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ATS College Students....I have a question for you.

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posted on Jan, 30 2013 @ 11:31 PM
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It was the last month of the millenium that I graduated college. December 1999. Back then I had no awareness or enlightenment of conspiracies or cover-ups and I can't remember ever having discussion about such topics amongst my peers.

I'm curious to know if things have changed since I attended. Do you guys talk openly about conspiracy discussions on campus and amongst friends? Do you think the majority population of students at your school is awake and aware of conspiracy topics?

If you answered yes....what do you think contributed to the increase of awareness? Was it word of mouth? Social networking? Emails? Guest speakers? etc...

Thanks in advance.


edit on 30-1-2013 by solarstorm because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 30 2013 @ 11:36 PM
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Yes. An we also talk about the Pros' and Cons' about them as well. It's a fairly common subject at our University.



posted on Jan, 30 2013 @ 11:39 PM
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Colleges are breading grounds for conspiracy talk, especially when it relates to capitalism and social inequality.




posted on Jan, 30 2013 @ 11:43 PM
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I don't trust anyone under 30. Sorry .....



posted on Jan, 30 2013 @ 11:51 PM
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I do believe that things have changed, people are not as guarded when talking about conspiracies as before but to "talk openly" I still don't see that around me. It's not a common subject that one simply just walks up and says "Hey did you know....," at least not where I am and I'm sure many of us know what I mean.

I do think that more conspiracies are known and people somewhat do hear about them more often but to have a full conversation with someone on a higher conspiracy level rather than the superficial is pretty difficult. No I do not believe the majority are awake, if there is then it's only a slight percentage. Out of that slight percentage the majority of that is most likely males. I'm a girl and my fellow girl friends don't really talk about it, there's only one and still it's not as deeply thought through as the guys with whom I've spoken to. As you mentioned, do I believe the majority of them are awake? No. Definitely not. Sure the internet and the advancement of technology has allowed more college students to venture into the world of conspiracies but even so, for some reason it's a strange topic to get into.



posted on Jan, 30 2013 @ 11:54 PM
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Interestingly enough, I just came across this article:

Students weigh in on Sandy Hook conspiracy theories

easternprogress.com...




A video posted on YouTube in December has received more than 11 million views. The video “The Sandy Hook Shooting-Fully Exposed” included several theories touting an underlying government conspiracy.

Claims on the video ranged from a second shooter on the scene to the possibility the grieving parents may have been crisis actors hired by the government.

Communications professor James Tracy from Florida Atlantic University posted similar claims on his blog Memory Hole. He discusses the press release from the Connecticut chief medical examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver.

Tracy’s claim centers on Carver’s reaction during the press release interview and his seemingly odd reaction and lack of answers to specific questions concerning the case.

Another area of concern for Tracy mentioned on his blog was the inconsistencies in the media coverage directly following the shooting. Tracy believes the public should not immediately take the event as truth, rather, research and investigate themselves.

Jack Gaddie, 18, exercise science major from northern Kentucky, said he felt the shootings likely happened but could see how some people could believe the conspiracy theories.

“I do think the government could manipulate information,” Gaddie said.



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 12:00 AM
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Originally posted by solarstorm
If you answered yes....what do you think contributed to the increase of awareness? Was it word of mouth? Social networking? Emails? Guest speakers? etc...


I took a semester of "college" in 2009. Personally, I think these are too broad of questions. Because anything can persuade a person to do something.

I'm going to assume 30% of USA college students are aware that something is up. 70% college students are sheep. ---- and half of the 70% know something is going on, but still act like sheep.



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 12:00 AM
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While not college I did attend adult education a few years back (so much for that at the time *hic*) and there were a few people who discussed conspiracy theories.

But they did my head in. Literally every thing under the sun was a conspiracy.

Really made me step back and realise that without the ability to reason the things you argue, you're just making a lot of noise... so the louder you say it, the better it sounds to you.

Sadly, it's just gone down hill for me.

The things I thought were normal are false pretence and the things I used to think were definitely shady are becoming more and more desperate in how they have to be seen in order to continue to be shady.




posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 12:04 AM
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Hi
Yes I talk about conspiracies openly with my friends...actually close friends(because they will not consider me insane for doing so).

These are the reasons which contributed to a rise of interest in conspiracies :-

*Movies like Batman, Matrix , Avengers
*Games like Deus Ex ,Prototype , System Shock
*Increased feeling that something somewhere is not right
*Websites like ATS openly allowing discussions regarding conspiracies have also contributed to its rise.


So yeah . The main factor would be sources of entertainment like games, movies etc.



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 12:06 AM
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I appreciate the responses so far.


Much thanks.



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 12:15 AM
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Well, I'm 4th semester community college here in a fair size Missouri community and I can say I've had 3 courses now where the instructors have openly discussed topics found here in conspiracy threads. Not near the extreme that can be found here ..and that's neither good nor bad, just a statement of fact.

One I'm currently taking a course from even has some discussion areas on the course web site area dedicated to it. I'll leave out which courses they've been since I've invited a couple to come over here and one told me they were already on here somewhere. No need to make anything that personal to who would know who then...but it's been a surprise, to be sure.

Why? Well..in the most recent one? Some lines of work/interest just kinda mesh right in with it and some don't leave much way to avoid it. The other 2 came to talk about it by personal anger in seeing what is happening in the world around us and made no real bones about saying that. Of course they also made it fair in that it was never one sided for partisanship. I always thought that was classy....... particularly since one was an avowed Democrat.

He and I came to get along quite well and respected one another by the end of the course too. One of my first wake-ups to how the "other side" isn't "the other side". We're all just Americans with different opinions.



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 12:23 AM
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reply to post by solarstorm
 


Im in my final semester at my local community college. From my experience, yes, there's open talk about conspiracy theories. Im in about 3 weeks this semester, and in my speech class the other day, the sandy hook conspiracy was brought up and that discussion lasted 30 minutes. (I didnt join the discussion though, I just listened)

I think social networking and a new generation of individuals that question authority is a leading factor in how open colleges are in discussing conspiracy subjects.



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 12:32 AM
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I am a PhD student at a top 30 university and I teach introduction level political science classes. Every course has a week or two entitled: "The Paranoid Style of American Politics" (taken from Richard Hofstadter's classic essay). I am actually quite indebted to ATS, as this site provides endless examples of how people try to fuse conspiracy with their political beliefs in order to ignore objective policy analysis. There is no greater example on the web for teaching about how politics and conspiracy fueled paranoia fuse together than this website.

I am neither pro nor anti conspiracy theory but from an objective prospective most of the real conspiracies government engages in or has engaged in are not the kind of things that are talked about on sites like ATS. Conspiricism in popular culture is based on the fantastic and absurd, and based on peoples need to find order in a chaotic world.

I've taken classes at every level of university possible, from a community college to graduate school at a top university. There is a definitive correlation between the predominate socioeconomic classes that make up an institution and the propensity for conspirisim to be part of its culture. Community colleges tend to cater towards poorer people and minorities, cultures which have always had a strong cultural tradition of conspiracy belief.

Yeah I know that isn't what the average poster here wants to here, but its the truth. I don't need anyone to agree with me. Ya'll just keep spinning conspiracies around political issues for me, I love using them to teach critical thinking about political science
Sandy Hook in particular is a gold mine for showing undergraduates how mass paranoia and distrust of government leads to creating objectively false conspiracies ("Sandy hook was a hoax to take our guns away!").
edit on 31-1-2013 by thelongjourney because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 12:36 AM
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Fellow 30-something here. Wanna know what did it? 9/11.

And rightfully so. There is much about the events of that day left to be determined.



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 12:46 AM
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I've never heard any conspiracies discussed. But then again, I've never really asked.

As a computer science major, I know students almost unanimously support digital rights advocacy and opposed SOPA during the web blackout. But I would just assume that's positively correlated with intelligence.



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 12:46 AM
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I encourage anyone who hasn't gone totally down the rabbit hole to actually read the essay I am talking about, by the way...as its remarkable how relevant it is today, even to these very boards. It should be required reading for college students everywhere, even "true believers" of conspiracies.
karws.gso.uri.edu...

This was written in 1964. I particularly like this part:



...The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction.
It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him. The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship, even of pedantry. Secret organizations set up to combat secret organizations give the same flattery....


Truly amazing. A scholar in 1964 describes 99.999% of posts on this website living in a world where they could not even imagined the internet as we know it.



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 12:25 PM
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I graduated University last April with a BSc so my classes were all geared towards the biology, microbiology, neuroscience and so forth courses. When you are learning about biochemical pathways and how to identify bacteria in the lab there is generally not much room for the mention of conspiracies. I was mainly around students who were in the same mindset, conspiracies simply do not come up. However I have taken a bunch of psychology courses and there would be mention of conspiracy theorists more than the conspiracies themselves. My abnormal psychology course for example we would be talking about paranoia in patients and then the topic of paranoia would become more broad simply looking for examples and conspiracy theorists would come up. Not much said other than mentioning conspiracy theorists can be looked upon as paranoid in some cases. Other psych classes would brush upon the idea that conspiracies provide excitement that some are looking for, something different, some order in the chaotic word...but there was no discussion of actual conspiracy topics.

Overall there really was not much conspiracy talk in classes or even when you were sitting in a room full of people and you happened to listen in on conversations around you. There were a few acknowledgements of conspiracies in some of my classes though. One of which was an advanced botany class about drug plants, very very interesting, and the prof would occasionally say things like "there are some people who believe there is a conspiracy in drug companies to push more medications rather than explore the plants we discuss here". She would not go beyond that but it was an acknowledgement and no one in the class would snicker or laugh at the idea, it seemed like we all were like "yeah I see how that could happen". There was another brief acknowledgement in a sociology class I took in my first year, the prof simply said something along the lines of "there are those who believe 9/11 was a conspiracy and matters of that magnitude can affect how people interact with one another". Very broad description, as the class was intended to be, and I think (it was 5 years ago so trying to remember) he went on to talk about how conspiracy opinions can divide people and lead to animosity...again broad and a "yeah no kidding that would divide people" answer.

In general though I think students do know that there are conspiracies, I think more of it is tied to Government or Political topics though. If you are into those topics I would assume you may be more aware of conspiracies but I myself have zero interest in politics of any sort on any level so I simply do not read anymore into it. However if I was asked if I think Government members and politics in general is full of liars and if that could lead to more sinister plots I would absolutely answer yes. I may not have an interest in Government or Politics but I do know power and money can corrupt.



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 01:24 PM
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I graduated a few years ago and I can't say that I ever talked about conspiracies with my friends on any level more than the occasional "it must have been aliens" quip.

Although, general mistrust of the government and the "establishment" is probably the norm. When you're young, and in college, you always feel like you have all the answers and everyone else is dumb for not seeing it. I'm sure that feeling persists into old age as well.

The thing is everyone feels that way; even the politicians. Everyone thinks they're right.



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 01:30 PM
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reply to post by thelongjourney
 


What do you say when US officials violate the logan act by discussing US policy at bilderberg club?

What do you say about the CIA that conducted or attempted to conduct operation northwoods,gladio,fast and furious,high tower, and iran contra?



posted on Jan, 31 2013 @ 01:44 PM
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My English Professor and I openly talked about conspiracies during class discussion. It was brought up by one other student, myself, and at times the professor.


The other students that were less informed on such topics were quite interested to hear some of the topics being discussed.


I go to a smaller Community College in WA, just to add a little perspective.




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