Technical Estrangement and the Ersatz Uncanny
It’s always strange when one’s professional life and one’s hobbies collide. I’ve been collecting guitar effects pedals for several years, not nearly as long as I’ve been researching conspiracy theories, but I hardly expected to see the Boss MT-2 Metal Zone pedal show up in a conspiracy theory. In January, however, a schematic of the much-reviled distortion pedal was being circulated as proof that the Covid-19 vaccine contained a secret 5G microchip to allow the tracking of innocent citizens.
The schematic was subsequently revealed to have originated as a hoax, but that didn’t stop its spread through Reddit conspiracy theory communities (note: hoaxes always take on a life of their own, and they’re never a good idea if you want to prove how stupid or gullible people are). Since then, I’ve thought a lot about why something as anodyne as a guitar pedal schematic might seem so mystifying, alluring, or uncanny that it could be swept up into a conspiracy theory.
One term that gets used a lot in connection with social media and the Internet in general is “context collapse,” a term coined by Danah Boyd in 2013 to describe social media environments where people from one’s different social groups (family, co-workers, friends, etc.) are all brought together. The net result can often be difficulty in navigating the various registers that one maintains…
