Ronson Chapter 8 Summary

In chapter 8 of Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test, Ronson believes that conspiracy theorists are psychopaths. He comes to this conclusion by first talking to Rachel North about her experience with a bombing on July 7, 2007. Rachel found that it was easy to cope with her experience by blogging about it. Eventually other survivors joined her and supported each other. In time, a group of conspirators led by David Shayler said she was made up and that the bombings on July 7th were an inside job. Ronson then met with Shayler and found that he also believed that the attacks on 9/11 were really missiles hid by holograms of airplanes. Shayler, later on, also tried to get people to think he was the Messiah. Ronson believed Shayler was a psychopath because he had no empathy for anyone involved in any of the attacks and thought very highly of himself.

I think both chapters were easy to understand. There were many interesting past events that were talked about, although all of the events were traumatic. I thought it was weird that the conspirators still didn't believe Rachel was real, even after they saw her in person. Even if some of them believed she was real, they couldn't be proven wrong about their theory, so they said she had to be mentally ill. It sort of reminds me of the day in class when we talked about facts that were proven wrong, but people doesn't like to admit they were wrong in the first place.