Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura

They may have a few points in there but it's packaged inside hours of dross, with absolutely no common sense applied in any of the episodes I've watched so far.

His 'investigator' June is a well known TV host from England with, I suspect, no actual knowledge or experience in the field of investigation. Ventura himself just seems like a knuckle head who'll believe anything told to him so long as it's by some 'informer/insider' with zero credibility.

The whole show is melodramatic, over the top rubbish that'll feed the already fruit loop conspiracy theorists out there while leaving the more sane ones among us scratching our heads as to how this lasted for three series.

While Ventura attempts to draw viewers in with an often aggressive 'I'm going to get to the bottom of this' attitude, the show's research methodology and lack of hard evidence beg ridicule. Those sources interviewed by the show tend to lack credibility, such as an accredited degree in the subject matter, and few such sources are able to provide any verifiable evidence. On occasion, the show triumphs by denying the conspiratorial claims and, in so doing, brings them further ridicule. However, the show consistently provides inflamed or outright false information when representing their claims. I have found that this show can be quite useful as a tool for sharpening one's critical thinking skills. Such skills are not taught in the show, but can be exercised by attempting to prove or disprove that which is demonstrated by Mr. Ventura and his team.

It's great show. The big problem is its overly dramatic and like all American Reality show it feels fakeish. Take June Sarpong only just gone over to the US. In the UK she was a Presenter on a kids show T4. So could she have developed "the man in the white van" contact who worked in almost every secret project. That felt fake to me. But are there people like that and would help investigators, take deep throat, so yes. Then every show starts with a clandestine encounter that felt a little fake to me until the Manimal and a guy on a BMX shouted at the contact. But if you Google search moat of these people turn out to be what they claim. I think the investigations are factual but the slip in filmed bits that are fake as hell, to make it feel like a deep throat style show. The main point in all the investigation is its all plausible, the ones that they prove are possible. Take "The Reptilian Elite" there was literally no evidence except for 1 psychic running away as she claimed she could "hear" them. There was no proof the video expert guy said 90% of them on the net had been artificially changed. Yet the one person who came up with it is raking up millions a year on the conspiracy. Conspiracy theories are notoriously hard to prove out right but you cannot completely disprove then 100%. Also the first 2 seasons were better. They had 2 different Guys a Daniel and Alex who were sceptical of all of it at the beginning but with the right evidence would start leaning and be like OK the evidence isn't 100%. Sean Stone and Tyrrel Ventura started taking the group into areas that didn't need to go. But overall its not bad.

There aren't many series specifically covering popular conspiracy theories, but Ventura seems to cover the broad strokes well enough for the runtime. The nature of the subject matter is polarizing but Ventura is an interesting enough character who doesn't bring too much of the wrong baggage to this subject matter - some of the people he interviews for the show are perhaps a bit unsuitable and detract from the serious inquiry of the stories they are trying to convey, but his team's adversarial approach to scrutinizing the accounts and motives seems to ground the presentation well enough while being playful and accessible - you're never going to be able to go over all the details in the time allotted, and all the pieces matter usually when it comes to conspiracy so armchair experts will find much to be desired, but otherwise it's decent edutainment.

This show is very much a product of its time (simpler times of 2009) and probably not the sort of thing a lot of networks would be comfortable airing in the 'post-truth' era, certainly not without a lot more careful editorial oversight - some of the people interviewed for this show have been so thoroughly cancelled that we're not going to see them again; personalities like David Icke are arguably so demented that even back in 2009 he shouldn't have been platformed on this show at least not without a strong disclaimer; because popular conspiracy theorists like Icke and Alex Jones are important to the story of how CT's are sustained and propagated, whether they be dangerously ignorant peddlers like the aforementioned, or whistleblowers or journalists whose suppression might not be fully realized today these characters are relevant to the stories so there is an argument for their inclusion in any holistic presentation even if you were making this show today, but since a lot of those guys make their money peddling disinformation and selling products off their personal brands they should come with clear disclaimers.

The initial thought we get if a person believes a conspiracy theory is they are paranoid and gullible (because somehow in our own gullibility, we believe our politicians tell us the absolute truth and act only in our interest), so when a former US governor puts his name to a show that is investigating these mad allegations we should take heed. I've just watched the first episode about HAARP and while the information given is vital and informative, American TV fails again. The information and whole point of the show becomes lost and irrelevant as the makers try to focus and capture the viewers imagination with spooky misleading music and narration, really annoying sound effects makes this show (like most US documentary shows) completely artificial, pompous and patronizing. The most annoying thing about this is that instead of the angry shock of what the investigators discovered, the viewer is left with a sense of comfortable normalization of the topic discussed. I don't blame Jesse Ventura, instead I blame the makers for making it more of a reality show about him than the topic at hand. However, Jesse should take responsibility for some of the rhetoric one-liners he used such as "I don't get intimidated, I get angry" which was used at least 3 times. I'll give this a rating of 4 or 5 for drawing credible attention to topics that have become sneered at in a world with an easily controlled status quo. But I would honestly recommend YouTube for these topics instead.