In the previous post I discussed how conspiracy theories arise, namely as untestable theories within a world which is incredibly complex and opaque, because all theories about our world essentially are. And one of the points I made is that the conspiracy theories that end up reaching us are those which are good at spreading between minds, not necessarily the ones that are true, what we could call the fundamental principle of mimetics.
In practice, what do those ideas look like? What determines whether something is popular (again, not necessarily true) or not? This is the point of this piece here.
There is one obvious but very important commonality between the ideas that spread well, which is that they typically flatter the ego of the listener in one way or another. This is why so many conspiracy theories give this sense of uncovering a truth which has been hidden to the "herd". People enjoy feeling special, especially because the fracture of modern life separates people out into micro-communities which are entirely mediated through identity, because to get into them in the first place you are filtered by how you present yourself, not what your innermost character, which heavily reinforces narcissism and attachment to the mask of personality, because it is the only thing that remains in an unconscious world.
Having access to a special truth is not restricted to conspiracy theorists however, far from it. Materialistic scientists also feel like they have something over the average person, as do literature enjoyers, listeners of classical music, and much more. There is such a thing as taste of course, but the main difference here lies in the focus of one's experience: enjoyment of something for its own sake, whether it is reading a book, listening to music, taking a walk, or deriving enjoyment from the identity, which is the default on "social" media. (perhaps "performative" media is a more apt term)
The ideas that are good at spreading within an echo chamber—and sadly we all live in one because society itself is a massive echo chamber—are those that reaffirm its fundamental assumptions, and make the receiver feel more safe. Despite what people claim, very few people read or listen to things to learn anything genuinely new or challenging to their worldview. By and large, the default consists in wanting to reaffirm what one already believes (or wants to believe in) because it is how the self-informed self operates.
First, the self wants to believe that life is meaningless, (because it itself is alienated) or that it doesn't have to take responsibility for its problems, or that really, all of the problems in society are caused by a tiny group of people we can point our fingers at, or that love doesn't exist (because it is unable to love), or that we can keep society going forever (because it is dependent on society), or that the world is fundamentally fair/unfair (depending on its living situation), or that we might one day find the solution to death (because it is terrified by it), or that foreigners/women/men/homosexuals are inherently inferior people, and then it looks for evidence and supporting theories. This process of self-confirmation is then denied, the same way that cowards deny that they constantly looking for safety in whatever situation they find themselves in, or in the same way that loveless people project their lovelessness onto others, because self-confirmation affects perception itself.
This fundamental property of the self-informed self, the fact that it continually seeks more of itself, what it understands, what it can use to justify or expand itself, or what it can co-opt, is the source of all of the rackets that surround us, and the main thing that dictates whether an idea will be popular or not.
If you can appeal to people's narrow horizons of experience, the fact that nowadays most people experience reality through their screen for instance, you will be more popular than someone who is in touch with their senses and draws upon them to arrive at th truth. Modern people relate more to references to video games or mass media, than to anything to do with their own body, especially the direct experience of love, which is why much of modern "humor" boils down to mere references.
Likewise if you can appeal to people's vices, their fears, obsession for safety, clinging to pleasure, general apathy about everything, desire to be special, fear of commitment, lack of any real competence, and their entirely mechanical (unconscious) way of living, you will be a lot more popular than someone who calls people out on those.
Not that insulting the reader is necessary for good writing, if anything cheap cruelty is often a substitute for simply telling the Truth, but that great writers are themselves great human beings, which means that they hold high standards when it comes to life and how to live it, which is inherently offensive to those who identify with their mediocrity.
One notable instance of this has to do with the obsession with mental illnesses in the modern world. Because people are no longer in touch with the Divine, or anything beyond their self, they start to identify with their problem, their conditions, their mental illness(es), because that gives them a coherent sense of self, and some type of meaning in the form of fighting against something.
In practice however, what could be a practical attitude against one's problems in life becomes an excuse to moan, moan and moooaaan about one's existence, usually with other people through social media. What is essentially intellectual masturbation in public becomes seen as a form of "vulnerability", a great act of "courage" in talking on and on about one's life, without ever really changing in any meaningful way.
Even the act of crying, which some people think of as the pinnacle of release and healing, can be part of this fake act of "recovery", because it can be performative rather than embodied. Crying without feeling what ails you in the first place is like faking an orgasm because you are being filmed, it's a way to bypass experience. And this is what is popular in practice: displays of virtues rather than virtues themselves.
This focus on appearance by the unconscious self is why all social media devolves into sharing images rather than having conversations, because to read takes time, whereas to see is immediate. This is why a graph that "shows" what people want to believe in, such as how "renewables" will save the planet, or how powerful technology is getting, do very well, because they bypass the need to even think in the first place. You can just look at it, like and reshare it, and move onto the next image. No consciousness there, no serious engagement with anything real, just a vague signal of agree/don't agree.
Thus it is not even appropriate to talk about what type of ideas are good at spreading, because oftentimes the ideas themselves are not what convince people. It's a really a matter of branding. Even science is a matter of branding. No one reads scientific papers, arguably not even scientists themselves besides their tiny area of specialization, but people love the aesthetics of science: the flasks and vats, the rockets and spaceships (granted that is space engineering, not science itself), the equations on the blackboard, the white coat and the sense of reassurance that an authority knows what they are doing, etc.
This mechanism of bypassing thoughts entirely is also why the type of information that reaches us is so often geared towards outrage, or anything that makes us reactive. It spreads well because it makes people bad at not spreading it, they do so almost automatically. "Look at how awful the world is! Look at how stupid the children are getting! Look at how little they care about X" This is what we could call parasitic memes, patterns in human behavior that spread because they hijack our reactivity in order to spread themselves.
This is why being embodied and calm has never been more important than in our times. It's not that people are having stupider ideas, it's that they do not even actively think to begin with, they become possessed by ideas that reaffirm emotional patterns in them. The basis of good thinking is stillness, otherwise you become reactive and your perception becomes clouded by fear, preventing you from seeing the truth unless it is convenient to your survival.
This aspect of survival is why politics is such a racket. It is a way for people to show their allegiance to certain clusters of ideas, not to discuss what could be improved as a society. Not that I believe it is really possible to consciously design a society at our scale, because the technological system is largely autonomous in how it runs. But the fact that we can't even have this conversation is telling, instead people rally around a common enemy, and over time start to adopt the same attitutes and ideas as one another, which is why working class people can support a literal billionaire as their president, or why people initially concerned with inequality and racial discrimination can end up becoming vegans.
Tribalism is convenient because it gives you an ingroup that can defend you—or at least the illusion that they will, if society ever went through a rough period, politics will hardly be useful because it is mostly done online—and that you can contribute to to get a sense of meaning. Just like warfare gives desperate people a sense of meaning through having an opponent, narrative warfare likewise does much of the same, except that you don't have to risk your life, and that the damage becomes psychological rather than physical, though it ends up affecting a lot more people.
Tribalism is also convenient because it vastly simplifies your worldview, and thus your life. It is so much easier to know that you can simply ask someone else for their opinion when you are confronted with confusion, rather than carefully consider the situation at hand to understand what is going on, and what you should do. Not that complication is necessarily a sign of wisdom, but a lack of nuance, and perhaps more importantly a lack of responsibility, is pretty much always a sign of immaturity (or fear).
And so these are the types of ideas that spread. Not just isolated ideas, but cluster of them that flatter the ego, appeal to people's vices, are concordant with the biggest echo chambers, and bypass the process of thinking entirely, through shallowness (images), through outrage, and through black and white ingroup-outgroup dynamics. All in all, the ideas that spread well are aligned with the self-informed self, not consciousness.
As much as I have talked about echo chambers and the lack of discernment of the self, at the end of the day we cannot ignore Reality altogether. This is why the Truth still appears, and still manages to find people who can spread it and embody it, especially over the long term, when fashion has sailed long ago and we are left with having to live with the consequences of our ideas.
A lesser version of that is that empiricism is required for things to work, which doesn't give you the Truth itself, but only the accuracy to it, which is why markets can produce products that work well, but cannot give you artistic quality, which is more ineffable, not testable with Reality directly. Empiricism and effectiveness have been crucial all throughout civilization, especially in the modern world, because utility runs into the need to interact with reality to some degree.
But over the past decades it feels that by and large, rackets have taken over. So many things feel like a racket to me now. Finance. Governments. Healthcare. Insurance. Advice. Schooling. Ideas. Popular media. Fame. Status. The news. Health and diet. Even having agency itself has become a racket, where it's about appearing to have agency than to actually wield it and use it wisely.
I have a lot more to say about this but that's for another piece. The main thesis I have in mind is that the trend towards shorter feedback loops between putting something out there, on the market or on the internet, and your social reward for it, means that the things that appeal to people's lower self win out in the short term. They become fashionable because they are easy to digest, feel familiar and reasurring, whereas what is good in the long term is often more uncomfortable, takes more effort to interact with, and requires an integrity that seems more and more dwindling on the internet.
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Memetics Ego Conspiracy Echochamber Racket Thoughtstopper Science Mentalhealth
2026-04-04