Discovered amongst the volcanic ash, discarded event programmes and shattered plastic pint glasses that covered campus the morning after the UEA 50th Anniversary celebrations, the following missive outlines the proceedings of the the School of American Studies' 'Art of Conspiracy' event. Or does it?..
To whomever this message reaches,
I have some disconcerting news. As a contribution to the University of East
Anglia’s 50th Anniversary Festival an assortment of departments,
schools and faculties were asked to think up and run hands on activities
throughout Saturday 28th September.
The School of American Studies’ input was an hour-long workshop entitled
‘The Art of Conspiracy’. According to an
unidentified whistleblower, a few days prior to the affair the organisers/puppet
masters met in an unknown location to plan the event in painstaking detail. We will never know for sure what happened in
that meeting, but thanks to the testimony of several dependable experts and eye
witnesses present at the workshop we have a clearer idea of what really
happened that Saturday.
As people filed into room 1.6 of the Thomas Paine
Study Centre, there was a certain tension in the air. People knew something was going to happen,
something important, but no one knew exactly what; all they could say was that
they had been attracted by the mystic title and blurb in a programme that had
been suspiciously handed to all of them earlier in the day. Coincidence? I think not.
The deep rumble of chatter disappeared abruptly
when Dr. Hilary Emmett introduced the running order of the event. The experts have told me that everything
happened exactly as Dr Emmett said it would – how convenient.
First, MA by Research student Joseph Broadbent gave
a brief talk titled ‘The Logic of Conspiracy Theory’. He proposed that conspiracy theorists do not
live up to their stereotype and to illustrate this point he demonstrated that
the tools to be a conspiracy theorist are innate within all of us. For example, he explained how just a few
biases we exhibit—such as the availability error, proportionality bias, the
post hoc fallacy, pareidolia, confirmation bias, and the backfire effect—make
us more disposed to believing conspiracy theories than we would initially have
thought. Mr. Broadbent went on to run a
mini-experiment to prove his hypothesis.
By playing a verse of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ forwards, then
backwards he managed to get the room to see how the song has been seen by some
conspiracy theorists to be a part of a grand satanic plot. Ending on that note, he left a list of how to
build your own conspiracy theory up for the room to see.
Following this the audience, which had already been
suspiciously sat in groups of five to eight, were invited to create their own
conspiracy theories. A chosen member
from each group went to the front of the room and underwent a ritual, at the
end of which they had selected three cards—a person, a corporation, and an
event—that had to explain the oncoming zombie apocalypse.
An eyewitness found this all incredibly troubling
because we all know that the zombie apocalypse is going be here soon. That the number 3 was used is more worrying
because we know that it is the only divisor of the number of the beast that
gives us the date of this oncoming catastrophe (2/2/22), but the team from
American Studies carried on despite these objections. It is quite clear that the academics from the
school of American Studies knew far more about this event than they were
letting on because the selection of three cards cannot be a coincidence. Therefore, I shall name them so that all who
deal with them in the future know about their role in this episode; they were:
Dr Nicholas Grant, Dr Wendy McMahon, Dr Kaeten Mistry, and Dr Jonathan
Mitchell.
After some clearly biased speculation and
conjecture each group presented their findings which were rated by how complex
and how believable they were. These
ranged from Bill Gates using Microsoft to create wirelessly updateable zombies,
to Disney having already started creating mindless zombies (from Britney Spears
to Miley Cyrus). From Sarah Palin being
a secret communist, to McDonalds being the epicentre of the future breakout. On reflection, these entries leave us much to
ponder as it is quite possible that they could be truthful, but cloaked in parody
so as to disguise their truthiness from the sheeple.
So, we are left with several perplexing questions: first,
was ‘the event’ a success? From the information I have to hand I think that for
American Studies it would have appeared so, yes, as participants and lecturers
alike were seen leaving happily discussing the art of the conspiracy
theory. And, secondly, lastly, and by
far the most important, is Miley Cyrus a zombie? Only time will tell.
Regards,
A. Nonymous.