Everyone's probably heard a fair number of conspiracy theories. Some such "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" have evolved into memehood, some cross into heavily controversial territory such as allegations that the shooting at Sandy Hook was a false flag attack, and then there's the timeless belief that the American government is run by lizard people. To many, most if not all of these beliefs raise the question of "who would believe something like that?"
The answer is that it's actually a pretty diverse crowd that subscribes to such theories. As written in Scientific American, a percent of people of every gender, race, political affiliation, and income bracket believe in conspiracy theories almost equally, though what conspiracies they believe are shaped by where they're coming from. They also found that around 1 in 5 people with post-graduate degrees believes in some conspiracy theory.
In an interview with NPR's All Things Considered, professor of social psychology Viren Swami talked about why such a high number of people subscribe to these kinds of ideas:
"Human beings have a very natural tendency to take in information that fits their own perspective of the world. And we tend to reject information or reject evidence that we disagree with. And we do that for a very simple reason. We don't like it when we feel wrong. We don't like it when people tell us we're wrong because that damages our psychological well-being. We don't like thinking that our view of the world, our perspective of the world is incorrect."
This is notable at a time where people are so entrenched in their political beliefs that we want to believe crazy things so that we can feel vindicated in what political values we hold. This interview occurred right after someone took a gun to investigate a pizzeria that he read was the center of a democrat-run child sex ring, to which a quick google search will show people still believe.
The fact of the matter is that the current administration is surrounded by conspiracy theories as a result of relying on them so much throughout the election, to which it's up to you to decide if you think is good or bad. On the opposing side, you have a lot of people eagerly waiting for a silver bullet in the investigation on Trump's ties to Russia that can be used to impeach the sitting president. The anticipation for such information is extremely comparable to people wanting to see a fake or foreign birth certificate from president Barack Obama when he took office in 2009.
But it isn't just outside the White House either. A Trump tweetstorm in March ended with the president accusing Obama of wiretapping Trump's office during the end of the election. With a distinct lack of evidence to back this up, Trump later said he got this info from watching a Fox news program, though the channel never made that claim. This claim has long been made in harder conservative media, however, media that often discusses such controversial conspiracies with about as much evidence.
The most visible claim of this specific conspiracy was from Breitbart, though I'm surprised they're not investigating their own reptilian leadership.
