So in my created world there has been a major dump of private information. Inside the dump contains all the evidence that confirms aliens - Major goverment corruption - Goverment involvement in 100s of previous mass shootings and traumatic events - plus coverups for other major events. My story takes place in a world 2 years after the major reveal. Im wondering on what you guys think would happen as a result of a massive reveal like that. Aliens will be revealed as real but wont be a focus of the story at all more of a we know they are real on other planets deal. mostly focusing on the public becoming extreme skeptics and the media being demonized but im open to all ideas. thanks
Mmm - I guess for a while things would be like with any major "reveal" - you'd probably have a major outcry at first and then a heated discussion... but I guess other than that nothing really would happen long terms... - You might have a groupt of people who actually believe all of this what is revealed - Some other groups may only believe in parts of the revealed info (each a different, of course) - Some may actually not believe in any of it. Information is really quick today, but it's also unfiltered, very often manipulated and in the end too much to really be considered... plus evidence usually offers more than one way of interpretating, even if you're an expert on something. So not all people would finally be "affected" by the evidence and the reveal in the same way. And even if they thought it to be true I doubt many would actually start doing something like an uprising unless the reveal posed a threat to their actual living standards. It might be that already previously existing ethical or political conflicts are heated and break out again - but the reveal itself I guess wouldn't cause that much of an uproar... (corrected some spelling mistakes)
Ohh i see what you are saying for sure @SpokenSilence. So even if its revealed that every bombing and shooting and mass tragedy in the us is government issued as a hidden form of population skimming that it wouldn't have a large effect on peoples everyday life? There would be protest for sure, everyone is looking for a reason to get outraged even now. People get outraged about words people use or things people say so i can imagine a decently large pushback?
Funny thing you're asking for an opinion, even stating you'd be open to anything, then turn on sarcasm the moment the answer isn't what you were thinking off. Again: I guess some people would Protest, probably, but not everybody. Espec. since there were always people involved in covering all this up. Even more as many of the Events are way back in the past.
Honestly wasn't trying to be sarcastic I'm just trying to mentally hash out the idea. I think i like the narrative or point you brought up even better. People inherently choose to believe what is convenient for them and falls in line with they're personal beliefs. It is also heavily muffled by the enormous flow of information coming in and out. I think ill use that it seems correct to me. despite the massive reveal that will shake everything for a short time my story starts 2 years after and leaves a ton of room for me to play with. I appreciate the input and didn't mean for it to come off as if i was dismissive. @SpokenSilence
Sry, kind of sounded sarcastic to me... But yeah, thats the Point, people believe easier what they already think already.
The complete collapse of society as it's revealed that all political leaders are lizard people, destroying trust in any and all authority figures and leading to a new version of witch hunts.
Hold on. A world or a single country where the theories are true? If world, are you saying that ALL governments indulged in the same practices? If so, why? Certain authoritarian governments simply wouldn't need to. They can round up people and throw them into the gulag. If it's one country, as is implied when you talk about "the" government, it just wouldn't remain secret for very long. After WW2, Soviet spies had infiltrated most western governments deeply. If they had evidence of western governments secretly oppressing their people, they would have released it to destabilise their idealogical rivals during the Cold War - even if they were doing it themselves, and would have done so in a very public way that would have elevated the conspiracy theories to far more than just rumours. Imagine if the Soviet space agency had said "We monitored the so-called capital moon landing mission. Nothing ever reached the moon, and here is the tracking telemetry captured by our satellites to prove it."
I'll make a few assumptions here. First, that the theories that are proven true aren't all, but just the major ones. The second is that the proof is somehow beyond a shadow of a doubt. I think its pretty straight forward. Two years in and people have accepted it in stride, kind of like how we've accepted snowden or brexit. Governments give up the act, and the shadow governments take over in earnest. People adapt to the conspiracy. Say companies were blocking the 100mpg gas car? Those are in the market now. Bigfoot is found and caged. The Illuminati has elections next month. But even in this world, where aliens are fact, and myth is reality, it still happens. On dark nights, in whispered moments, people still ask. Who killed JFK?
I always try to look to history. The 9/11 attacks were carried out by terrorists, but some people whisper that it might have been orchestrated by the USA to unify the country behind the president. Iraq was a misguided war to try and hunt down terrorist cells and squash the regime that propped them up, but plenty of people believe the interest was more in oil than terrorism. The children being kept in cages on our border are being transported all over the place to keep the ACLU from being able to get too much information out of them, but I'm sure there are people who believe that some of these immigrants are just going to disappear. That's like in the late 1930s when communists burned the Reichstag building which unified the nation behind the Furer, the Polish attacked German railways warranting an invasion into what just happened to be great farmland, and those pesky jews were being safety deported to other countries. "What happened to the Goldsteins? Oh, they were deported, to Ukraine I believe." Nope, nope, they were already dead in Auschwitz. By the end of the war, they'd lost confidence in the party, but once they were shown what the leaders were really doing, national outrage brought in a new constitution designed to make sure nothing like it happened there again. It culminated in the Nuremberg Trials which established a legal procedure for dealing with government sponsored crimes against humanity. My guess is that anyone directly in the know, who had any power to actually do anything would found guilty and executed. Any shadow government would likely be destroyed. They'd probably try to hold onto power, but would be simply overwhelmed by military might. I don't see any way any one man or group other than official channels could make the US military do anything. "The Illuminati orders that the USA hereby cease their military aggression towards their overlord or we will cripple it's economy." - Secret World Emperor. "Knock knock, mother fucker." - 200 american cruise missiles.
Wouldn't the media be responsible for exposing these sort of things? So, I don't understand the media being demonized. Demonizing the media would be something the government would do to try and keep things secret or continue to push a cover up. The other thing is I think you have to be very careful here. If you're using actual events and revealing them to be orchestrated by the government, that's not going to sit well with a lot of readers. You're talking about real victims here as a result of such tragedies. Saying that all the conspiracy theories are true could be a little insulting or off putting to those actually affected by these tragedies. Personally, I would never read a book like the one you're describing for these reasons.
Very good points guys. So after all this input what im thinking now is - If i want to write a world that follows a mass information dump that changes the landscape of the future first i would need to do it in a way that is respectful and doesn't devalue people that have personal ties to previous tragedy. Im thinking something along the lines of the storm area 51 meme at this point. Leaving aside how absurd that meme is if i use a secret organization that infiltrated and organized a mass information dump i think itll create a believable dialog. My book takes place 2 years after, so well call it a major historical event that changed the landscape of the the respective world (TMID) for short for now. I think the only way i could even make this is if i was using a created world because having it placed in say the us causes for concern and is to close to home for most. An imagined world is best i think. So the main question i have at this point how do i make something like this realistic but also respectful. Mind you this is just the world building im doing currently the actual storyline follows an individual who is trapped in a military virtual reality training facility. His consciousness has been downloaded into the program and is being used to help train soldiers (he thinks they are coming to save him when actuality hes just a tool to help facilitate the soldiers training) So the book itself isnt actually about the events but i wanted an overall theme and world where things have changed after the (TMID) event 2 years ago and its a talking place in the book (It is also a large source of struggle and pain for the main character for development) just to give some context. Now with a better understanding @deadrats would you still think you wouldnt read a book like that? @Mumble Bee thanks so much for the feedback i love the idea of shadow goverment in control and i think people just mostly accepting it is correct. All great thoughts so far guys thanks for the feedback.
@BizquiteenTrisket I'd read the cover text before I'd read the book - like always I guess however as long as this dramatic event (the one the reveal is all about) is actually important in whatever direction I'd probably make one up. Simply because it's difficult to keep the necessary respect to the victims and their families of real tragedys and yet "use" the tragedy for the story.
Once trust is destroyed, it's very hard to get it back. If we stop trusting the media, it's hard to regain faith in it. (If one story is manipulated and misrepresented, how can we be sure they all aren't being manipulated or misrepresented?) If we stop trusting our government when it becomes obvious they lied to us, it's more or less impossible for them to regain our trust—even if they actually start telling the truth. It's the old 'boy that cried wolf' idea. Well but THIS time I'm telling the truth, and here's proof ...aye right... Usually in that situation something new has to come along. Something that is unsullied by deceit, that we can 'trust.' As long it proves trustworthy, that's what we'll go along with. It can be a different kind of media, a different kind of government, a new religion, whatever. As long as it's new and seemingly transparent and untainted by the old, it has a chance. I believe if your characters have lost trust in what your story's government has been telling them, they will look elsewhere for guidance. Even a new government might not be enough, if it comes from the same system that produced the old one.
I wonder if new conspiracy theories wouldn't arise to replace the old, proven ones? I imagine so, and what would they be like? How many people would believe that the proof of the conspiracy theories was itself a conspiracy to distract from the real conspiracy? The question would be, I suppose, how would they spread? Peer to peer trams,ossopm, I imagine, just as they do now on social media.
