Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, they say, is the best way to understand them. Last week, I donned a foil hat and took to Twitter. I wasn’t out to understand conspiracy theorists – I was sarcastically mocking them. But now I do better understand how the fringes are drawn to conspiracy theories. In a foil hat, I Tweeted a video explaining that Bill Gates is using 5G to spread coronavirus. It’s crazy, yet it’s a real theory currently circulating, and while I hope every message was dripping with enough scorn to highlight the lunacy, it was fun. I could hijack any thread about anything turning it into a chance to espouse my new wackadoo ideology. As I Tweeted, the old improv golden rule, “yes and” let me twist nearly anything anyone said into my theory. If sarcasm were used to attack my new belief, I’d give a scolding correction – “5G impacts the hippocampus, not the prefrontal cortex”. If someone made an unstoppably valid point, I could halt the discussion by claiming the person’s brain was “rotted by 5G”. In one video, hat on my head, and juggling five balls, I recited my version of the John Galt’s Speech from Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. You have come to hear a message of the world crisis, and so you shall. For 12 years you have asked "who is the juggler in the tinfoil hat?" It is I speaking now. Togther we can #foilgates pic.twitter.com/VeRQa8PXbC— Mason "ChatGPT Controls Me" Pelt (@masonpelt) April…Looking At Conspiracy Theories From Inside Someone Else’s Foil Hat