The FriendsReunited Conspiracy (?) – Part 15 – How to be a Conspiracist

If you haven’t been reading this series of blogs then catch up at http://spankyrant.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-friendsreunited-conspiracy-part-1.html and the 14 following parts.

I’ve been having a lot of chats and thoughts about how our pursuers’ minds work. It’s actually becoming quite interesting, and I’ve now done a lot of research about conspiracy theories.

So, this is my own 10-point guide on how to create your very own conspiracy theory:

1.    Manage to find a spurious coincidence or two in something in which suit your underlying objectives.  Don’t worry if some of them aren’t really coincidences at all – work on the basis that quantity is more important than quality.

2.    Get someone to investigate – better still, pay someone to do so, as they may be inclined to agree that the “coincidences” add up to something suspicious in order to keep the fees going.

3.    If people aren’t saying what you want, they must be lying: minutely analyse their demeanour to find make-believe “tells” that supposedly show this to be the case.

4.    Ignore, or simply disbelieve, any proof you happen to be shown or find that would disprove your theory.

5.    No matter how implausible it may seem, be prepared to believe that unconnected third parties are “in” on the conspiracy, and will be inclined to do fraudulent things, like changing official records.

6.    Seek comments by friends and colleagues, and carefully note down the comments that support your mooted conspiracy.

7.    Disregard anyone’s comments that are unsupportive of your conspiracy.

8.    Parlay your combination of evanescent coincidences and non-coincidences, disbelief of obvious proof, mystifying involvement of unconnected third parties and self-serving supportive statements into a long document, thus (in your mind) conferring credibility on your mooted conspiracy.

9.    Ask lots more spurious questions to keep the conspiracy going.

10. Go back point 2 and continue (forever if necessary)

Here are a few examples of my 10-point plan in action.

1.    Find a coincidence – well that was easy, they had a similar idea to us. And my previous blog on coincidences just shows how this one works.

It’s funny they never mention the US reunion site Classmates. It was a very mature site by 1999 and we always were very open in interviews about how it was an inspiration to our site. Perhaps they are next in line after us.

2.    Investigate it. It seems they used PIs predominately – 4 in fact, from what we can see. None of them ever found anything of interest, but I bet the PIs loved to encourage it. And when one failed to find anything they just employed another. Then there were their friends – and they are surely going to agree with everything you come up with.

3.    Twist things. Again I’ve been over this many times. Everything I’ve said is “did he really mean that” or “sounding scripted”.

One of the worst examples of this is the following which I quote (our friends are Mr and Mrs F and the developer is Mr D)

“1^st September 2011 – Investigator UK sent an operative to visit a director based in Kent by the name of Mrs F from the original Friends Reunited team; while not a break through, his report below still strongly hints at a cover-up:

“….I attended [our friend] today at 16.40. There was a silver Audi TT parked in the rear garden. The front door was knocked (Dogs barking) and a white female, slim, aged approx. 40yrs answered the door and identified herself as Mrs F.  When asked under pretext, about the Mr D name she convincingly stated that she did not know of anyone of that name.

Mrs F then made a telephone call to someone who she said may know them, apparently the previous owner of her house at [Mrs F’s address]. She started the phone call with "Hi it's me" and asked about the Mr D name.  This did not provide any further information but her mannerism on the phone led me to suspect that she may have been told not to say anything to me, particularly towards the end of the call.

I gave her, which she relayed down the phone, the Christian names of all the Mr D and again this was met with a negative result. She finished the phone call with "Bye love" This is very familiar language to use with a previous house owner and I strongly suspected that she was probably talking to Mr F instead.”

This was very strange  behavior, especially as previous investigations leveraged an approach to individuals to try and gain a link to the Mr D name through queries about previous owners; this current approach however simply asked Mrs F if she knew anyone by the name of Mr D herself, it had nothing to do with the previous owners.  So why would Mrs F suggest she call the previous owner of her house to find out if she her self knew someone by the name of Mr D, then lie to someone she just met, having instead phoned her husband.  It looks like she was primed and ready for a different approach by our Private Detective, and made the “wrong” phone call.”

This is actually so outrageous I will be following up later. They called on someone who has nothing to do with this, asked her some questions. She tries to help, even calling a friend, and then when they don’t get what they are looking for they call her a liar.

She bought her house from her best friend. What they do here is utterly disgusting. And sums up their whole approach. If that was printed in the gutter press I would be shocked. Scumbags. But it is a classic case of how they twist everything.

4.    Ignoring proof. All the facts and proof I have given them over the years, as shown recently in my factual blog, has just been dismissed.

5.    Third party involvement. The most amazing instance: Nominet’s domain registration details were somehow backdated and fraudulently changed.

6 & 7.    Show and quote anonymous people. Well, these apparently include a fraud squad officer, a home office director, senior police officers, a famous author, and top solicitors, amongst others. None are named of course – love to have a chat with all these people.    

      You get the “…it seems there is a definite hint of a cover up” and the classic -

“an impartial report by an independent third party summarised our recently updated findings as follows: “...it is quite obvious that something untoward and significant has occurred. It is inconceivable that such an extensive series of interdependent coincidences, half-truths and unexplained occurrences are random and without association.”

Actually, just as an aside. In a recent blog, I published some of their communications back in 2005, including their apology email that stated - 

“I had uncovered nothing but a raft of circumstantial evidence, coincidences and half truths”

The line “coincidences and half truths” repeated. Verrrrry strange. One statement from our chief pursuer and the other from “an independent third party”. Odd that both people should use such very similar terminology, isn’t it ?  Now I wouldn’t dare to suggest …..Oh dear – I am getting into this conspiracy malarkey a bit too much I think. Just going for a lie down.

But here’s a classic. Our chief pursuer recently contacted someone that I subsequently met. They sent a lot of documents and correspondence to him. There has already been a blog about this. I have now been passed the whole of the correspondence and documents that passed between them. There is some priceless stuff in there, but that’s for later. In that correspondence, the fellow they had contacted passed a comment on the supposed coincidences which form the basis of our pursuers’ case. Within days, that comment was quoted by our pursuers in their response to my blog as being made by “one of your [FriendsReunited’s] own technical team”.

Although there is a lot of competition, I found this to be one of the funniest of the lot. He asks someone some questions; they try to help; suddenly their comments are taken out of context – and referred to as being made by one of our “technical team” (presuming that this would confer added credibility). Brilliant - but maybe a little crazy ?

And they call me a liar and economical with the truth!

8.    Write it up. Well they certainly have written it up. The summary our pursuers have been provided to us is 21 pages in length, but I have recently been told there are over 1000 pages compiled over 12 years. They even claim to have “a recognized UK author (family friend)” ready to write a book about it. [STOP PRESS - AND A FILM!!!]

9. Questions.  The questions they ask - all over the place and continual. Do they somehow think that asking random questions adds force to their mooted conspiracy ?

They are particularly obsessed with our first hosting company, Aflex. Questions about meetings, invoices, domains, timings, payment, cover ups, emails, laptops etc etc etc – ITS BONKERS! The list gets longer with every contact as if it adds credibility.

10. And so we start again back at point 2…….

Having seen the latest document they sent to the press which has completely ignored all my blogs and is asking even more spurious questions, I am beginning to think this will never actually end.

@spankyhurst