Conspiracist validation replaces evidence with communal repetition and affirmation.

Evidence

The process mimics collaboration and peer review: someone posts a hypothesis and others ignore it, reject it, or accept it. Something is accepted when others on the board repeat it and build on it. This is the endpoint of the new conspiracist process at work: bare assertion validated by affirmation—by “a lot of people are saying”—culminating in a piling up of fabulation on fabulation. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 303

Categorization

• DEFINE: Capsules the chapter’s core concept — conspiracism’s affirmation-by-repetition validation logic — in one compressible definitional statement.
• XREF: Directly parallels the chapter-title phrase and the Peircean ‘method of authority’ / persuasion-by-multitude lineage. — connects to: Social validation through sharing now substitutes for evidence as credibility — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 15; Repetition within echo chambers, not evidence, produces conspiracist assent — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 129; Conspiracist propagators treat accuracy as irrelevant because crowdsourcing will reveal truth. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 135 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Repetition substitutes for evidence as validation in new conspiracism #corroborates (0.95) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 15
• Repeated false accusation can generate belief through sheer illocutionary force #corroborates (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1466