On Tuesday, October 16th, YouTube went down.
At about 6:20 PM Pacific Time, the video streaming giant saw its service lost due to an outage, and it stayed down for about an hour and a half, going back up at about 8.
People panicked. People complained. People watched porn. People even called the police.
And of course, people came up with conspiracy theories.
I’m excited to unveil my newest project, developed in conjunction with Growl Studios:
These are short videos released every day, and tackling the newest and worst in conspiracy theories, scams, pseudoscience, medical woo, and viral hoaxes.
Each video is maximized for skeptical goodness, running just 2 to 3 minutes, and full of visuals and creepy music.
So what will the Daily Debunker be debunking?
QAnon, of course:
On October 9th, the US Marshals released a statement announcing the successful carrying out of an operation called “MiSafeKid” in the Detroit area.
The press release touted the location and recovery of 123 children that had gone missing, all found and accounted for in one day in late September.
They represented a little more than a third of 300 case files of children in Michigan’s Child Protective Services who had been reported missing at some point and for whom CPS didn’t have a current address.
Obviously, anything that leads to the recovery of missing children is something good. But because so many modern conspiracy theories revolve around exaggerated claims of “child sex trafficking rings,” stories like this also inevitably wind up as fodder for un-evidenced accusations and bizarre plots.
The far right has staked almost everything on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. In putting a person who possibly committed sexual assault as a teen, and definitely both lied constantly and had a rage-filled meltdown during his hearings, conservatives are basically saying that demeanor, bias, and character don’t matter when it comes to SCOTUS – only winning does.
But to believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory, Kavanaugh’s all-but-certain confirmation to the Supreme Court means something else entirely: the beginning of the end of the cabal that controls the world.
Conspiracy theory avatar QAnon has a terrible track record at making predictions.
He came into the world concocting a bizarre scheme where Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were going to be secretly arrested, with the National Guard called up to quell the massive riots that would ensue. It didn’t happen.
He predicted the sham Devin Nunes memo would bring down the deep state. It didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen with the Department of Justice Inspector General report after that, and FISA declassification after that. He’s predicted wars, terrorist attacks, mass suicides, catastrophic falls of public figures, and government purges – none of which took place.
