There's this "stan" culture thing I don't really get. When the actual Eminem video for his song, "Stan" came out, he didn't mean it to be a good thing to be a "stan"--it was scary and dangerous and terrible. Idealizing, forming a parasocial relationship with, and inappropriately engaging with and revolving one's life around some other person is self-destructive.
Social media made it easy to get to know people and feel like you really know them. I follow Mark Hamill, Lynda Carter, Henry Winkler, and Jon Bowman on Twitter. I can tell my 6-7 year old self I follow Luke Skywalker, Wonder Woman, the Fonz, and Bowzer from Sha Na Na on the futuristic thing called the internet and she would be really impressed. These are her heroes. The human beings are far more complex and actually, they are or seem to be pretty good folks. Their good opinions and decency IRL make me pretty happy with my early appreciation.
But I don't do heroes now that I'm grown. People in the real world are real, and they can disappoint. You can't invest in people you don't even know with ride or die fervor. That isn't being real--that's being in a whole fucking cult. (See also: Biden fans don't need flags and swag and what not.)
I did a little thing not too long ago about Jim Caviezel and RFK, Jr. Conspiracy theories are sometimes about filling in the difference between your own worldview and the differing worldview of many others as you confront them. It's hard to incorporate different points of view. Making up neo-narratives is one way of handling the difference.
But you have to understand it is "made-up". A lot of conspiracy theories are just a "cope"--a way of dealing with the difference between the world in your head and what's actually happening.
