Case in point – in 2012 a Portugese-language blog created the false conspiracy theory that Avril Lavigne killed herself after her first album, and was replace by a doppleganger who took over her career. However, the replacement dropped subtle clues in lyrics and elsewhere, revealing the conspiracy.
The conspiracy theory took off, with some fans believing Avril was dead. The blog authors then issued a reveal, which was largely ignored. They proved their case, but did not quite have the outcome they were hoping for.
This episode now gets added to the pile of examples of how easy it is for people to backfill a narrative. This is one more reason not to attempt skeptical hoaxes – you don’t need to. There are enough real-world examples.
The process should be familiar to regular readers here. Once you have an idea in your head, confirmation bias kicks in and can be incredibly powerful. The human brain is well constructed for pattern recognition. We can unconsciously sift through incredible amounts of information looking for associations. When we find them, they seem impressive and we assume it is unlikely that the associations are a coincidence. This is because we literally are not aware of the millions of possible associations we had to choose from.
We also readily engage in anomaly hunting, looking for tiny details that don’t seem to fit. It’s easy to give innocent or quirky anomalies a sinister interpretation.
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Source:
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/i...racy-theories/
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