So it begins

Conspiracy theories are a bit like ghost stories. We know, or we wish, they are untrue, we know they so much more sensationalistic than intellectual, and most of us would be quite ashamed if someone exposed our passion for the tales of horror and grotesque. Yet for some reason we love them regardless...

The fact is ghost stories and conspiracy theories both share a single forefather – the folk tale. Of course, the two cousins are radically different in style, form, and context, but deep down they are simple storytelling. It seems a basic human instinct to gather in places of relative safety, campfire or living room, and tell tall tales of basic truths and practical advice shrouded in fantasy and wit.

“The Paranoid Style Blog” strives to go beyond simple storytelling. Not because it is bad; on the contrary, there are many, many websites that do it far better than I ever could. There is a lot to choose from: sites like snopes.com contain conspiracy theories among various trivia and fringe science. On the other hand we have sites who take this as serious business, like prisonplanet.com or vigilantcitizen.com.

Rather than emulate them, the goal of this blog is to look for answers as to why, just like with ghost stories, tabloids, fast-food, soap operas, or roller coasters, we love conspiracy theories so much, in spite of them being seen as infantile at best, a dangerous, subversive habit at worst. The blog will not try to judge them, to verify or vilify them, but rather show where they came from and what function they serve in a society.

The academic bit does not mean it has to be boring. Far from it, during my research I came across stories, texts, and historical facts that were not only interesting, but put our contemporary world into perspective. Academic in theory also means objective – this site is not sponsored by any organization what would want to frame the theories one way or the other. The posts contained here will be ideas and reflections I came across during my research and studies. Hopefully, they will be both enlightening and entertaining.

NEXT TIME: The title of the blog revealed, or how a certain Pulitzer-winning American historian defined conspiracy theories in a way that remains valid half a century later...