Conspiracy, Migration, and Social Media. by Kevin Patrick Fitzgerald, first published on Medium and Substack, September 2026, reissued by Mnoty Press October 2026.
I have a friend who is addicted to social media and who is passionate about conspiracy theories. It kind of baffles me how strongly he can believe in something with no evidence, and I find myself choosing to tip-toe around subjects rather than listen to another barrage of disinformation.
The most recent example is that the covid vaccines are full of magnets. I did not ask why or how. I just said that doesn't make sense and let it go at that.
But, this isn't really a personal essay, I refer to my relationship with my friend to bring up a point. Some are silly, like magnets in the vaccine, but some are bigger and held onto more passionately, and feel more dangerous.
The one that inspired this essay is that 'the elites', a category of people I'm willing to work with, are trying to depopulate the global south because they know resource scarcity is on the horizon. Following this, every time there's a natural disaster, and of course the virus and the vaccines, it is presented as an obvious part of this depopulation campaign.
My argument against this is that 'the elites' have the world organized the way they want it already. People in the global south are dying from natural disasters and diseases anyway, and the people of the global north are ignoring it. But the motive is not for some imagined future of resource scarcity; the motive is greed for resource control.
An example is the forest fires in Borneo. My friend showed me a video on facebook showing a person on a four-wheeler driving along the side of the road apparently intentionally spreading fire. This looks like something is afoot.
My friend said that this is definitely part of the depopulation campaign, I said it is likely part of a mining company's campaign to force the people living in the jungle in Borneo to leave their homes, and to thereby clear the way for more aggressive mining.
I don't really know. I don't have evidence in support of my theory, but I think it's grounded in reality and makes sense. And I admit that it fits with my larger world view and that I interpret things within and through that larger world view. I can't research thoroughly every bit of evidence I come across.
But, zooming out a bit, my friend seems to be addicted to his phone. It's not just the conspiracy theories, but their context. They come among a barrage of content, and the content is not neutral. It is clearly designed to maximize attention, and it is extremely effective. So, by the time the conspiracy theory stuff comes up, he's already hooked.
Zooming out a bit more, it seems like almost everyone is addicted to their social media feeds. They all seem to be individually catered, and it seems to be getting worse. It seems like people just try to hurry up and get their work and their socializing done so they can check back in on their social media.
I don't know how many of them are getting how much disinformation, how many are getting engrossed in conspiracy theories without evidence. I don't know how I would even begin to measure such a thing.
I suspect my friend is not the only one, and he does not seem to come across conspiracy theories that explain disinformation and social media addiction. But, here's a possibility; maybe the algorithm that is designed to maximize attention is rewarding people who post content that successfully targets people's attention.
And, so, we have what I am tentatively calling an attention economy. Some small group of people, I feel ok calling them elites, are making a fortune by selling space within this attention economy. They are not really selling space in the traditional sense, though. It's more like billboards on the side of the road. They are selling access to people's attention.
They keep people tuned in and scrolling, and they pepper commercials that are custom made for each category of user. While a person is engrossed in a conspiracy theory, which seems so dramatic and important, they are also being primed for a marketing campaign.
It seems pretty simple at that level, but if people are posting that sort of content on social media, like I'm doing now, although I choose a writing platform rather than video, and perhaps that's why I'm not making any money at it… but, people do the same thing with writing. It's different because it's cheaper and to make bogus written content with AI, and because most people don't read.
So, bringing this around to migration. The arguments against migration, which is fundamental to human existence (how do people think we got from Africa to Alaska in the first place; by staying in our little pockets and refusing to change?), are to my mind central to the problems of the attention economy.
Anger and fear help people pay attention, and migration is a topic that scares and angers people. I'm not suggesting that the first people to make it to Alaska were not angry or scared.
But there's another layer; a conspiratorial layer. And yes, how I imagine this conspiracy fits with my world view. 'The elites' want people who live in the global south to stay in the global south so they can continue to provide cheap labor. They also want the people in the global north to not care about the suffering of the people in the global south.
They don't have to do a whole bunch of tricky mastermind stuff. They just have to pay a few people to come up with attention-grasping content on how migration is a threat, pay some other people to manipulate a few network connections, and let the more susceptible people run with it.
The thing about migration is that the data is right in my face… literally, I mean my desk and this little pile next to the desk… and it was much worse a few months ago.
There is a mountain of obstacles for a person from the global south to migrate to the global north. The paperwork and the processing time are a nuisance, but the bottom line is money.
A person moving from Morocco to Spain, for example, has to prove that they have x amount of income that they can receive while living in Spain. For each family member, they have to prove more income. This is after all the paperwork fees and processing times, and Spain is one of the more lenient countries in terms of immigration policy.
A person moving from Spain to Morocco does not have the financial obstacle. There's still paperwork, which takes time, but the paperwork is cheaper and the demands are less strict. Also, people from Spain can visit Morocco without applying for a visa.
I use Spain and Morocco as an example because they are fourteen kilometers apart. People, this magnificent bunch of animals that migrated from Africa to Alaska is now being kept in a bunch of cages.
And when a few try to break out of their cages, they are demonized through these aggressive social media campaigns, and hunted by the governments of the global north. This does look like an elite conspiracy to me.
Yanis Varoufakis wrote a book recently called Techno-feudalism, where he made the argument that those of us who are motivated to resist the financial tyranny of the elites should seize the spaces of social media. It sounds nice, but I see a lot of people trying, and it doesn't seem to be working.
Further, if the only way to seize space is to compete with the volume of content rich people can get poor people to make with AI, then it seems like a losing battle. I seem to remember Sun Tzu talking about choosing one's ground, and Glen Fry saying we should find a place to make our stand.
I don't think that competing with cleaver pumper sticker campaigns or bombarding comments sections are effective strategies. I really don't know what strategy will work.
I'm gonna turn off this computer and go spend time with my family.
Thank you very much for reading. I hope you have a lovely day and that you have a healthy relationship with social media. Please take good care of yourself.
Power to the People.
Freedom of the Soul.