Conspiracies

Not the kind with secret cabals and cover-ups, but the quiet conspiracies of everyday life—the unspoken agreements and emergent behaviors that shape our world without anyone explicitly planning them.

The Conspiracy of Busyness

We've collectively agreed to be busy all the time. Not productively busy, just... busy. Checking phones, scheduling meetings, creating urgency where none exists. It's as if we're all afraid of what might happen if we stopped moving for a moment.

The Meeting Industrial Complex

Somehow we've created a world where having meetings about meetings is normal. Where "let's schedule time to discuss this" has become the default response to every question. No one planned this, but here we are, spending more time talking about work than doing it.

The Upgrade Conspiracy

Technology companies have convinced us that last year's perfectly functional device is now inadequate. Not broken, not missing essential features—just old. We participate willingly, even eagerly, in this planned obsolescence of our own possessions.

The Expertise Intimidation Game

Experts in every field have developed increasingly complex jargon that serves more to exclude than to clarify. It's not conscious gatekeeping, but it has the same effect: making simple concepts seem unreachable to outsiders.

The Social Media Authenticity Paradox

We've created platforms designed for sharing authentic moments, then developed elaborate performance strategies for appearing authentic. The more we try to be genuine online, the more artificial we become.

The Productivity Theater

Open offices, standing desks, collaboration tools, agile methodologies—we've built an entire ecosystem around appearing productive rather than being productive. Everyone knows it's theater, but we keep performing anyway.

The News Cycle Acceleration

Media outlets, social platforms, and audiences have entered into an unspoken agreement to treat everything as urgent. Breaking news about breaking news about something that happened on Twitter. The conspiracy is that we all know it's not actually urgent, but we can't stop consuming it.

The Credential Inflation Scheme

Jobs that once required a high school diploma now demand a bachelor's degree. Jobs that needed a bachelor's now want a master's. The work hasn't changed, but we've collectively decided more education is always better, creating artificial barriers to entry.

The Small Talk Preservation Society

We maintain elaborate social rituals around meaningless conversation. "How's the weather?" "How about those [sports team]?" "Working hard or hardly working?" We all know these exchanges are empty, but we guard them fiercely because they signal social competence.

The Complexity Worship Cult

Simple solutions are dismissed as naive. Complex solutions are praised as sophisticated. We've accidentally created incentives that reward making things harder rather than easier, more complicated rather than more elegant.

The Growth Imperative

Every company must grow. Every quarter must be better than the last. Every metric must go up and to the right. No one planned this eternal expansion requirement, but it now drives decisions at every level of the economy.

The Privacy Surrender Pact

We've agreed to give up our personal information in exchange for free services, then act surprised when that information is used in ways we don't like. It's a conspiracy of willful ignorance.

These aren't planned conspiracies but emergent ones—patterns that arise from individual rational decisions that create collectively irrational outcomes.

@article{yotam2025conspiracies,
  title   = "Conspiracies",
  author  = "Yotam, Kris",
  journal = "krisyotam.com",
  year    = "2025",
  month   = "May",
  url     = "https://krisyotam.com/notes/random/conspiracies"
}