Conspiracy theory and chill

Entering the dating world after being with one person for four years has been troubling, to say the least. I thought it would be difficult to find a guy with a sense of humour, but turns out it’s far more difficult to find someone with a clear grasp on reality.

Last week I went on a tinder date [i.e. where romance goes to die] with a cute, intelligent reporter. What a smile. I’m a sucker for dimples. And so interesting, really a man of the world. The date started off great.

I should mention that the fact that he pitched at all was a great start because he’d already ghosted me once, and yes I know I shouldn’t have given him a second chance but to be frank a fair amount of sexting had occurred before the date and I was curious.

We drank to relax the first date nerves and awkwardness, as one does. I continued to drink to deal with the deep disappointment at the extensive list of conspiracy theories he believes in – “only ones with evidence” – unfortunately a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of conspiracy theories. And by the way, the fact that there is no evidence, is not evidence.

“Whyyy?” I thought to myself in despair. “Surely clever good looking boys know better than this?”

But that is not the way the world works. According to conspiracy boy (as I refer to him), America did not land on the moon. Ebola was inserted into West Africa by pharmaceutical companies to test the vaccine. The Libyan revolution was created by the West to prevent Gaddaffi from creating an entire new currency in Africa (that one’s at least vaguely interesting). TUPAC IS STILL ALIVE. 9/11 blah blah blah. I actually take it for granted these days that I am surrounded by 9/11 Truthers. Sometimes I feel like I’m crazy because I’m not one. Don’t even say it. Don’t.

I’ll give him some credit for not mentioning the Jews controlling the international media and banking system. Maybe because he knew I was Jewish, I don’t know. I do know though that the Conspiracy Theorist Starter Pack always includes a “when in doubt, blame the Jews” token.

Anyways, after he finished telling me that everything I believe is a lie, I took him back to my place, where I revealed my true alien reptilian form and ate him. Joke’s on him, because he didn’t even believe in lizard people.

JK. But I was feeling like if we didn’t get to the “chill” part of our evening soon, I was gonna start getting cranky.

On a serious note though, as a young person in a world with so much uncertainty and so many kak things going on, I do often feel a sense of powerlessness and insecurity and I understand the urge to look for simple answers and explanations for horrible things.

The world can be a really scary, confusing place. I felt bad for conspiracy boy. I wanted to hold him and stroke his hair and say, “it’s ok baby, I know Tupac wasn’t at his peak yet. It’s terrible. I’m sad too. I’m sorry he was cremated and The Outlawz smoked his ashes in a joint [???] and he keeps releasing music. But he’s dead.”

I also totally get the deep mistrust in powerful governments and corporations. The control they hold over us is scary AF. Obvio it makes people feel super vulnerable.

And let’s not forget, everyone loves a great villain.

But this kinda made me think of something I learnt in an undergrad politics class about the problem with conspiracy theories (a true miracle because most of the time I feel like I’ve forgotten everything I learnt in university). It’s called the fallacy of the single cause and it goes like this:

 X occurred after Y. Therefore Y caused X.

Easy. We reduce the problem to one great evil source. It’s a government plot, or something.

But then we start being suffocated by confirmation bias and scrape around desperately finding any shred of evidence or non-evidence to support the theory, and we are sucked into the black hole of the internet and start believing everything we see and slowly the cats that rule the internet and the world start feeding us our own brains and we don’t even realise it.

Fortunately, fellow humans and lizard people and cat overlords, we are in 2016, and we hold the capabilities and resources to rigourously and scientifically analyse these situations and understand them, because the world is a complex place and mostly X was caused by a combination of A, B, C, and a bunch of other reasons. Not just Y.

It just is not all a deliberate plot.

In any case, since when has the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy ever needed a sinister or secret plot to subject, kill or ignore the suffering of people that have no value to it? The whole system is fucked, that’s the problem. #jussaying

Anyway, I digress.

I must come clean. Or dirty. Or at all, really (too far? Too far.) After listening to this drivel for long enough, my mind just wandered to previous illicit conversations between conspiracy boy and me. Eventually I really became far less interested in whether man landed on the moon (lol jk I never cared), and far more interested in whether this man was going to land in my bed, and in what position (see what I did there?). Expectations had been created, what’s a girl to do?

So eventually I did take him home. Not because I needed the human sustenance to maintain my human form as a lizard person, but because goddammit it’s been a while and quite frankly there wasn’t much that was going to stop me from getting my rocks off that night.

Turns out I definitely would have gotten more satisfaction from the experience if I was a lizard person.

Instead, I came to the sad realisation that there were probably many hours that he spent feeding his wild theories, that could have been better spent learning where the clitoris is and how to please a woman sexually. 

I’ve been debating in my head how much detail to go into here, I’m not used to talking about my sex life on the internet, but I think it’s enough to say he had his fun, paid zero attention to me or my clitoris, and rolled over to go to sleep. Very typical selfish lover, very average sexual experience, and an unfortunately very common story.

I wasn’t going to just let this slide though. I tapped him on the shoulder. Pointing to my phone, I said, “Hi there! Can I refer you to this string of texts in which you explained in detail your sexual prowess and expertise in pleasuring women? What about this one where you said that you were going to bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep?” Sigh. False advertising. And unfortunately there is no advertising standards authority for sexting. “Sorry, I’m just so tired,” he said.

Ignoring for a moment certain obvious lessons here, like don’t sext with people you’ve never met because they will lie to you (I knew there were too many cry-laughing emojis), I think we can see what the ultimate moral of the story is: there’s clearly a massive conspiracy keeping men from learning anything about sex and women’s bodies that isn’t just about their own dicks, and that’s why the world is so full of average sex and so void of female orgasms.

Waaiiit, no. That’s just the patriarchy again. Either way, I think I’m updating my tinder profile:

"Looking for a cute, intelligent, funny guy. Must believe that man landed on the moon and that Tupac is no longer alive. Working knowledge of the female anatomy essential."