hard to summarize, but here’s my attempt, a lot of this is paraphrased directly from the video:

Conspiracy theory thinking is nothing new (e.g. the great fire of Rome in 64 CE was a false flag operation ordered by Emperor Nero), and constitutes a way of thinking. It is popular because it is fun, gives you as sense of special identity, and gives you a sense of control and power in a chaotic and often disempowering world. Being able to feel like you are personally connecting the dots is psychologically compelling, like a good detective story.

Contra names this way of thinking “Conspiracism”, and it includes:

• intentionalism: nothing happens by accident, big events imply intentional conspiracy, e.g. major climate disasters are manufactured by a secret cabal of scientists and the elites
• dualism: everything is a fight between good and evil, which are inherent, e.g. the elite are all Satanists who epitomize evil and are motivated by their pure evil
• symbolism: everything has meaning, nothing is a coincidence, e.g. the monster energy drink looks a little like the Hebrew character for the numeral 6 repeated three times, so it must mean monster energy drinks are connected to the secret cabal of satanists conspiring against us

Further more conspiracists seem to be obsessed with rituals. Rituals usually coordinate social relations and establish status, e.g. weddings, coronations, readings of judicial verdicts, which authorize relationships of power. The assumption is that secret conspirators also have secret rituals.

A lot of the imagination about the secret evil rituals of conspirators start to seem a lot like “pornography for Puritans” - essentially false and imaginative reports are conjured up about all the evil rituals happening behind closed doors, like the Satanic Panic of the 90s, and conspiracists are able to justify their perverse obsession and interest in sexually lurid and taboo accounts by claiming to be righteously invested in saving children from those ritual abuses and so on. This also relates to the way witch hunts involved disrobing women and carefully inspecting their bodies in public for witch marks, the stated motivations are to identify witches, but it implies a repressed sexual desire that is fulfilled with righteous justifications.

From here Contra argues that we shouldn’t take seriously the claims that conspiracists are genuinely invested in children, and that many of them are basically just perverts hiding their obsessive sexual fantasies and forbidden desires behind righteous and moral justifications. (She shares the clip from It’s Always Sunny where he asks “No way, someone uploaded naked pics online, that’s disgusting! Where did he post those?”)

A lot of times conspiracism also takes the form of revenge porn, like To Catch a Predator which never involves child victims and focuses not at all on victims but instead running sting operations that allow televising the entrapment and punishment of would-be predators.

Will come back to finish, there’s a lot more 😅

I have an interest in philosophy separately, so contra was one of my favorite channels for years, even before she transitioned. Ironically her transition and her trans content did not help me understand myself or contribute to my egg-cracking at all 😆