How the internet ruined conspiracy theories

That’s the way conspiracy theorists and radicals of all stripes used to connect to each other, back in the days before the internet. They’d hang around some scruffy bookstore — someplace with an evocative and dog-whistle kind of name, such as “Sacco & Vanzetti Books and Co.” or “Free Your Mind Books & News” or “Fellow Travelers Bookshelf” — and bump into each other near the shelves where they kept the books proving that the Great Pyramid of Giza was built by ancient astronauts, or something equally far-out and ludicrous, such as The Communist Manifesto.

They’d exchange knowing looks, the kind of expression that signaled to the other person that you, too, knew what was really happening in the world, and then a series of coded interactions would ensue, ending with an invitation to a meeting of the devotees of that particular fringe obsession.

These meetings often took place in the basement or back room of the bookstore, which was rented to the group by the shop’s owner in an impressive display of vertically integrated monopolistic exploitation, all the more unexpected because the owner usually claimed to be an unrepentant communist.

(Unrepentant because, as we all know, true communism has never been tried.)

The internet has taken the fun out of this kind of thing, as it has to pretty much everything else. The shabby bookshop has been replaced by Twitter, and the complicated series of Kabuki-like exchanges have been reduced to a simple hashtag, something like #ancientastronauts or #brettonwoods. Or worse.

It’s a lot easier now to connect with your fellow oddballs and looneys, of course, but back when my friend was doing his script research, you had to get on an airplane and fly somewhere.

My friend went to the meeting in New Orleans and wandered around the tables, talking to people carrying huge binders of clippings and off-center photocopies, which they called “evidence.” At one point, he bumped into someone he knew slightly.

“Oh!” his acquaintance said. “I had no idea you were a fan of the Kennedy assassination.”

“I wouldn’t call myself a fan of the Kennedy assassination,” my friend said.

“Oh, no, no, no,” his acquaintance said. “I don’t mean it like that. I mean, is it your thing?”

My friend explained what he was doing there, that it was an act of research, not an act of faith. He wasn’t a fan of the Kennedy assassination, and it wasn’t his thing. It was just a part of something he was writing, and he wanted to get the atmosphere right, so he followed a trail of smudgy flyers and ended up in New Orleans to collect impressions and, eventually, put them into a script.

“I still don’t know why you would fly all the way to New Orleans to this crappy hotel if you didn’t love the assassination,” his acquaintance responded.

This was a fair question. It was a pretty big commitment of time and money. The other attendees had all taken time off from work, bought plane tickets, booked hotel rooms, and lugged boxes of files and overstuffed binders. The people gathered in that hotel ballroom were devoted to the Kennedy assassination and had the receipts to prove it. To be an obsessive conspiracy theorist back then, on pretty much any topic, required you to ante up.

Things were better back then. Lovers of the Kennedy assassination, believers in ancient astronauts, people who demanded that Henry Kissinger be jailed or Mumia Abu-Jamal be freed, furious commies and anti-commies both — they didn’t just hit the “like” button. They didn’t just retweet. They called Hertz and American Airlines and Marriott and put some skin in the game.

Conspiracy theorists these days have a lot to learn about grit and stick-to-it-iveness. A crackpot group that’s too easy to join is also too easy to quit.

Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.