From vlogbrothers.

Anyway, Vote.org everybody.

I am going to keep thinking about the "Everything is a Conspiracy Theory if you don’t know how anything works" meme. I think it’s, like, 50% right. But really important to note here that the fact that I got a ballot with democrats all on the bottom was both unlikely and guaranteed. Like, it was unlike that I would get one with all democrats on the bottom, but guaranteed that SOMEONE would. So conspiracy theories are really:

One part distrust in systems
One part not knowing how systems work
One part the universe presenting you with information that confirms your anti-system biases.

And, of course, all three of those things lean on each other. Not understanding systems because they are massively complex leads to distrusting those systems. Not trusting systems leads to being more likely to falsely misattribute something random to something malicious. And then of course you have all of the magnification systems of the news media and social media and wall-to-wall bad actors who just want to win elections.

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