> just the few who requested conspiracy materials by mail.

I remember conspiracy theory / UFO magazines being more widely distributed than regular newspapers. There's even a joke on that in the first Men in Black movie.

Was that ever more than a joke, though? The National Enquirer sold plenty of issues but almost everyone knew it was entertainment rather than a reliable source. Similarly, while bookstores had books & magazines they tended not to shelve them with more legitimate materials.

The other big difference was the barrier to entry: printing things cost real money and anything at all mass-market required a physical presence which could be sued for libel. In contrast, it’s much easier for anyone in the world to slap together a decent enough website or upload a video to YouTube and Google will feature it right next to official NASA content. Sure, anyone who wants to can learn that the source isn’t credible but the last decade really underscores that most people won’t check.

Are you really suggesting that conspiracy theories such as JFK, Roswell, Area 51, Antivaccine/"mark of the beast," Moonlanding, Big Foot etc weren't already in popular culture before the internet was popularized? Because, in fact, many of them spread because there was no wide usage of the internet (Roswell, probably being the #1.) It helps create lore. Even X-Files, a show that I adore, was really pre-popularized internet era.

Think of Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc. Those conspiracy theories led to the Oklahoma City bombing. And they were widespread prior to the internet being a big thing. Think of the Turner Diaries which was big in the early 90s, there are too many examples to even list.

9/11 was maybe the first popular internet spread conspiracy, but I would make a strong argument that without the internet it may have been more widespread because there is less online debunks.

I don't know if you've ever argued with a conspiracy theorist but their minds were made up before any major theory was proposed. It's a natural distrust of authority.

Do I have hard data? No, and I am willing to be that it would be incredibly hard to measure that anyhow, but I do have tons of anecdotes and history to back up the claim that it's nothing new. It's human nature.

re: "Think of Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc. Those conspiracy theories led to the Oklahoma City bombing"

What part of the admitted shooting of Vicki Weaver while holding an infant in her hands, and of 1 of Randy Weaver's under-18 sons, by FBI snipers; and the use of explosive/flammable igniters to disperse "CS gas", a form of tear gas, used against people inside wooden buildings in Waco [2], are conspiracy theories?

Even the US Gov't admits to the basic facts of both situations...?

[1] http://www.cnn.com/US/9510/ruby_ridge/ [2] http://www.cnn.com/US/9908/24/fbi.waco/

I think they may have meant that the conspiracy theory that an interconnected federal government planned Ruby Ridge and Waco, and planned more such incidents, led to the OKC bombing. What the government did was wrong and arguably it was systemically predisposed to do wrong in situations like that. But it wasn’t planning more such actions, the OKC bombing wasn’t connected (I think), and even if so the belief that bombing, rather than protests, court cases and elections, was the right thing to do, was delusional.

But if I’m wrong and they think that it’s a conspiracy theory to think those situations were mishandled or shouldn’t have been instigated, then thank you for bringing up the facts; we shouldn’t be credulous and assume US Marshall and ATF agents are competent or just because we saw them on TV.

Exactly, Ruby Ridge and Waco for that matter were completely bungled operations, and imo were largely unjustified hamfisted responses. However they weren't inherently nefarious, just sheer incompetence and cowboy minded policing. Yet their mere existence fueled a far right movement that believes they were. In an unfortunate turn, the OKC bombing was a direct result of that. It fell right into the preaching of Koresh as well as the popular right wing writings "The Turner Diaries." That was more or less my point, and all of that occurred well before people had regular internet access.

Well, that sheer incompetence indeed disappeared when it was time to cover all this up. Was that nefarious? Because this is what eventually motivated McVeigh, not some strange conspiracy theories. Let me quote:

"I waited two years from "Waco" for non-violent "checks and balances" built into our system to correct the abuse of power we were seeing in federal actions against citizens. The Executive; Legislative; and Judicial branches not only concluded that the government did nothing wrong (leaving the door open for "Waco" to happen again), they actually gave awards and bonus pay to those agents involved, and conversely, jailed the survivors of the Waco inferno after the jury wanted them set free.

"Other "checks and balances" likewise proved futile: media awareness and outcry (the major media failed in its role as overseer of government ally); protest marches; letter campaigns; even small-budget video production; etc. - all failed to correct the abuse."

Source: https://www.webcitation.org/5wow5v4MK?url=http://www.foxnews...

The initial intent was not nefarious, the execution was incompetent, the cover up of the incompetence was nefarious. That's not the same as saying the ATF torched the place to the ground, which isn't backed up by anything...and that's what McVeigh believed.

I’m suggest that we’re seeing things spread wider and faster than before, and that it’s easier to make things look legitimate because a lot of people assume things on YouTube or Facebook are vetted in some way.

Which is not an unfair assumption given they do remove some things.