I've been coming to wonder if the approach used by people to think about conspiracy theories in America at least is becoming increasingly untenable

generally it tends to gate conspiracy theories as products of either a 'cultic milieu' or deviant populism

the cultic milieu approach is very useful but fails to explain the mainstreaming of conspiracism (which has always been mainstream in the US even prior to the founding of the US) and the populist approach is too narrow

Something I am leaning towards is really that "conspiracy thinking" is just a generic cognitive style rather than a "paranoid style" per se

most conspiracies in some way center around the threat of perceived collusion or self-dealing.

detecting collusion or self-dealing is a basic human social challenge with very consequences for individual and collective welfare.

there are a lot of other things that go into conspiracism, what draws people to it (one of the big factors being need for community), etc but at base its a folk theory people use to understand the world

and one that we should expect to be continuously prevalent rather than something we can stamp out by better content controls or different politics

that tends to come through too in SSC's attempts to reverse-engineer conspiracy theory aesthetics for mainstream beliefs https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/04/prospiracy-theories/

right, this is something i think i should elaborate on more too https://twitter.com/h27kim/status/1264207265105448960

if you presume that human civilization requires

* collective and coordinated behavior to carry out purposeful goals

* actors with self-interest in pursuing purposeful goals

you have building blocks of conspiracism

if you presume further that in both of those bullets that either activity requires some measure of discretion or secrecy, the OP's point is further enhanced

it makes sense that human folk psychology would not only have some basis for detection of perceived malign variants of these normal activities, but also that people find it easy to fit the world into these categories https://twitter.com/Aelkus/status/1264205262304489473