Chapter 9

In chapter 8, Ronson investigates the story of Rachel North and the 7/7 subway bomb, and speaks with the conspiracy theorists, specifically David Shaylor, that have actively been campaigning their belief that it didn't happen. Rachel North narrowly escaped death when she was in a subway carriage with a suicide bomber in 7/7/7 in London. She started to blog about her experience to help deal with her grief, however, she had to deal with the masses of conspiracy theorists harassing her and commenting on her blog trying to contradict her story. Ronson was intrigued by the conspiracy theorists and wanted to talk to them about their beliefs and hear what type of evidence they have to back up their position. He meets up with David Shaylor, a conspiracy theorist that has many different interesting perspectives, including that it wasn't planes that hit the world trade center on 9/11, but missiles that looked like planes because they had holograms. David Shaylor seems to be a very crazy man. He even goes to the extent to claim that he is the Messiah.

I am really intrigued by conspiracy theorists now they sound absolutely insane and very stubborn. How do people come to believe those types of things? I find it hard to imagine that people like that exist in real life. I was kind of confused by the point of this chapter because Ronson didn't really tie it in with the whole psychopath testing stuff he has been doing in previous chapters. Obviously David Shaylor is insane but Ronson didn't really talk about the psychopath test much in this chapter. I liked at the end of the chapter how Ronson speculates that people like watching reality TV shows because the people on them are "the right kind of mad" because I think that's totally true and that people enjoy watching crazy people on TV because it makes them feel better about their lives.