Selling the Fantasy

You've got to admire those wrestling commentators - the way they are able to pretend that what is going on in the ring is somehow real and has consequences.  I've just been watching a bit of AEW and I have to take my hat off to Jim Ross and the guys for the way in which they maintain a tone of utter sincerity, regardless of how ludicrous the stuff going on in the ring is getting.  They really get into it, listening to them you could almost believe that they guy taking a pasting is genuinely at risk and might have their career ended.  Never mind that we all know that they'll be back in the ring next week, taking another 'career threatening' hammering.  Just for that moment, you can suspend disbelief, thanks to the fact that the commentary team are playing a blinder.  It gives an insight into how people get drawn into those conspiracy fantasies by all those online and TV fantasists, who make similarly plausible and impassioned pitches for their particular brands of madness.  Because often, I find myself wondering how could anyone believe any of this shit?  But after watching some of these fantasists (and wrestling commentaries), I can begin to see how it is possible to make the utterly fake seem, even if only for a moment, plausible.

Whereas the wrestling commentators sell the onscreen action by getting more involved, more impassioned and excited as it goes on, more often than not turning to outrage as the blatant cheating of the heels pays off, the key for the conspiracy fantasists is to stay calm, to seem reasonable - but still get outraged when they reach the bits about how 'they' are duping and manipulating us all.  I was watching one the other day - it was the way in which he kept presenting things as 'facts', without ever backing them up with any evidence.  It was the matter-of-fact way he pronounced these utterly ridiculous utterances - 'Facebook has banned pictures of goats on their platform - following them with an resigned sort of shrug, not to emphasise the ridiculousness of what they have said, but rather how the actions of the alleged perpetrator of these non-existent acts fly in the face of good old common sense.  It is this demeanour of faux authority which disguises the fact that what you are actually listening to are the demented ramblings of an idiot, rather than the sage pronouncements of a wise man.  The question remains, of course, as to the extent to which they actually believe in the shit they are selling.  I mean, those wrestling commentators know that it is all fake and that they are selling the illusion in the name of entertainment, but is it the same for the conspiracy fantasists?  Surely they must know that they are peddling dangerous fantasies, otherwise why the need to employ all those techniques to make it seem sincere?  Or are they just as deluded as the people they sell it to?