Yes, there are still MH370 Truthers.

Taking belief in anything to an extreme puts one on a dangerous road.

My all-time favorite definition of skepticism, whose author I would give if I knew it, is the intersection of science literacy and consumer protection. When people are able to distinguish what’s real from what’s not, they’re better equipped to make every life decision. Not just recognizing and avoiding fraudulent products, but also avoiding faulty thought processes that can lead to a whole constellation of bad decisions.

Today is an illustration of that. We’ve all heard of Flat Earthers. Of 9/11 Truthers who think it was an inside job. Alien Truthers who think the government is hiding aliens. All manner of conspiracy theorists, from vaccine deniers to Q Anon. And now we call your attention to the MH370 Truthers, those who believe there is some nefarious hidden secret behind the 2014 loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 which disappeared with all 227 passengers and 12 crew aboard presumed dead.

Today I’d like to say a few words about them, prompted by some recent unpleasantries on Twitter. It’s not just a “Let’s laugh at those weirdos;” I believe it has significance for every one of us — which I’ll come back to.

The standard model of what most experts think happened to MH370 was some kind of small fire, perhaps electrical, perhaps among Li-Ion batteries in the cargo. (I went through this in detail in Skeptoid #595.) What does a pilot do when they suspect an electrical fire? It’s to start turning stuff off to stop it. This is consistent with the data we got: various systems went inactive over a period of time. When an airborne emergency happens, pilots follow a 3-step credo: 1. Aviate, 2. Navigate, 3. Communicate. (Keep the plane in the air; know where you are — and you do both of those things before you spend an iota of attention talking to people on the ground.) That the plane returned toward its primary emergency landing location tells us they got as far as #2. But before they got to #3, they pilots were overcome by smoke and rendered unconscious (according to this most generally-accepted model). The plane continued on autopilot along its path until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean — which is 100% consistent with every piece of evidence we have.

Of course, we don’t know this is what happened; but it’s what pilots were proposing within days of the loss, and it’s what all evidence to date has been consistent with, including the probable crash location, ocean currents, and the locations and dates of the few bits of flotsam that made it to beaches.

That’s not good enough for everyone, especially not for the conspiracy-hungry. Among people with the least familiarity with pilot procedures, a pilot suicide has always been a favorite hypothesis. It’s also the worst; MH370’s flight profile differs more from those of actual pilot suicide cases than any other flight ever flown. A Grand Scheme by Russia, North Korea, or China to kidnap and liquidate the passengers remains a popular alternative also.

However, it is the intersection of the Venn diagrams of the UFO and conspiracy theory communities that give us the loudest, and longest-lived, alternate versions. In these scenarios, MH370 went through a wormhole or portal to another dimension. UFOs beamed it up into space. The United States military, with its secret science fiction weapons, somehow dematerialized the flight. For reasons.

The dark underbelly of Twitter is where a lot of these bottom feeders circle-jerk their batshit alternative realities. They anomaly-hunt the data, looking for weird things that “prove” their version. And, unhelpfully, a community of trolls is out there throwing fuel on this dumpster fire — probably for the amusement value — and busting out fake CG videos of passenger jets, just to screw with the Truthers. It doesn’t even matter what’s in the video. Just make it look weird, and leak it out there with a whisper that it’s a secret video captured by a satellite or a submarine or something.

Here are a couple of fairly childish ones showing how three UFOs appeared, circled the flight, and made it vanish:

Of course, all such videos were quickly and exhaustively debunked. The components they had been assembled from were identified from their original sources, the VFX plugins used by the creators left telltale signatures, etc. etc. etc. People with the expertise to do visual effects all know the same sources for material — whether VFX people are trying to fake something or VFX people are looking to spot fakes, it’s a level playing field because they all know the same stuff. If you’re interested in the details of the debunks you can head over to the discussion threads on Metabunk.

But to the MH370 Truthers, who lack VFX expertise but who have credulity in abundance, such videos were unassailable gospel. We must keep in mind that this category of belief is a religion. There is gospel, and there is heresy. Once the Truthers saw the hoax videos, the videos became the absolute proof of their predefined conclusion of what happened to the plane. It was circled by UFOs and poofed into another dimension — you know, like what happens sometimes. Any suggestion that the videos are hoaxes is existential heresy.

Don’t believe me? Well. A couple days ago Mick West — proprietor of Metabunk (and a featured expert in my UFO Movie) — tweeted a short video explanation of how he tracked down one of the video assets used to construct the above videos. I would love to paste some of the tweet responses he received, but there are well over a hundred. Please click that link and scroll to see the responses yourself.

Scary, isn’t it? Those people are at the bottom of the ocean of Kool-Aid, and seem itching for a fight — even to do real-world violence.

The reason I wrote this today is not that I think anyone reading it might have been sucked down this particular MH370 rabbit hole and is in need of salvation, but because it serves as a cautionary tale. Most of these people saying such vile things are otherwise normal, intelligent, functional 21st century adults. As are we all (or so we like to persuade ourselves). If they can go so far unhinged on something as random as “MH370 was kidnapped by aliens” then why might not any of us go as unhinged on something more day-to-day? The Trump trials. Israel/Gaza. Abortion rights. Greedo shot first. Pick your issue, whatever it is — how do you ensure that you are integrating it healthfully into your life, and not becoming a batshit lunatic?

Some reading this right now are. Please do not be one of them. Take a step back.

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