Blake Dowling: Florida’s No. 1 — in conspiracy theories

We all know that Florida, California and Texas lead the nation in most things.

College football, electoral votes, economies — and guess what else? Conspiracy theories and urban legends.

Florida is the Number one state in believing in conspiracy theories. Thanks to our good pals in social media circles and search engines, technology has pushed these formerly fringe items and narratives into the mainstream.

These days, you are one Google session and Facebook post away from checking on the latest jibber jabber.

Whereas in the past, these types of things were only discussed here and there and rarely available for public consumption on a large scale.

In Florida, the most searched conspiracy theory is the New World Order.

When I was growing up, there was the Loch Ness monster, JFK, Aliens, and Bigfoot; that was about it.

Conspiracies have multiplied and evolved to now include a vast sea of topics from ridiculous to frightening: Tupac is alive, a New World order running things, Lizard people, fake moon landing, Chemtrails, and Taylor Swift is a CIA agent to name a few of the top ones. While there probably are aliens at Area 51 as a former Air Force officer recently testified to this fact, the others seem pretty bogus.

As far as the New World order is concerned, that one is going to get ugly this year as it sounds slightly political. We need to buckle up in Florida as the internet will be overflowing with extreme posts from right, left, up and down in the coming months leading up to the presidential election. Posts of election tampering, vaccine conspiracies, Tupac is back and lizard people are already rearing their digital heads.

Our most popular conspiracy theory in Florida is the idea of the New World Order. What is this? Wikipedia defines it as the NWO, a secretly emerging totalitarian world government. The common theme about a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually achieve world domination and rule the world through an authoritarian one-world government, which will replace sovereign nation-states.

I, for one, say I’m not buying it; see Jack Nicholson’s quote later.

Chemtrails are also as popular as Swatches were in 1991; these days, believers say they are evidence of the government spraying us with vaccines or trying to reverse climate issues. I am not buying that one either. The BBC gives a long explanation of the trails behind planes being water and trails of vapor, nothing more.

My advice: Take a deep breath when engaging with others on social platforms about anything. Half of what you see just may be fake from our friends overseas, and, these days, don’t forget they are “roiding up” their disinformation efforts with artificial intelligence.

There are parties whose goals are to spread chaos and distrust of our government and systems, so don’t be part of the problem. Report and block those posts and move on, no need to share craziness.

It’s a tough gig to filter through the noise. Some would argue that Twitter (now X) was a great place for information before Elon Musk took over and fired most of their content review team.

Then there are those who will say it is now a great place for info.

I think it was a mess before and still is, no matter who is in charge of it.

Social media and technology continue to amplify conspiracy theories to the masses. Just as recently as the horrific tragedy that was the Maui fire there was a video shared that claimed the fire was started by the U.S. military and a brand-new energy weapon via a video that went viral.

The video was actually from Chile and was an electrical transformer exploding, but for a hot minute, there were plenty of people believing the energy weapon narrative.

What happens when tragedy strikes and an urban myth becomes terrifying? Ever heard of the elevator game? It is an urban myth-fueled game where a person who is alone and on an elevator can supposedly enter another dimension. You begin by visiting various floors in a certain sequence and voilà. You are transported elsewhere. Super easy instructions and helpful/hilarious pix can be found here. If you find this interesting, you are bound to find the Public Radio Alliance and their intriguing shows extremely entertaining. I would start with Rabbits.

As they say in the book, the door is now open.

It is theorized that a young lady named Elisa Lam was playing this game at the Cecil Hotel in California. The hotel has a grim reputation with many deaths and suicides happening there over the years. There is video footage of her behaving strangely, seemingly talking to people on the elevator who are not there and then vanishing. Her body was found in the water tower of the hotel days later.

Sheesh.

Back in the Sunshine State. Disney has been in the news a lot lately, and our friends at Ripley’s recently brought back to the headlines one of our state’s oldest conspiracy theories. Did Walt Disney freeze his head with the goal of coming back one day?

Most of the stories are speculative around this myth but he certainly had the means to get it done. He was suffering from lung cancer at the end of his life so that would be the reason why he wanted to come back later.

There are a lot of unknowns out there, from sky chemicals to Walt Disney to the Elevator game to Jeffery Epstein dying in prison. Mysteries left and right you might say (political pun intended). However, lots of facts remain.

The government does and will continue to hide things from us, hence the word “classified.”

Our friends in D.C. also don’t help the cause of conspiracy theorists when things are forced on us.

Making anything mandatory is literally creating a new conspiracy instantly. Sure, the media is part of the problem, too, and is biased one way or another in many stories depending on the platform. People have opinions, and they share them; that’s the way it is. You can watch CNBC and Fox split screen on Election Night for a good case study. Look at NPR; it is staffed by 87 Democrats in the newsroom and zero Republicans. Of course, the opinions will lean one way.

I assume Fox is the same in the other direction with their staff being mostly Republicans.

My conclusion today is that rampant sketchiness exists by the tanker-full in our world.

There are a lot of people trying to force their opinions on us, and others conspiring for various nefarious reasons (hacking, societal overthrow, down with capitalism, etc.), and, of course, others just goofing around.

But let’s dial it down and remember some common sense as we step into the Summer and Fall and into election season.

If it looks crazy and unbelievable online, it probably is fake/false/untrue. We look to Nicholson for our closing wisdom on conspiracy theories and urban myths.

“Go sell crazy somewhere else, we are all stocked up here.”

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Blake Dowling is CEO of Aegis Biz Tech, the host of the Biz & Tech podcast and author of the book, “Professionally Distanced.”