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Hi there, my name’s Kirby Ferguson. I am the creator of This is Not a Conspiracy Theory.

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Stay tuned to the end of this video for further information about how this series works and how you can subscribe.

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Alright. Here were go.

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The people of the internet present

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A documentary feature delivered in episodes

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November 1963.

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An assassination.

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Not the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy,

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but that of his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.

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It was this killing that permanently sealed JFK’s murder in mystery.

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The conclusion of the official government investigation was simple yet unsatisfying:

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a disaffected loner with a cheap rifle killed the president... by himself.

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Counter narratives started to appear.

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Amateur sleuths tried to follow the trajectories of the bullets backwards, into the shadows.

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Their methods were a combination of lawyer, detective and outsider.

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This style of reasoning became known as the conspiracy theory.

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Trust in government plummeted during the years of scandal and upheaval that followed.

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Finally, the president himself was implicated in a spying scandal and the fears of conspiracy thinkers seemed confirmed.

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Conspiracies were real.

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But the research into the Kennedy assassination was failing to develop a convincing alternative scenario.

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Instead, it had splintered into countless, conflicting variations.

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And on the outskirts of popular culture, new and more outrageous ideas were developing.

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The flaws of the conspiracy theory were becoming obvious.

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And its logic could lead to preposterous conclusions.

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According to the stories the US government is concealing under top security

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flying saucers from another world

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and alien bodies, cryogenically suspended in huge freezers.

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The term conspiracy was soon an insult.

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Why the fuck does everything have to be a conspiracy, huh?

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And yet the conspiracy theory would continue to grow.

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Its influence absorbed into popular culture.

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It blurred into the realm of science fiction as claims of alien abductions and cover-ups multiplied.

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This happened. If you believe it, that’s alright.

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If you don’t believe it, I don’t care.

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The TV series The X Files channeled all these themes of paranoia

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and beamed them into American living rooms every Sunday evening.

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While Oliver Stone’s film JFK brought the Kennedy conspiracy theory back into the mainstream.

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Now we’re through the looking glass here people.

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White is black.

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And black is white.

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But it was a new form of media, the World Wide Web,

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that brought the conspiracy theory to its widest audience ever.

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And after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the conspiracy theory became an online sensation

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and it’s maintained a conspicuous presence in online culture ever since.

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By 2013, we'd entered a new era of suspicion and paranoia.

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Trust in government hovered at levels even lower than the Nixon era.

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Despite their persistently poor reputation, belief in conspiracy theories flourished.

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“Sixty-three percent of registered voters believe at least one political conspiracy theory...” Conspiracy Theories Prosper, Dan Cassino and Krista Jenkins

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The conspiracy theory is something more than just paranoia from the fringes of society.

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It's a dramatic expression of a uniquely modern anxiety:

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the sensation that you are trapped within the invisible design of a greater power.

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What you know you can’t explain.

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But it's there.

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like a splinter in your mind.

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In the United States in particular these fears have deep roots,

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roots that tangle down into the core of the American identity and beyond.

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Back through the centuries, past America’s formation

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and right down to the bedrock psychology of the conspiracy theory:

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the projection of human intentions upon complex events.

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The ancient Greeks once saw lightning bolts and imagined the fury of Zeus.

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But we later developed better understanding of the forces of nature,

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and we are now beginning to understand the complexity behind our own society.

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We are confronting powers more daunting than a shadowy elite,

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powers that we struggle to comprehend with the minds we’ve evolved.

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You don’t get it.

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Then help me. Please, I need to know.

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This may be hard for you to understand, but there is no conspiracy.

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Nobody is in charge.

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What we are now realizing is that we are guided, constrained,

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and even controlled by the systems we have made,

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by the rules, institutions and technologies we ourselves created.

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And these systems have no ideology,

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they have no ambition, they are not greedy,

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they are not good and they are not evil.

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They are simply not like us.

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This is Not a Conspiracy Theory

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A serial documentary about the forces that shape us

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From the creator of “Everything is a Remix”

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Written & Directed by Kirby Ferguson. Original Score by John Woods. Fonts by The Font Bureau

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No DRM, No Regional Limitations, Multiple Subtitles

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And welcome back.

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There you have it, there’s the premise of This is Not a Conspiracy Theory.

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That is the theme I’m going to explore and whether you would like to subscribe or not, you should base it on that.

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Do you want to see more or not -- it’s up to you.

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Okay, so the format of This is Not a Conspiracy Theory is a little unusual but it is basically simple.

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It is a documentary feature broken up into installments and delivered on the net.

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That’s the basics of it. It’s a nonfiction movie, in parts, on the web. That’s the fundamentals.

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So you just saw Part 1, that is free for everyone to watch.

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If you’d like to see the rest of the series, you have to subscribe, you have to purchase them.

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The total running time for the feature will be at least 80 minutes, it will be at least 80 minutes long.

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However, there will be no set number of installments and there will be no schedule to their release.

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They do take a lot of time to make, so they’ll come out when they’re done and it will be slow.

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You should know that.

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But the installments of the film aren’t the whole story.

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They’ll be accompanied by a series of video updates and these will be the more interactive realm of the project.

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This series will keep you up-to-date with what’s going on behind the scenes

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and they’ll also be a platform in which you can participate, you can offer feedback, you can potentially influence the course of the series.

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Or you can just sit back and watch it all unfold, Whatever you’d like.

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And real fast, three more features worth mentioning.

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The series has no DRM. There’s no proprietary copy protection on the files.

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You can watch the videos on any device you’d like.

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There are no regional limitations.

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Whether you’re in the US, Canada, Russia, China, whatever, you can watch the videos.

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And all the installments will be subtitled in many languages by the user community.

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Subtitles will be added as soon as possible after launch.

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So there’s only this first installment done right now so you’re basically pre-ordering the rest of the series.

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So right now the price is reduced to $12 US. It will later, become $15.

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You can also get a second subscription for half off by choo sing the gift option.

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So you can get a gift subscription for a friend, a family member, an enemy -- hey, why not? -- for a mere six bucks.

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And there you have it.

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That’s This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. I hope you will consider purchasing the videos.

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I think it will be a special and unique experience for you.

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And by doing so you are supporting ambitious and 100% independent filmmaking.

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Thank you so much for your attention, I really do value it highly and I hope it shows in that videos that I make.

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I really do not take your time for granted. I try to make the most of the time that we have together.

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Thank you so much for watching. See ya next time.