This is a pretty funny story about how internet conspiracy theories spread. It all started with a serious Wired story about a vaccine that may mitigate stress related hormonal damage to your brain.
Headline: Under Pressure: The search for a stress vaccine.
It became a four hundred word tabloid story about a vaccine for stress.
Headline:Jab that could put a stop to stress without slowing us down.
Then a little conspiracy committee decided that what was going on was some sort of clinical trials of a mind altering, brain eating, drug that would be a tool of the nefarious one world government.
Headline: Establishment Media Pushes Brain Eating Vaccines.
This last group encouraged readers to search “brain eating vaccine” on google – and it quickly hit the google trends charts. One day I’m going to spend a bit of energy blogging specifically about the words that are on that chart at the time to see what happens to my traffic.