[FussyZeus]

The explanation is a lot more simple I think.

Back in the old days, the way you showed you were better than everyone else was owning the nicest car, having air conditioning, or having a powered mower.

Now that more or less everyone has more or less everything, the only ways we can fulfill the basic instinct to be better than our neighbors is engaging in these kind of "all the sheep think this happened, but really..." ideas. Psuedo-intellectualism at it's finest.

You could show these people facts all day, it doesn't matter. Hell if you took one of them up in one of those Space Jets they'd probably swear you were faking it somehow, because the longer you hold onto a belief, the more invested in it you are, the more it's going to wound your ego to admit you're wrong. Most people would rather take a bullet than admit they were wrong (especially Americans and Brits) so that's how we end up with the Flat Earth people.

[lordnacho]

I think you're onto something. Most people I know who want to appear smart find it necessary to be contrarian. Most of what they say is can be rephrased as "ordinary people just believe everything they're taught, but I've learned how to think so (9/11, illuminati, global warming, anti-vaccine, and so on but only one madness)".