Let’s hope social-media-fueled conspiracy theories don’t last long

Some 40 years ago, a friend was describing the frustration he had experienced in Nepal trying to convince the natives that Americans had walked on the moon. The moon, to them, was sacred and they did not like the idea of human feet besmirching its surface.

Too polite to engage in direct contradiction, when my friend would present them with evidence of the moon landing they would say, “Yes, but it was a different moon.”

They weren’t the only ones. Right here at home there were disbelievers and conspiracy theorists who peddled the notion of a faked moon landing, an issue that even went so far as to be explored in the film “Capricorn One.”

Despite its realistic portrayal, it seems safe to say that 94% of the people who exited the theaters after enjoying the show still believed the moon landing was real. 

What of the 6% who, according to polls at the time, did not? For that we can largely thank Bill Kaysing, a troubled English major (pardon the redundancy) who parlayed some technical writing he had done for the space industry in the 1950s into a “hunch” and then a “fell-blown conviction” that we did not, in fact, visit the moon.

Homeless for about 10 years of his life, Kaysing lived out of a travel trailer, foraging for food and picking up odd jobs here and there, from picking fruit to selling mail-order dental equipment. His existence would have been lost had he not, in 1976, self-published the booklet, “We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle.” Among his evidence was the fact that no stars appear in any of the photographs sent back from the moon’s surface — never mind that the photos were taken during the lunar daytime, when stars would have been no more visible on the moon than here on earth.

It scarcely needs to be pointed out that there was no Facebook in 1976, nor does it need to be pointed out that, for America’s sense of history and place when it comes to space travel, the lack of social media was fortunate.

Indeed, as the conspiratorial embers are poked by modern-day podcasters, YouTubers and Fox News, polls show that more people believe the moon landing was faked today than when the landing actually took place.

With social media being what it is, is there any doubt that — had it existed in 1969 — somewhere between 20% and 40% of Americans would doubt the veracity of the lunar landing (particularly if it had happened under a Democratic administration)?

Consider that only a few years ago, a loon stepped forward in Britain to suggest that it would have been impossible for man to walk on the moon because the moon is made of light.

It remains inexplicable how so many people have traded in their own eyeballs for the white cane of social media. Sizable numbers of individuals, including a former president of the United States, look at the video of Jan. 6 and pronounce it a peaceful exercise of free speech.

Fires in the West have become so intense that they are generating their own weather systems, while other parts of the world are experiencing downpours of unprecedented intensity. Glaciers melt, permafrost turns to mud, polar ice breaks apart, air conditioners are installed in Seattle, great reservoirs look as if someone pulled the plug on a bathtub —  yet climate change remains a tough sell.

Perhaps schools need to do a better job in teaching the basics of truth. Kids today are obviously more social-media savvy than their grandparents, who are the ones most likely to fall for Facebook claptrap. Still, there seems to be a growing societal inference that it’s OK to make up your own truth as you go along. 

To a lesser degree, schools themselves have had a hand in this, when they teach that there are no such things as winners and losers, that the way to combat unpleasantries such as poverty is not to eliminate poverty, but to call it by a less offensive name, or that thoughts put to paper are good enough if they can be understood, without regard to the rules that govern the English language.

I like to think we are just going through a phase. That social media is just a regrettable bridge between fact-based newspapers and whatever fact-based product will eventually take their place. That people don’t really believe nonsense, such as faked moon landings and the peacefulness of Jan. 6, but are choosing to see things more to their liking, the way an abstract artist chooses to see a peacock. That, like low-hanging pants, this is a fad that is going on longer than it should, but one day will end.

Or maybe I’m just ignoring the truth.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.