Welcome to a town that doesn't exist. Or so the story goes. This is Bielefeld, in the
north west of Germany, and ever since an Internet joke from 1994 went viral — although the
term "went viral" hadn't been invented in 1994 — but ever since then, there's been
a running gag in Germany about the Bielefeld Conspiracy, about how it's a made-up city.
Do you know anyone from Bielefeld, goes the question? Have you ever been there? Most people
will say no. So how can you be sure that it's real and not what "they" want you to think?
Belief is an incredibly powerful thing. The Bielefeld Conspiracy is a joke that everyone's
in on, but it's a joke that demonstrates safely how good the brain can be at rationalising.
I guarantee that you, out there, you could explain away any evidence that this town exists
with just a few seconds of thought. Maps? Faked. Photos? Faked. Video of the city? Either
shot somewhere else or just fancy computer graphics. If you've actually visited it? False
memories, elaborate ruses, I'm sure you can come up with something better than that.
Now every group of people, no matter how small or large, has its own references, its own
in-jokes, its markers that define them. From jokes that only you and your friends get,
or just you and your partner, scaling up to millions of people who have rickrolling. Or
the entire nation of Germany, which has Bielefeld. Which is a concept and pronunciation I've
probably mangled a bit in translation, given I'm not German.
But groups linked by belief are powerful. Whether it's religion, or lack of religion;
politics, whether it's parties or social views; or belief in a conspiracy theory — humans
ally ourselves with people who think like us, and then we adjust our ideas, slowly and
unconsciously alter our minds, to match those around us, and to favour people like us. Social
psychologist Henri Tajfel experimented in the 70s and 80s with what he called the "minimal
group paradigm": what is the smallest thing that could trigger an us-versus-them attitude?
His answer was, basically, anything at all.
So perhaps it's best, every now and then, to step outside the echo chambers we find
ourselves in, to try to empathise with people who are different than us, and to wonder if,
perhaps, we might be a little wrong. After all, I might be part of the conspiracy.
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