The 2020 election is a hurricane season of alleged conspiracies. Theory after theory has churned from the Democratic debates, the Iowa caucuses, and the Twitter goings-on of candidates’ supporters or alleged supporters. The recent theory that a Nigerian Twitter fan account for Pete Buttigieg was actually a sock puppet run by campaign staffer Lis Smith—it wasn’t—illustrates how quickly and easily conspiracy theories spread; the story was trending on Twitter mere hours after the initial allegation.

This case also illustrates the downstream consequences of laughter. Just as quickly as the theory emerged, a storm surge of snarky denials, Nigerian email scam jokes, and other can-you-believe-these-idiots eye rolls flooded social media.

For nonbelievers, “See conspiracy theory; mock” has become an ingrained response online—and we need to break the habit. The closer we get to the general election, the more conspiracy theories we’re bound to see. Making fun of them, however tempting it might be, is the worst possible reaction.

This is not a civility argument. For one thing, civility arguments are mostly bullshit rhetorical sleights-of-hand designed to shift focus from the substance of a critique to its tone. Nor is it a claim that false information is cool and fun and we should just shrug and say nothing, since who needs truth, Mike Bloomberg makes the best memes, and everything is terrible. Rather, it’s a warning that jokes about conspiracy theories are strategically ineffective. In fact, they’re likely to backfire and dump even more refuse into the already toxic political waters.

One problem is that making fun of something spreads that thing just as quickly as sharing it sincerely would. (See: Covid-19 conspiracies.) The theory in question might be a bizarro-world fever dream. The person who shares that fever dream to mock it could have the best intentions; they might assume that showing the absurdity of the theory will help prevent others from taking it seriously. But as a previous article in this series explained, the information ecology doesn’t give a shit why anyone does what they do online. Sharing is sharing is sharing.

In the case of the Nigerian Pete supporter, every time folks made snarky comments or retweeted jokes about the theory—whether they were Pete supporters or Pete anti-stans—those messages pinged to new audiences, spreading polluted information in unpredictable directions. The more responses there were, the more reason journalists had to cover the story. Jokes about the theory, even journalists’ own jokes, quickly became part of that coverage.

Another problem with mocking conspiracy theories is that it plays right into the conspiratorial mindset. Contrary to the prevalent assumption that only MAGA types believe in conspiracy theories, conspiratorial thinking—in which dots are connected, questions are asked, and official explanations are challenged—isn’t unique to any single demographic. Instead, as historian Kathryn Olmsted emphasizes, conspiracy theories have long existed on the right and the left, within white and black communities;, and among those with little power and those with extraordinary power. Some are off-the-wall bonkers, and some are grounded in historical precedent. Some are morally repugnant, and some are understandable. Some even turn out to be true.

Although they’re large and contain multitudes, conspiracy theories across the spectrum share two things. First, they emerge from what Ryan Milner and I describe in our book as “deep memetic frames.” This concept draws from deep stories as described by Arlie Hauschild, which reflect the affective paradigms we feel our ways into; frames as described by George Lakoff, which function as the “metaphors we live by;” and memetic logics as described by Milner, which guide the reciprocal process of social sharing. Deep memetic frames are what we believe in our bones to be true about the world. They emerge from our education, our experiences, and how we’re culturally conditioned to interpret information. Some are tethered to empirical reality, some less so, and some not at all; regardless, they shape how we see and what we know (or think we know) so completely that we probably don’t even notice them. Whether we’re aware of them or not, our frames take information and turn it into evidence.