Lonely Conspiracy

The deepest sense of untrust to reality seems to be on the very basis of any conspiracy theorist’s mindset. Where does it come from? Finding out that one of my close relatives joined the blooming camp of conspiracists, I can not help but think about it.

There are two main ways for alternative-reality concepts to be created and supported. The first one is the creative one. “What if?” My storytelling students learn to question everything with this question. It helps to create non-trivial plots and ideas and many, if not all, great stories were created with the help of this simple tool. However, there is a clear distinction between real-world and, for instance, GoT world and only a few hard-core fans would disagree with it.

The second way is different. Imagine someone who feels really bad in the world. Not that bad to be diagnosed with severe depression but bad enough not to feel any good for days. Their life seems so very unsatisfying for them it fills them with the deepest frustration. The basic philosophical systems, for example, religion, does not provide much relief. They probably did everything right in their lives — education, marriage, job — but it did not make them any happier, as it was promised. “Something definitely is wrong with the world,” they think. “Something feels so very much incorrect.” These feelings store up day by day. Finally, the people around… wait a minute, where are the people around?

More than nine million people in the UK are lonely. The NHS website has quite a voluminous chapter on loneliness and how badly it influences people’s health and wellbeing. In 2016 the UK government formed a special commission aimed to investigate and find ways to fight loneliness in the UK, known as Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness. In 2018, after the Commission’s report, the country got their first Minister for Loneliness.

In 2020 it suddenly appeared that my close relative was deeply trapped in conspiracy theories and plots. They were anti-covid, anti-vaccination, anti-west, you name it. All the other interests quickly declined to zero and it seemed that the only way of having a conversation for us two was fighting around those topics. I stubbornly did not want to believe they were where they were. They passionately did not want to be okay with me preferring official science and randomized triple-blind placebo-controlled trials. Finally, we ended our phone communication a couple of months ago and I can only hope we will ever talk normally again.

Quite recently, I listened to the WeTransfer’s Influencer podcast with Noreena Hertz, a British economist, thought leader and author. The podcast started with the experiment description. Researchers took a rat, left it with food and water alone in the box for three weeks. After this time had passed, they put another rat into that box. In mere minutes, this previously normal and social but now lonely rat attacked and killed the newcomer. During the three weeks of loneliness, the rat lost its ability for empathy, socializing and bonding.

This is how the podcast’s host introduced Mrs Hertz’s new book “Lonely Century” in which she, besides all the other things, links the rise of radical movements and conspiracy with widespread tech- and economy-induced loneliness. The book presents data and conclusions of research made around loneliness and its effects on human life.

If there are few people left who would be surprised with the statement like “loneliness affects physical health equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day”, I was definitely one of those shocked with the less obvious effects: Declining of cognitive skills, atrophy of ability to compassionate and empathize, finally the extremely high levels of cortisol and adrenaline.

The longer you are lonely, the more complicated it is for you to stop being lonely. Loneliness puts us into a cycle sometimes too hard to break.

I thought about my relative. Are they lonely? Yes, they are. After retirement from the job that was the almost only reliable source of daily socialization, TV and Youtube slowly replaced live human interactions in their life. COVID-19 isolation made it only worse. Finally, the social media and Youtube algorithms, helpfully offering new and new articles and videos about the world conspiracy, finished what was started.

In 2019 a group of scientists from Stanford University published a paper “The Welfare Effects of Social Media”. It summarized the research they had conducted earlier with 2,743 active Facebook users, half of which were asked not to use social media for four weeks. The results are predictable, but yet: They felt happier, had more social interactions, deeper connections with their peers in comparison to the control group. This was the first research that clearly showed the way social media influences human connection and interaction.

But is it fair to blame for all only social media?

Each of us knows enough people who masterfully combine both live and virtual communication. For some, social media does no harm, even more, it makes their life easier and fuller. If not for social media, how would we survive this Covid-19 year? It certainly has its effect but it would be oversimplifying to blame only social media. There must be something else.

This is when I tried to remember how it worked before the 2000s and the rise of social media. Quick answer: In almost the same way conceptually. People still were supposed to consume content (TV, radio, books and press) and then discuss it with their peers (via phone, mail or personally). But there were three huge differences:

1. Speed. It was way slower and took way more effort to communicate to anyone farther than your living room.
2. Barriers. There was less diversity of content and higher barriers for the ideas to be spread.
3. Urgent need to be “live”. Live communication was an enormous part of life. To be in a nearby community meant a lot more for survival in the non-digital economy than it means now.

I usually hear the following question after this comparison: “So you say, it was easier for people to socialize, right?” My answer is — it is not that simple. From the evolutionary point of view, we have not really changed during the last 500 years, not to say during the last 100 years — the period we learn new words like iphone, internet, facebook, etc. So the same strain with socialization we have now, our ancestors had, too. It is hard to believe, but your grandma may have had the same issues with sweaty palms when she was facing the need to ask something in the convenience store.

The only difference is that they did not have any other “fast-carb” social choices, whereas now social media generously provides us with many.

We crave socializing, some more and others less, but we badly need to be connected to other people around us to feel fine. And if our ancestors did not have a choice, they had to exercise their social and communication skills over and over again. They had to value the relationships they had because there were not that many options around. So they needed to overcome problems and solve issues that appeared. The same way the skilled old-school taxi driver automatically knew how to find the right address, they had their “social muscles” developed enough to do a lot of things automatically.

So, the answer to that question is both yes and no. No, they were not genetically better at establishing social connections. Yes, they were better trained and conditioned to be better in social communication with their peers.

It must be mentioned that the decline of relationship value also did both good and bad things to us. Moreover, it is almost impossible to understand whether the cons overweigh the pros. For instance, we are more likely to end abusive relationships or be less afraid to minimize toxic interactions than our parents and grandparents were. We do value our personality and its safety a lot and are overall better conditioned to fight for it. But we are also less able to overcome occasional boredom, troubles, misunderstandings and save otherwise healthy and fulfilling relationships with others.

To be not alone is the work, let’s put it like this. If we skip this work, we slowly lose the ability to do it effectively. This is an atrophy that may happen to almost any of us.

Here we come to the main point: While we have jobs, live events and places for socialization, while we are well-integrated into economical life, we may be able to avoid this emptiness. It puts working-age people in the less risk group. Such people have all the opportunities and need to exercise their social skills.

But what about those who are like my relative? Those who live in a culture that sees them as a kind of “deadstock”, not interesting for the needs of further economical development. There are almost zero possibilities for people of their age and socio-economic status to meet each other. If you are ready to contradict it with an argument “They simply do not try good enough”, come on, stop reading this and go back to the atlants with their broad and beautiful shoulders.

It takes remarkable psychological effort to keep coming into the gym where 99% are 30-year younger than you. Or to find a pub where you would not look like a white crow and also that would not be too expensive for you. Or to start doing something you have never done for all your life because your full-time job was fulfilling your social needs always.

Of course, there are ways for those who are seeking. But it needs significant effort while clicking on the Facebook app icon or binge-watching Youtube takes zero energy. What would you choose in the world of an ageist environment that does not see you as their target audience any longer? Would you be strong enough not to take a fast and simple red pill instead of a full of hardships blue one? My relative and millions of senior people around the world were too tired of trying and chose the red one. Who am I, to blame them for this?

The harmful ideas always existed. What is different now is that they got a wonderful and simple way to be spread, while most of the world societies appeared not to be ready. There are millions of people almost invisible to the market economy. There are even more lonely, angry and frustrated people because the simple answers the commercials gave them for years did not work — a new car and a better bag did not make them happier. Lonely people are ready to join whatever community just not to be alone in this big world. We all do the same, actually. This is a part of human nature, a social being nature. And here is the question: If the only ones who are “talking” to them are conspiracy theory communities, are you sure we are blaming the right things?