Against fiction

Now that storytelling is no longer a practice exclusive to the human species , I speculate about a near future in which "handmade" stories will be a curiosity worthy of a craft fair. If we throw in the towel, at least it might be time to abandon that dreamy, naive discourse about the power of stories.

Each story we share is a pocket universe where correlation is prohibited. Coincidences are sinful ; at most, one is allowed, and always in the first chapter. But from then on, every story inevitably becomes a lattice of cause and effect so elemental, so intuitive, that we've ended up confusing it with the structure of our own existence. We believe that every change of mood, every phobia, every bout of heartbreak hides a secret (which movies reveal in the form of a flashback ). Even those who have never read a screenwriting manual in their lives sense that, before leaving this world, the opportunity to wrap up unfinished business will present itself. As in biopics , at the end of the road, an epiphanic climax will confirm that our successes were deserved and our failures were necessary to make us grow. Because, although the phrase may embarrass some of us, we all whisper it in solitude, "everything happens for a reason." As in mystery novels. Or as in conspiracy theories. Which are the adaptation for the multiplex audience of this same existential pleasure of believing ourselves to be fiction.

When U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posts "Evil has been defeated by the hand of God" hours after the death of Pope Francis, or when she accuses Jews of using a space laser beam to start fires, she is applying literary workshop rules: 1) An antagonist cannot die of natural causes. 2) In a disaster story, the presence of a villain is more urgent than the credibility of the whole.

Natalie Wynn shouldn't be a secret to anyone. Her latest essay, "Conspiracy ," is a beautifully crafted and scripted two-hour-and-40-minute video published on her YouTube channel, Contrapoints, after a year of development. Within a month, it has garnered over three million views. It's a piece of high-flying comedy, but also the definitive dissection of conspiracy thinking , that countercultural plaything inherited from the 20th century that today has a media presence and a capacity to influence political life without historical precedent, like the ghost of the previous pandemic.

Given such a serious subject, do Wynn benefit from the jokes and formal virtuosity more suited to a propaganda speech? The essay's conclusion is the opposite of a narrative climax. After describing a problem from all angles, Conspiracy asserts that, as of today, there is no solution in sight . Everything passes, period.