Eddie's Ready

Eddie (his real name, age 37) had been running his website for almost 20 years now. You may have come across it whilst searching for inspiration (!) on the internet: -

EDDIE’S READY – DEBUNKER OF MYTHS, TELLER OF TRUTHS AND LICENSED SPIRITUALIST

He’d started it as a bit of a joke whilst at University. The freshers were clogging up the Students Union bar, making his enjoyment of the evening as a whole and the obtaining of beer in particular difficult. Loud and crowded. Just what he hated. But then he overheard a conversation on the next table.

“I’m telling you now,” said one, beer glass swinging violently from side to side, “Princess Diana was killed on the orders of the royal family. It wasn’t an accident at all. It’s obvious.”

Another member of the group turned to the speaker. “Don’t talk crap. The driver of the car was pissed. It was travelling too fast. An accident, pure and simple. Sad but unfortunately true. Prove to me it wasn’t an accident.”

The conversation became more and more heated. Eddie was beginning to enjoy himself despite the crush. To him, it was like entering in to a magical world where lunacy and common sense were equally valued and equally disputed. In the end, as with all conspiracy theories, beliefs and half-truths morphed into facts, becoming almost indistinguishable from them.

It wasn’t possible for the two students in the bar to absolutely prove or disprove what had happened, but it didn’t matter anyway. It helped the evening along, with the beer acting as the lubricant required to turn thought into words. Even if the words were complete nonsense. No-one won the argument; no-one really cared. By the morning, no-one would remember.

It got Eddie thinking. There was power in the ability of anyone who could speak passionately against or in defence of something without a shred of evidence to support what they were saying. The spoken word remained the uber-currency. Eddie was surprised how many people listening to such conversations believed what was being said regardless of how detached from reality the topic was. The delivery was everything.

He did some research. It was fortunate it tied in with a thesis he was preparing on the subject of megalomania. All the powerful politicians seem to have it in varying degrees, and always have. Perhaps it was needed to survive in such an environment. Some of the nastier bastards that history has thrown up are now regarded as megalomaniacs, power-crazed, or simply unstable, but megalomaniacs even so.

Politics and world-domination apart, the until recently and relatively settled global economy allows for few individuals with such lofty ideals to go against conventional thinking. When they do, many enter the world of conspiracy theories. JFK wasn’t assassinated; the earth is flat; the moon landings were fake; that kind of thing. And they could prove it too. Well, they could provide a combination of interpretive photos and ambiguous correspondence about a subject. With the help of a powerful personality and a rational thought process, that was enough. First, find a big enough soap box, then get on it and spout to the masses until they are converted.

It was madness, yet every year someone brought up something new that defied belief. Eddie felt certain he wasn’t alone in believing this kind of ridiculous behaviour insulted the intelligence of virtually all human beings, but he was unable to find an organisation that was created specifically to point this out and, if possible, use facts to disprove these crackpot theories.

So Eddie used the relatively fledgling internet to create the website identified at the beginning of this article. Truth be told, he couldn’t remember why he included the bit about being a licensed spiritualist. He wasn’t – as far as he was aware spiritualists didn’t need a licence – but it had seemed a good idea in the time. He suspected alcohol may have been involved. Anyway, no-one had pulled him up about it.

At first it was a hobby. He encouraged people to ask questions about all manner of things, and he’d respond in his own quirky way, telling them all the stuff they could have found out for themselves if they’d done the research. When he noticed the larger percentage of traffic to his site was concentrating on conspiracy stuff, he realised there was an opening for what he considered a sane appreciation of the facts, allowing for sensible conclusions to be reached.

The website increased in popularity. Companies got in touch to place advertisements. Eddie began to make money from it. He employed an assistant and kept all research undertaken on a wide range of conspiracy theories constantly updated. He quit his full-time job to concentrate on expanding it further. His ambition was to make sure that any information he provided in response to a question was (1) unambiguous, (2) straightforward, (3) accurate and (4) above criticism.

Eddie’s Ready (the shorthand name for the site, approved by a focus group specifically tasked with looking at ways to promote the appeal of the site) became popular with the so-called ‘real’ generation. From Eddie’s viewpoint, this description included everyone who wasn’t prepared to accept all the BS around but had neither the time nor the desire to research a subject themselves. Usually, such people weren’t overly computer savvy either, over and above asking the question about what was bothering them through the website. It was a wide-ranging group of people with diverse backgrounds and a surprisingly large age range.

The deaths of celebrities proved a very popular area. Conspiracy theorists believed Elvis, Prince and John Lennon, amongst others, hadn’t died as reported but had chosen to step back from society for a variety of reasons. Proof was difficult to come by, but some of the explanations put forward to support these preposterous claims beggared belief. Eddie’s Ready (or ER for short according to website supporters) skewered these claims with as many facts as could be found. ER started to make enemies.

Many conspiracy theories related to old stories for which the absence of a definitive explanation proved a fertile place to expound more and more ridiculous explanations. The holocaust hadn’t happened; aliens built Stonehenge; the FBI killed JFK. Freedom of speech was one thing, but spouting utter bollocks in the pursuit of an audience and, hopefully, receiving media attention was something else. Eddie from ER became a popular figure on TV, debunking the myths and theories arising from many sources. The list of enemies lengthened.

And the number of sources was increasing. Eddie was having to consider expanding staff numbers again to keep up with demand. Love him or hate him, Mr Trump was right when he said fake news was becoming prevalent within society. The likes of Facebook and Microsoft, amongst others, with their cavalier attitude towards checking the truth of a story, had allowed blatant lies, half-truths and misinformation to spread to every corner of the globe. The Fox News position on global warming seems particularly unhelpful.

On the one hand, this was good for Eddie, but on the other hand he was becoming worried things were getting out of control. Government agencies of many countries were using the internet to spread all sorts of stuff, possibly through hacking and certainly to the detriment of rival nations. The line between truth and fiction was becoming more blurred every day.

Then the coronavirus pandemic landed. It was new and, as far as anyone was aware, without a cure. The media went into overdrive. Quotes were obtained from the good, the bad and the desperate to appear knowledgeable. Theories were put forward, many of them complete speculation. But the virus was killing lots of people worldwide and the public wanted answers. When the 5G wi-fi masts in several parts of the country were attacked by idiots following an absolutely unsubstantiated suggestion they were responsible for the virus, Eddie knew things had gone too far.

His website debunked the 5G claim immediately. It received the largest amounts of abusive content emails it had ever received. Mr Trump called the virus the ‘Chinese disease’. The website received enquiries from worried members of the public asking if this was true. It reported that it was too early to speculate on this, but did indicate this was where the virus seemed to have come from. That was enough for some people to begin assaulting anyone who looked oriental in origin. Cue more abusive emails too. The world was going mad.

Eddie sat back in the office of his 17^th floor flat. He lived alone. Like him, many people were continuing to work from home even though travel restrictions had been lifted. ER was very busy dealing with enquiries about the adequacy of facemasks. He remembered how things had been when he started. The explosion in use of mobile phones, laptops, iPads etc. meant everyone could be connected to the internet 24/7 if they wanted to be now. Lack of regulation was allowing both the professional and amateur conspiracy theorist to make wild and inevitably false allegations about all sorts of thing. Covid-19 was a goldmine.

He thought he heard a noise in the main part of the flat, but dismissed it. He carried on working until he heard another noise, which was when he got up to investigate. The flat was fitted with all the bells and whistles security you could ever need and Eddie used it when he was away from it. When he was there though, it was all turned off. It was the 17^th floor after all. No-one could gain access. Anyway, the front door was locked.

Eddie’s body was found later that afternoon. It had landed on top of an Audi R8 parked directly below his flat. The police were working on the assumption it was suicide. CCTV showed no-one acting suspiciously in the area before or after the fall. The entrance to the flat was locked. There were no signs entry had been forced. The flat was clean and tidy. All in all, it was a mystery. At the time of writing, the death is still being treated as unexplained.

In death, Eddie became a conspiracy theory of his own. Was he the victim of a hit organised by other conspiracy theorists unhappy at having their beliefs debunked by the ER website? Had he stumbled on information that could prove foreign powers had been able to access UK media and manipulate it to suit? Did they arrange for him to be killed? Was he so unhappy at the dramatic increase in in conspiracy theories being propounded on the internet that it all got too much for him? Did the level-headed website response to the coronavirus pandemic conspiracy theories upset less tolerant individuals?

The truth will never be known as no-one witnessed what happened. The stories will run and run. Who knows, one of them might even be true.