This is Not a Conspiracy Theory (Part 1)

An investigation into the forces that shape us.
From the creator of "Everything is a Remix,"
a documentary feature delivered in installments.
Pre-order the full series at
http://thisisnotaconspiracytheory.com

*** Full show notes to come! ***

Score by
John Woods
JohnWoodsMusic.com

Creative Consultant
Karin Soukup
http://www.karinsoukup.com

Fonts by The Font Bureau
http://www.fontbureau.com

Stock footage donated By iStock
iStock.com

Additional Motion Graphics
Louis Wesolowsky
Louiswes.com

Production Assistant
Lorenzo Santos
http://about.me/lsantos

Additional Motion Graphics by Michael Ashton (www.ashtonmike.com), Juan Behrens (http://work.bre4k.com) and Luca Bartolomei

Legal Counsel
Jack Lerner and The University Of Southern California School of Law

Thank you to Simon Russell, whose particle animations were used in the systems montage
simonrussell.blogspot.com

Thank you to Rod Weatherbie, Donald Cox, Andy Newman, Erik Kok, Nate Parsons, Devin DiMattia, Matt Radcliffe, Sam Saxton, Benjamin Riggs, Shawn Brenneman, Adam Rutherford, Jenny Bartashnik, Adam Savage, Adam Besheer

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

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

Alright. Here were go.

The people of the internet present

A documentary feature delivered in episodes

November 1963.

An assassination.

Not the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy,

but that of his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.

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

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

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

Counter narratives started to appear.

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

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

This style of reasoning became known as the conspiracy theory.

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

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

Conspiracies were real.

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

Instead, it had splintered into countless, conflicting variations.

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

The flaws of the conspiracy theory were becoming obvious.

And its logic could lead to preposterous conclusions.

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

flying saucers from another world

and alien bodies, cryogenically suspended in huge freezers.

The term conspiracy was soon an insult.

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

And yet the conspiracy theory would continue to grow.

Its influence absorbed into popular culture.

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

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

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

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

and beamed them into American living rooms every Sunday evening.

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

Now we’re through the looking glass here people.

White is black.

And black is white.

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

that brought the conspiracy theory to its widest audience ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What you know you can’t explain.

But it's there.

like a splinter in your mind.

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

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

Back through the centuries, past America’s formation

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

the projection of human intentions upon complex events.

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

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

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

We are confronting powers more daunting than a shadowy elite,

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

You don’t get it.

Then help me. Please, I need to know.

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

Nobody is in charge.

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

and even controlled by the systems we have made,

by the rules, institutions and technologies we ourselves created.

And these systems have no ideology,

they have no ambition, they are not greedy,

they are not good and they are not evil.

They are simply not like us.

This is Not a Conspiracy Theory

A serial documentary about the forces that shape us

From the creator of “Everything is a Remix”

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

No DRM, No Regional Limitations, Multiple Subtitles

And welcome back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You should know that.

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

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

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

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.

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

And real fast, three more features worth mentioning.

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

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

There are no regional limitations.

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

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

Subtitles will be added as soon as possible after launch.

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

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

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

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

And there you have it.

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

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

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

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

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

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