Infographic: how to make a lie go mainstream, in 26 easy steps

A flowchart at Mother Jones illustrates how to cook up a bullshit conspiracy theory and push it mainstream, in just 26 steps. (via Mat Honan)

• [MacBookHeir]

  Cute chart. And funny. I must assert however that all theories (conspiracy or otherwise) are pure bullshit to begin with and tend to gain legitimacy as more and more people buy into them. A theory is just a crazy idea until 15 or more people stand behind it.

• [Chesterfield]

  WTF is up with the obnoxiously huge ads in your rss feed? Here’s a screenshot if you are interested in what your readers are seeing.

  • [JonStewartMill]

    Adblocker and NoScript are your friends.

  • [Andrew McNicol]

    That’s strange. I’m also using Google Reader, but I’m not getting ads at all. Sure they’re actually coming from BB? (Can’t think of another way they’d appear, though.)

• [irksome]

  The true beauty in any good conspiracy theory lies in its ability to turn any refutation into a part of said conspiracy.

  • [Teller]

    Excellent observation. And it works in a similar way for edgy artists in almost any discipline.

• [epb]

  Interesting that MJ pokes fun at the mercury/autism conspiracy theory. MJ assisted in the birth of that theory in 2004.

• [Anonymous]

  Here’s a crazy one, before getting elected Obama branded himself as the opposite of Bush and now governs just like Bush (in many ways more extreme: i.e. codified indefinite detention & assassinations, new wars, further eroding of civil liberties). The conspiracy is that, because the policies haven’t changed, the change in leadership was only intended to be superficial and this was hidden (or downplayed) from the public during the election. I know, I know, what a racist, right-wing, Tea-bagger, Birther-style conspiracy!

  • [Sethum]

    You mean the conspiracy that the government has been working hard to make people forget that 2011 is still part of the post-1984 era?

• [laukarlueng]

  Here’s a stupid conspiracy theory I heard recently:

  “Now, let me just comment, first of all, on the fact that I can’t get the networks to break in on all kinds of other discussions — (laughter.) I was just back there listening to Chuck — he was saying, it’s amazing that he’s not going to be talking about national security. I would not have the networks breaking in if I was talking about that, Chuck, and you know it.”

  This crackpot thinks that there’s some conspiracy among networks to cover only sensational stories in order to grab headlines, like the network heads are colluding to keep his comments on more important subjects out of the media! What a psycho nutbag!