The Absolute Stupidest Things People Believed In 2024
Not meant to be comprehensive, because ... well, you know.
One of the favorite mantras of the conspiratorial Right has long been “We are the mainstream now” (right along with the Q-derived “We are the media now”). Now, it’s not exactly true, largely because they don’t produce any art and because regular people who are not terminally online fascists are continually surprised to discover what it is they actually believe. This has become even more pronounced since much of the Left has left Xitter and these people have been forced to “discuss amongst themselves.” They’re not just hearing “Oh, these people are super racist dipshits who literally think we drink the blood of children we terrify in Satanic rituals” from journalists on the Left, they’re hearing it directly from the mouths of those who do believe these things. Because that’s who is left there.
Still, in the seven or eight years since “Q” first appeared on 4chan, far more people hold absolutely batshit ideas than ever did previously. These views are absolutely mainstream … in the Republican Party. People on the Right are far more likely to make up their own version of events based on one or two things they’ve heard about than they are to actually pay attention to what is going on in the world.
And what hath that wrought this year? Well, let’s take a look at some of the inane things people actually believed this year!
COVID Was Ethnically Targeted
Yeah … we’ve heard that one before, from the usual loons — but the one claiming it this time was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the man who will likely be heading up the Department of Health and Human Services.
Specifically, Kennedy claimed that Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people were the most immune to the virus. What made it really clear that this was some very anti-Semitic nonsense is the fact that Jewish people were actually more likely to get the virus, for whatever reason.
Kids Are Getting Gender Affirming Surgeries At School
Donald Trump was a big fan of this one and repeated it endlessly, to absolutely zero pushback from anyone in his party.
“Think about it,” he said during a town hall with Tiffany Justice of Moms For Liberty. “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child and many of these children, 15 years later, say ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’”
Well, definitely not their World History teacher. Definitely not the school nurse, especially if they attend one of the 25 percent of schools that do not even have school nurses. Or anyone, because of how this is an entirely made-up thing that has never, ever happened, ever, anywhere.
Post-Birth Abortions
I think my favorite thing about the “post-birth abortion” nonsense is that it stems from the fact that Donald Trump’s newness to anti-abortion rhetoric in 2016 caused him to get a lot of things wrong — including his claim that doctors routinely perform “abortions” on newborn babies, which is obviously not a thing. But because the Right had invested so heavily in his infallibility, they had to just go along with him and all agree it was a thing.
Of course, what ended up happening was that they demonized palliative care for newborns with no chance of survival because that was the only plausible interpretation of what he might be talking about.
Thus, he continued spreading this nonsense well into this past election, with literally zero negative effect on his campaign. Because they all believe it now.
MYSTERY DRONES!
To be fair, the mystery drones definitely existed — but many of the stories people told themselves about the mystery drones were unfounded and ridiculous, starting with the fact that they were “something new” when drones flying over our military bases has been a thing for a long while, with the vast majority of them coming from regular, non-international spy Americans, and ending with the fact that many of them were actually just planes.
Here Comes The Stories Of The Hurricane
Honestly, there were so many bizarre lies and conspiracies about the hurricanes in the Southeast this year that I do not even think it is possible for me to name them all. There were the tamer (yet still destructive) lies about how victims were only going to get $750 total in aid, when in fact it was just some quick emergency cash to help them right away, that people were being barred from helping victims for some reason, that drones were banned because people were using them to send aid, that property was being seized …
Then there was the far more insidious lie that areas hit by hurricanes wouldn’t be getting any FEMA money, because all of that money had gone to help undocumented immigrants.
Then there was the theory about how someone did the hurricanes on purpose because they hate Republicans and wanted to destroy their homes — that one having been famously pushed by Ms. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
There were also the right-wing loons who circulated AI pictures of children who didn’t actually exist, in order to show just how terribly all of the kids with six fingers and 67 teeth were being neglected by the Biden-Harris administration.
Of course, my favorite story to come out of the hurricane nonsense was the one about how, somehow, Hurricane Helene led to the capture of the High Horseman, a completely imaginary sex trafficker — a story a crazy Telegram cult leader named Ginger said she was told by “white hats” in the military and also angels, and which was later repeated by many on Xitter, several right-wing websites, and AI bots like ChatGPT, as absolute truth.
Haitians Are Eating People’s Pets
Yet another example of the “Republican candidate says something batshit insane and untrue and now all of their followers have to fall all over themselves to prove that it is true” phenomenon was when JD Vance claimed on Twitter that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets. This was obviously untrue — and Vance even eventually admitted it was a lie, but still recommended that Trump and other Republicans keep claiming it’s true anyway.
There is, sadly, almost no hope that this will not all get worse in the coming year and in the years following that. The Right, at this point, is the world’s most destructive improv troupe, “Yes, and”-ing their way through life, caring more about making lies appear to be true for appearances’ sake than about finding out what the actual truth is about anything.
Open Thread Chat Dec. 31. One of a dog's favorite days is New Year's Eve, they love the ball drop!
Kittens like it too!
https://substack.com/chat/1783367/post/f1057fee-3e74-4c49-b925-12b471a5a1f1
“Trump cares about little people like me” wasn’t crazy enough to make the list?