The Cult of Joey Dauben

I think it’s important to think about and discuss the mindset that Joey and Brandy adopted, and how that mindset became so pervasive that they completely lost touch with reality. According to political scientist Michael Barkun, conspiracy theorist break down into three groups and the third one certainly describes people like Joey, Brandy, Brannon, Connie, Anthony, and Barbara: Superconspiracy theories. Conspiratorial constructs in which multiple conspiracies are believed to be linked together hierarchically. Event and systemic are joined in complex ways, so that conspiracies come to be nested together. At the summit of the conspiratorial hierarchy is a distant but all-powerful evil force manipulating lesser conspiratorial actors. Superconspiracy theories have enjoyed particular growth since the 1980s, in the work of authors such as David Icke and Milton William Cooper.

Now think, for a second, how your entire world view completely changes if you believed the things they do. It’s a belief system that can't be backed by empirical evidence. You have to buy the argument that the almighty "they" won’t let you hear the truth therefore they know what the truth is but you have to trust them on that since "they" won’t let us see it. At this point, everyone breaks down to either the true believers who have seen the light, and the rest of us who are the sheeple who are slaves to the "they" without even knowing what’s going on.

Here is a very interesting paragraph on Wikipedia about it:
Psychologists believe that the search for meaning is common in conspiracism and the development of conspiracy theories, and may be powerful enough alone to lead to the first formulating of the idea. Once cognized, confirmation bias and avoidance of cognitive dissonance may reinforce the belief. In a context where a conspiracy theory has become popular within a social group, communal reinforcement may equally play a part. Some research carried out at the University of Kent, UK suggests people may be influenced by conspiracy theories without being aware that their attitudes have changed. After reading popular conspiracy theories about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, participants in this study correctly estimated how much their peers' attitudes had changed, but significantly underestimated how much their own attitudes had changed to become more in favor of the conspiracy theories. The authors conclude that conspiracy theories may therefore have a 'hidden power' to influence people's beliefs.

Now, there are two points I would like to extrapolate from this, 1. Scientific studies have shown that people that go down this conspiratorial path lose their basic sense of self awareness. Paging Brandy, Joey, Brannon. 2. Conspiracy theorist fosters a need for communal reinforcement, this is where and what the ECO was for. Again, according to wiki:
Communal reinforcement is a social phenomenon in which a concept or idea is repeatedly asserted in a community, regardless of whether sufficient empirical evidence has been presented to support it. Over time, the concept or idea is reinforced to become a strong belief in many people's minds, and may be regarded by the members of the community as fact. Often, the concept or idea may be further reinforced by publications in the mass media, books, or other means of communication. The phrase "millions of people can't all be wrong" is indicative of the common tendency to accept a communally reinforced idea without question, which often aids in the widespread acceptance of urban legends, myths, and rumors.

Every story, Bible verse, cartoon or lecture that went on at the ECO had a hint of conspiracy behind it. Joey, Brannon and Brandy had to surround themselves with like-minded believers as they pontificated about the rest of us and cherry picked different news articles and put their spin on them to foster their beliefs on others. Those that professed to be true believers were given the microphone; those that did not were outed, branded a name (malcontents or trouble makers) and ultimately moderated or outright banned for their lack of belief. This is what became the cult of Joey Dauben, as he was the head of this, but it was never about him as much as it was about their beliefs. Notice now that even as they distance themselves from Joey, they still hold on to their conspiratorial world view as they now look for a new community of like-minded believers that they can regain their confidence so that they can boldly go back out to the world and proclaim their faith.