reporting.

So, it was... a supposedly fun thing she would never do again?
posted by officer_fred at 9:15 AM on February 29, 2016 [10 favorites]


My favorite conspiracy theorists are the ones who rant about how incompetent the government is, then tell me with a straight face that NASA faked the Apollo landings and the government has kept that secret for 45+ years.
posted by eriko at 9:18 AM on February 29, 2016 [21 favorites]


"in one of the vintage Playboys my girlfriend collects"

Oh, man, if I was forced to go into the past and work at a job of my choosing then it would be at Playboy in the late 60s-early 70s. Why? Because there's this book (technically, a trio of books that have been collected as one) called "The Illuminatus! Trilogy and it was written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Those 2 worked as associate editors, editing the Playboy Forum advice column. Now, (and this is why I want to work there at that time period), for some reason, the Playboy Forum kept getting tons of conspiracy mail. So much so that eventually the 2 decided to write a series of novels with the premise of: "What if all of these conspiracy theories are true? Even if they're contradictory?" and thus the Illuminatus Trilogy was born.
posted by I-baLL at 9:18 AM on February 29, 2016 [11 favorites]


a clock that runs backwards is right FOUR times a day
I think if it runs backwards at the correct speed it can be right _all the time_ (at least when checked discretely). e.g. imagine a 24-hour clock that runs backwards 23:59:59 every second.
posted by achrise at 9:32 AM on February 29, 2016 [10 favorites]


I met one of those Reptilian-conspiracy-theorists, once. I was on vacation in Cuba. A guy next to me at the bar was holding a book with lots of famous people on the cover: World leaders, religious figures, actors, etc., so not famous from any single domain. So I thought that looked interesting and I asked him about the book and he let me look at it and explained that it was about how these reptilian aliens had infiltrated the earth and were putting themselves in positions of power. He explained it all to me with a totally straight face.

I had no idea what to say to all this, especially since I was the one who asked him about the book, so I couldn't very well be annoyed that he was telling me all this nutjobbery. Fortunately, I didn't have to say anything...some other guy at the bar overheard and said "Oh are you talking about [I don't remember what he called it]?" and it turns out HE WAS A REPTILIAN-CONSPIRACY-THEORIST nutjob, too! So then they started talking and I was the one overhearing. One was at the resort on a short vacation before leaving the resort to take Spanish lessons because he was planning on moving somewhere-or-other for reptilian-conspiracy-related reasons. The other guy had just bought a farm and was setting it up for substinance farming, again for reptilian-conspiracy-related reasons.

When the bartender brought my drink, I left them to it.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:36 AM on February 29, 2016 [24 favorites]


Am now idly wondering what a MetaFilter cruise would be like.
posted by Wordshore at 9:51 AM on February 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


"Do you believe in acupuncture, alien abductions, ancient aliens, chi, crop circles, entity possession, “forbidden archaeology” or “forbidden religion,” homeopathy, near-death experiences, occult Nazi super-weapons, planet x, poisoned vaccines, spiritual channeling, the new world order, or illegal immigrants from Zeta Reticuli? Do you go to bed worrying about the New World Order, the Vatican, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, NASA, the WHO, the CDC, the UN, space aliens and/or demons conspiring against you and all right-thinking people? And are you convinced that the world is ruled from the Bohemian Grove, a secret bunker under the Denver airport, Bilderberg meetings, the Council on Foreign Relations, Buckingham Palace, alien worlds or other dimensions?"

"Lady, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say."
posted by Thistledown at 9:59 AM on February 29, 2016 [10 favorites]


Not to be conspiratorial (seriously), but I could swear I read a really similar "I went some event like this" kind of article some months or even a year ago.
posted by rmd1023 at 10:08 AM on February 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


I know many people who partake in conspiracy theories and myself spent the 90's enmeshed in that world (though I was never a believer). Some are much more into it than others. Some believe in woo (pre-millennial dispensationism, aliens) and some don't. The common theme to all of them is this: "You have to take care of yourself."

One family member believes that "the powers that be" (he doesn't really know who) have their own agenda and one day will take the final step of collecting everyone's guns to end all hope of rebellion. I need to arm myself so I can be ready when the day comes.

Another family member believes the end times will happen before the last person born in 1948 dies. We need to be prepared spiritually to be Raptured and if not then be prepared for chaos (with silver and gold!) in order to ride out the Tribulation. We're sinners but we're still his kids so he cares.

Another family member is anti-vax and you can guess how they recommend taking care of ourselves and any potential children. Oh, and also our dogs. (One is a hemophiliac so he can't get shots anyways.)

One way or another, there is something coming or something already here and we need to protect ourselves from it since we can't do anything about it ourselves. I remember talking with the anti-government family member about Occupy and the Rolling Jubilee. He was skeptical, which is understandable, but for entirely different reasons. "What they're doing is pointless, the government wants us in debt and no one can change that. It's a scam, nobody would be doing something like this except to line their own pockets. If this is real then don't get involved, you'll just get a bullet in the head or commit 'suicide'...."

And because there are things you must do to protect yourself - like buying guns, gold, prayer videos and herbal supplements - there are industries that cater to them. These may be the real conspiracy, as they have a vested interest in keeping people frightened. Though enough people think like this without needing a supporting industry that it doesn't explain everything.

The most frightening part is that everyone I'm talking about are otherwise intelligent and often successful people who don't really bring this out in their daily lives or interactions with others. A stack of videos and a safe full of gold, a well filled gun safe, an large number of medicine bottles. If you didn't investigate their homes you would never know and if you were to talk with them about the subject it would take a while before you began to say, "Waaaiiiiit and minute..." to yourself.

I don't think it is about comfort - no one I know has found comfort in their paranoia. I actually don't think it's about giving up responsibility, as their habits often lead to more action and involvement, not less. The common denominator to me seems to be tribalism. You can trust your family, your close friends and your tribe but everyone is suspect. Everyone I know like this is super supportive of those around them and would give the shirt off their backs if they were in need, but everyone else can go get fucked.

These are just my personal observations and the last conclusion I just came up with. I'm eternally working through how to deal with this stuff.
posted by charred husk at 10:14 AM on February 29, 2016 [30 favorites]


I know I shouldn't be surprised but I discovered this weekend that there are people who believe the Challenger explosion didn't happen.
posted by skycrashesdown at 10:17 AM on February 29, 2016


I could swear I read a really similar "I went some event like this" kind of article some months or even a year ago.

Well, yeah, but that one was a little too close to the truth so the Order of St Hubertus had it wiped.
posted by miyabo at 10:18 AM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


While the idea of this cruise is amusing from afar, I suspect that in real life, it would be close to my definition of hell. I ran into a 9/11 "truther" at a party once and he followed me around for a good half hour trying to prove he was right.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 10:21 AM on February 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


Am now idly wondering what a MetaFilter cruise would be like.

Fairly severe list to port.
posted by Mooski at 10:27 AM on February 29, 2016 [16 favorites]


Am now idly wondering what a MetaFilter cruise would be like.


If anyone needs me, I'll be on the lido deck, drunk.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:28 AM on February 29, 2016 [7 favorites]


Mooski: "Fairly severe list to port."

The Port Wine Brotherhood has better robes even than St Hubertus
posted by chavenet at 10:48 AM on February 29, 2016


We can address the causes of the financial crisis if those causes are inadequate regulation, perverse incentives, and an absence of transnational cooperation in controlling the behaviour of companies. We can't solve it if it's the outcome of a shadowy elite who are in charge of the world.

one thing at least is very clear. this thread has clarified my tendency to favor contradictory positions.
posted by philip-random at 10:55 AM on February 29, 2016


I think if it runs backwards at the correct speed it can be right _all the time_ (at least when checked discretely). e.g. imagine a 24-hour clock that runs backwards 23:59:59 every second.

Huh. Sounds almost like you're advocating for a 4-corner simultaneous 4-day time cube, in only 24-hour rotation. But then that would mean...

4 corner days, cubes 4 quad earth - no 1-day god.
posted by Mayor West at 10:56 AM on February 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


Am now idly wondering what a MetaFilter cruise would be like.

As if Norovirus weren't enough fun.

WASHINGTON—In an effort to control the spread of a significant health threat, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quarantined the Pacific Ocean Monday after the body of water reportedly came into contact with Carnival’s Crown Princess cruise ship...
posted by waving at 10:58 AM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


"I'm sorry, you can't carry that on board."
"What? My privilege? But I take this with me everywhere."
"I'm afraid you'll have to check it."
posted by ODiV at 11:08 AM on February 29, 2016 [9 favorites]


Wordshore:
"Am now idly wondering what a MetaFilter cruise would be like."
We'd all be giving presentations on how the Cabal is orchestrating discussion and silencing us all our lives.
(Of course, there is no Cabal.)
posted by charred husk at 11:17 AM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


We'd get that fucking white whale, I know that for sure.
posted by Chitownfats at 11:18 AM on February 29, 2016 [5 favorites]


Am now idly wondering what a MetaFilter cruise would be like.

Plate of beans for breakfast

Plate of beans for lunch

Plate of beans for dinner

A lot of farting, basically.
posted by duffell at 11:20 AM on February 29, 2016 [16 favorites]


With vaccines, he said, “They rape your kids. They are literally raping your kids. They literally jam something into their bodies that makes them sick

Holy shit, just when you thought antivaxers couldn't get any grosser...
posted by Itaxpica at 11:28 AM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Lady, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say."

Which is why I personally suspect that a LOT of the 'conspiracy nuts' are being paid by the True Powers That Be to discredit their own theories or distract us from the REAL problems. Especially "Dr. Anti-Vax"; he should be getting monthly checks from "Big Pharma" for what he's done to get laws passed making childhood vaccination mandatory (Disclaimer: I accept that vaccination is a good and necessary thing, but the Marketing departments of the companies making them ARE evil, as ALL effective Marketing departments are)
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:31 AM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


One of the best parts of Merlan's piece was this comment:

Um..

all the reporters did actually end up calling an Uber to get breakfast when we disembarked. It showed up and it was a huge black Suburban. So we got in all together and pulled away in a large unmarked black car. That happened.

posted by NoxAeternum at 11:35 AM on February 29, 2016 [27 favorites]


Especially "Dr. Anti-Vax"; he should be getting monthly checks from "Big Pharma" for what he's done to get laws passed making childhood vaccination mandatory

Hell, I'll cut him a check for that.
posted by Etrigan at 11:36 AM on February 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


Here is my funny conspiracy story: One of my late father's best friends from MIT is someone who was one of the Whiz Kids, has headed up some lettered governmental agencies, been high up in the DOD and that sort of thing. A very highly connected guy. So, one evening years ago my father can't sleep and he's flipping through the channels and some History Channel show about conspiracies catches his eye. They go on about the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians and the Bohemian Grove and the Trilateral Commission and all that, and at the end of the show they get to the Bilderberg Group. As the show is describing the Bilderbergers and what they do, it shows footage of people getting out of fancy cars and being escorted into the meeting venue, and who should get out of one of the cars but my dad's friend. He immediately dials him up and the conversation goes like this:

"Hey! I just saw this thing on TV about the Bilderb--"

"I'm not a member!"
posted by slkinsey at 11:56 AM on February 29, 2016 [14 favorites]


God, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Andrew Wakefield.
posted by Existential Dread at 12:01 PM on February 29, 2016 [9 favorites]


And on the other side: there was thread on Mefi a few years ago, some conspiracy related thing, and someone actually commented "There are no conspiracies, things just happen", a comment which got a quite a lot of favourites. This is such a naieve viewpoint I couldn't believe it got so many favourites. So, ghettoisation of black people, incarceration of black people, the rise of corporate power, the destruction of the unions, the rise of the 1%, the banking crisis and financial scandals, stuff like that, it all "just happened", there were no active actors involved in making it happen?

"Multiple actors acting in their own interest" is not a conspiracy unless they're coordinating though which I think is the point of a comment like that. There are a number of real clear-cut nutso government/institutional conspiracies in the historical record though.

that I'm finding it hard to focus anger at these sad confused people

Except that many of the people like the people who spoke on this cruise are in fact predatory, or at best unintentionally leading their followers into harms way.
posted by atoxyl at 12:33 PM on February 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


Just because you're paranoid does not mean that they aren't out to get you.
posted by njohnson23 at 12:36 PM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


If I were rich enough, I'd hire two or three black helicopters to just follow this cruise around.
posted by The Man from Lardfork at 12:47 PM on February 29, 2016 [15 favorites]


Do they sail into the Bermuda Triangle???

Man, it's so much bigger than that. There are beds of clathrates all over North America. It's not just ships either, it's the whole climate. We're waking the Kraken*, and it may be too late for bedtime stories.

*May not be entirely false: see the clathrate gun hypothesis.
posted by bonehead at 1:00 PM on February 29, 2016


Why would they agree to all be in one place at the same time on something easily sinkabke?

Why, indeed.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:00 PM on February 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


If I were rich enough, I'd hire two or three black helicopters to just follow this cruise around.

If ever there were a good use for an annoying black quadcopter drone, this is it.

"Hey Man from Lardfork, why is it that the NSA drone is only following the ship when you're alone in your cabin?"

"Uhhhhhh.... Because I got a drone signal-blocking chip implanted in my brain?"
posted by slkinsey at 1:02 PM on February 29, 2016


A friend of mine once asked me about some heinous technical legislation that was in the news, and as I was explaining it, she interrupted me with, "Oh, is this one of your conspiracy theories?"

So. One, no. I wasn't speculating or slippery sloping. I was literally describing what the legislation did (or would do--I don't remember if it had passed.) Two, 'one of my conspiracy theories'? I mean, I know that conspiracies exist, but I don't have theories about big, wide-ranging secretive plots or anything like that.

Turns out that when she'd about something that seemed foreign to her, including some technology stuff or even sometimes just stupid legislation, she'd sometimes write it off as a conspiracy theory.

That friend doesn't do that anymore, but I've noticed a lot of other people doing it since. It's like a lazy skepticism where when something falls outside of your understanding, especially if it's something scary, you can dismiss it by lumping the people talking about it in with various truthers and whatnot.

The funniest thing about it, though, is that it betrays a familiarly naive and simplistic worldview to believe that everyone talking about things you don't understand is a conspiracy theorist.
posted by ernielundquist at 1:13 PM on February 29, 2016 [14 favorites]


This sort of thing reminds me that many years ago, Mrs. Example and I were on our honeymoon at this nice little hotel built over a hot spring. One evening as we were relaxing in the gigantic hot tub, we got into a conversation with a guy who was in town for a convention very similar to this cruise. Completely unbidden, he launched into a spiel about how the United Nations and the New World Order were going around implanting microchips in newborns in order to further some sort of agenda he wasn't terribly clear on.

To this day, our shorthand for that particular strain of conspiracy theorist is "Mr. Chip-Baby".
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:27 PM on February 29, 2016 [5 favorites]


I'm not sure what I hate more: Using CTs as simple, usually personalized answers distracting from complex, usually structural problems (having enemies is so much easier than having to question yourself or something you're a part of) - or using the label to ridicule critical thinking and make yourself feel strong while you clinch onto mainstream narratives, while the more obviously an official truth is built upon lies, the more CTs will flourish.

Some of the comments here are hard to stomach for me, because I discovered MetaFilter in the days following 9/11 - overjoyed to find a community where very reasonable discussions outside the box were possible.
posted by dnial at 2:12 PM on February 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


ernielundquist: It's like a lazy skepticism where when something falls outside of your understanding, especially if it's something scary, you can dismiss it by lumping the people talking about it in with various truthers and whatnot.

That's a great point.

A flip side of this is that conspiracy theorists often have a vague grasp of something which is actually happening that they then fill in with many incorrect details. Someone is, indeed, fucking them over. Perhaps it's all out in the open, if you have the patience to read the fine print of this treaty or business deal or SEC filing or that one. Perhaps it's uncoordinated actors all acting in their self-interest. But, even though it's not an official keep-it-secret conspiracy, it's a fuck-you-over that requires a lot of digging to figure out.

And easier than a lot of digging is making stuff up, or believing other people who have made stuff up.
posted by clawsoon at 2:24 PM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


Just because you're paranoid does not mean that they aren't out to get you.

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they are out to get you, either.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:26 PM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


A flip side of this is that conspiracy theorists often have a vague grasp of something which is actually happening that they then fill in with many incorrect details. Someone is, indeed, fucking them over. Perhaps it's all out in the open, if you have the patience to read the fine print of this treaty or business deal or SEC filing or that one. Perhaps it's uncoordinated actors all acting in their self-interest. But, even though it's not an official keep-it-secret conspiracy, it's a fuck-you-over that requires a lot of digging to figure out.

And easier than a lot of digging is making stuff up, or believing other people who have made stuff up.


This is exactly my feeling about things such as, for example, the anti-vaxxer movement. There are a lot of pretty not-great aspects of the American health system, as we all know; things that could be killing people by penalizing them for being sick while being poor. It's a huge problem, even after the passage of the ACA, and has a lot of powerful actors trying to keep the status quo in place, so they focus on what they believe is just this one little thing that they can be in control of. Or believing that the problems of society in the last fifty years would have been ameliorated somehow if JFK hadn't been shot.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:46 PM on February 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


Remember when Art Bell tried to make Rods happen?
posted by Room 641-A at 2:54 PM on February 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


the idea of this cruise is amusing from afar, I suspect that in real life, it would be close to my definition of hell.

Oh yeah, like "No Exit" on the high seas. It might make for a hella funny premise for a documentary or mockumentary film, though. I've been trying to imagine who I'd cast as that Morton guy. It reminds me of that classic "what happens when two guys in the same asylum who both think they're Jesus meet?" scenario.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:54 PM on February 29, 2016


I mean, really, if there was a conspiracy against these idiots, it would have been exceedingly easy for an Agenda 21/WHO secret submarine crewed by the stormtroopers of Lizard Armada to torpedo them while they were in international waters. Or something.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:27 PM on February 29, 2016


A friend of mine has gone from a left-of-center liberal-ish person to...something else. He's both more conservative and Libertarian-leaning, but at the same time embraces a kind of hippy, Jesus-tinged New Age philosophy. And the conspiracy theories--everything under the sun. He would be right at home on this thing, and since he's a trust fund kid and doesn't have to work, I'd be surprised if he hadn't gone.
posted by zardoz at 4:05 PM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


You know, my wife and I won a week-long cruise once, and we went, and it was fun but really... not our thing. BUT. I would totally be up for a Metafilter cruise.
posted by duffell at 4:38 PM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy
posted by Twang at 5:15 PM on February 29, 2016


When it comes to conspiracy theories, the best question to ask is, "How many people would have to be keeping this a secret, and for how long?" People are shitty at keeping secrets and they always have been.
posted by panama joe at 5:17 PM on February 29, 2016


Wow best tag list evah!

I just can't get over how the cognitive dissonance of "I know it's true" yet "I think I'll go on a cruise with a bunch of nutjobs" can be reconciled in their heads by several thousand folks. I must be missing something. Hmm, what if it is all true?
posted by sammyo at 5:23 PM on February 29, 2016


If these guys are so smart and so paranoid then why hasn't any of them heard of a torpedo?
posted by spitbull at 5:28 PM on February 29, 2016


Can't believe I didn't see it before now. Andy Wakefield, Sherri Tenpenny, and Laura Magdalene Eisenhower are clearly reptilians, trying to bring the skeptics out into the open so they can harvest our organs and lay eggs in our body cavities
posted by duffell at 5:31 PM on February 29, 2016


Can you possibly imagine the fun you can have on this cruise with just a simple black suit and sunglasses. Good times...
posted by AGameOfMoans at 5:35 PM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


I find it conspiracy theories oddly fascinating and beautiful. They represent fractured ideas, broken bits of meaning and information woven together over decades in a game of natural selection until only the most primordial and virulent ideas remain.

Whenever confronted by these theories or their theorists, I am reminded of confirmation bias. The bias to confirm one's already held beliefs with any available datum or sensory experience only becomes a problem in mental illness and now in the internet age the ability to completely filter information.

The other dynamic that I find so poignant is how longstanding state enforced secrecy in the military and intelligence communities has created myths around seeming gaps in public information. In the same way gaps in history give way to new and transformative myths, each myth informing the next. One can move between time travel to reptilians to alternative theories about the origins of anything that is not immediately familiar. The fact that information is deliberately withheld is the definition of its value and gravity.

In truth, I find the batshit conspiracy stuff to be less oppressive than the 24 hour news cycle, which much more blandly offers a myopic, stunted and simplistic confirmation of a worldview to viewers. These are presumptive economic, geopolitical and historical world-views that strip mine the imagination by offering the conversion of one-sided formulas into ready fact. This is information to crystalize option and sell insurance and fabric softener.

I'm going back to reading my conservative newsletter now. Hillary is gonna get me if I'm not careful...
posted by thebestusernameever at 7:49 PM on February 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


I've spent more time than most with a wide variety of various theorists. I used to really love talking to them in the 80s and 90s, when it was chariot of the gods, ascended masters, and lizard people. Now it all just seems so mean spirited and predatory. There's none of the hope of the earlier theorists, with their motherships and higher beings sharing universal knowledge and cool graffiti. Or maybe I was just stoned, and hung out with stoners, and the ugly, goldbug side of the fruitcake just never made it into my personal reality.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:02 PM on February 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


MetaFilter: A lot of farting, basically.

I regret nothing.
posted by eriko at 11:08 PM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


Conspirators of the Seas.
posted by SillyShepherd at 2:14 AM on March 1, 2016


A friend of mine has gone from a left-of-center liberal-ish person to...something else.
The Phoenix Foundation wrote a lovely song about that recently.
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:00 AM on March 1, 2016


marienbad: "there was thread on Mefi a few years ago, some conspiracy related thing, and someone actually commented "There are no conspiracies, things just happen", a comment which got a quite a lot of favourites."

No, they did not (unless Google is in on the conspiracy). You must be paraphrasing something, and dollars to donuts the difference between what it actually said and what you remember it as saying is the reason it got all those favorites.
posted by Bugbread at 5:50 AM on March 1, 2016


If I were rich enough, I'd hire two or three black helicopters to just follow this cruise around.

If I were rich enough, I'd equal your number of helicopters. Excellent plan.

I'm never going to end up on one of these things, but if I did, I suspect I'd be entertained for a few hours then slowly sink into disgust as I realize these people are taking things seriously way past the point where the subject matter is amusing bar fodder.
posted by iffthen at 6:56 AM on March 1, 2016


SecretAgentSockpuppet:
"Now it all just seems so mean spirited and predatory. There's none of the hope of the earlier theorists, with their motherships and higher beings sharing universal knowledge and cool graffiti. Or maybe I was just stoned, and hung out with stoners, and the ugly, goldbug side of the fruitcake just never made it into my personal reality."
The ugly side was always there, it's just that back then it was limited to direct mailings and word of mouth. Nowadays the internet makes fear-based marketing much easier.
posted by charred husk at 6:56 AM on March 1, 2016


If I were rich enough, I'd hire two or three black helicopters to just follow this cruise around.

If I were rich enough, I'd equal your number of helicopters. Excellent plan.


If I were rich enough, I'd throw in a submarine with full sea monster camo.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:58 AM on March 1, 2016


I'd also go with a submarine, but re-emerging randomly when there's only one guy watching.

- I tell you, THERE'S A SUBMARINE OUT THERE!
- Don't be paranoid, Johnson.

posted by lmfsilva at 7:00 AM on March 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


If I were rich enough, I'd equal your number of helicopters. Excellent plan.

I'd just issue earpieces to all the crew and tell them I'd doubly their salary if they whisper in their hand often.
posted by eriko at 7:43 AM on March 1, 2016


Not to be conspiratorial (seriously), but I could swear I read a really similar "I went some event like this" kind of article some months or even a year ago.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:08 PM on February 29


Well, there was this post.

This post was the one that popped immediately into my head when I saw this FPP, however.
posted by magstheaxe at 11:31 AM on March 1, 2016


Ah, okay. A combination of the two conflating in my mind seems likely. Mystery solved! Thanks!
posted by rmd1023 at 11:48 AM on March 1, 2016


Can you go on this thing but get trashed at the bar the entire time?
posted by gucci mane at 12:36 PM on March 1, 2016


"One particular 'incarnate fairy,' he said, is very powerful. In 2011, he asked her to move the prime meridian. She did that, and then he filed an enormous lien 'against all 12 of the Federal Reserve banks'.”

I feel so sorry for the poor worker bees at various gov't and business organizations that have to deal with the crap paperwork these yahoos generate.
posted by magstheaxe at 1:06 PM on March 1, 2016


You know, I'm sort of 99 percent equating "Conspiracy" with "nutball" in the sense that how could a conspiracy so necessarily multilevel as the JFK assassination remain secret for so long, but, every so often, I think about Jimmy Hoffa. It wouldn't have taken a lot of individuals to effect his disappearence, of course, but the "ok" for it would have had to have been massive and widespread. either within his organization or within his enemies', given the guarantee of curiosity and scrutiny it would engender. There would've been thousands, tens of thousands, of people who "knew a guy who knew a guy", etc. Yet...
posted by Chitownfats at 2:28 PM on March 1, 2016


This quote explains conspiracy theories to me:

"What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad."

In context, there is a conspiracy, but he's describing a feeling, and doesn't everybody feel a little bit that way? Doesn't the world suck in ways that are hard to accept, if you think of people as mostly reasonable and good-willed? Even if you can explain things rationally, there's still a sense of wrongness, of injustice, about it.

Everyone lives in their own mental model of the world -- it conforms more or less with known facts but it's nevertheless made up of narratives because that's the thing we understand, and it's difficult to "see" facts that don't fit the narratives you know. (See any study about giving facts to partisans.)

Most people have narratives that, for whatever reason, they need. I love the word mumpsimus -- it's a belief or practice still adhered to even though it's been shown to be incorrect. It has its own historical context, but I think of it as when you choose to inhabit a reality in your head even though you should (and sometimes do) recognize that it's not actually correct.

For instance, I "know" that karma doesn't exist but in my head narrative it still does, frankly because that reality conforms closely enough to the observed one, and I'd much rather live there.

The point is, everybody balances the "technical accuracy" of their own narratives with the (often) emotional value those narratives provide. As the emotional value grows, facts diminish in relevance -- not as a side effect, but by definition.

Anyhow, it made me more sympathetic to conspiracy theorists. Like mostly I'm lucky the ways I need to mentally rearrange reality in my head don't interfere too much with day-to-day life.
posted by bjrubble at 4:10 PM on March 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


bjrubble: "doesn't everybody feel a little bit that way?"

Nope.

bjrubble: "Doesn't the world suck in ways that are hard to accept, if you think of people as mostly reasonable and good-willed?"

I think that right there may be the reason for not feeling that way. I don't think people are all horrible, either, but I think most people are pretty much in the middle, sometimes reasonable and sometimes not, sometimes good-willed and sometimes spiteful, sometimes generous and sometimes cruel. Generally selfish, though, but not overwhelmingly so. But that mix is enough that there's nothing that makes the suckiness in the world particularly surprising or needing of hidden factors to understand. Yes, I feel it's often wrong and unjust, but I don't think there must be hidden causes.
posted by Bugbread at 5:04 PM on March 1, 2016


Janine Melnitz: Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis?

Winston Zeddemore: Ah, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:36 AM on March 11, 2016




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