It was just the latest example of online conspiracy theories spilling over into real life, along with people setting fire to 5G towers in Europe, drinking bleach as a COVID cure in the United States, and refusing to social distance because they think the virus is fake all over the world. More and more, fringe beliefs are turning into headline-grabbing news.

There's an argument that people buy into conspiracy theories because of a general eroding of trust in mainstream media.

What seems more likely is that the surge is the result of a deep-seated, fundamental desire in the human psyche that has been given the space to spread its wings in a way that it never has before, because of the internet. We all want to believe that we are uniquely smart; that we understand things that other people do not; that we are special.

Guilty. Favourite stories have always been the ones that blow up a certain assumption that society has about the world. One may be more prone to devouring them via the Atlantic than David "Avocado" Wolfe's Facebook page, but can intimately recognise the underlying appeal.

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You get to feel like you know something about the world that other people don't. You get to feel superior to people who have chosen to consume different media and, therefore, don't know this incredible thing that you now know. And God, that feels so good.

There are plenty of conspiracy theory-believers in my orbit, ranging from ex-boyfriends to acquaintances to people close. They tend to be people who are not, by traditional social-hierarchy standards, high achievers. They all have a sort of bombastic arrogance that is a cover for excruciatingly low feelings of self-worth.

And what conspiracy theories tell you is: "You feel stupid, but you aren't stupid. You're smart because you see the world for how it is. Those other people, the ones that make you feel inferior - they're the stupid ones.

They believe whatever the government and the mainstream media tells them. You're better than that because you see the truth".

That has such a seductive power. It's freeing and beautiful to feel like you're part of a special group. That there's something about you that differentiates you from the people around you. It's the whole foundation for the superhero narrative - which, judging from Marvel's box office success, hasn't lost its appeal.

And there aren't more conspiracy theories now because this urge to feel special is new; there are more conspiracy theories now because the internet exists.

Twenty years ago, conspiracy theorists were limited to joining a cult; shouting on public transport and in city streets, or chewing the ear off the person sitting next to them in the pub.

Now, you can find thousands of people with the same predilection for disbelieving authority figures that you have, from all over the world, on social media and alternative websites and YouTube comments sections.

A seed of an idea - that in pre-internet times would be a passing thought - is only an absent minded Google search away from being watered and nourished, and grafted onto all sorts of other ideas, and watered again and smothered in fertilizer.

It's scary: this power of the internet to lead people into rabbit holes. It feels like something fundamental is slipping. And it has severe, real-world consequences: the measles outbreak in Samoa last year that killed 60 children was brought via a traveller from New Zealand, where anti-vaccination conspiracy theories have reduced measles vaccination rates. But it's also the dark side of the most wonderful thing about the internet: the democratisation of information.

Society operates under a set of agreed facts, and that includes - as well as things like the colour of the sky and what the time is at any given point - our shared definitions of who should hold power and what is fair. Before the internet, those facts were decided by the narrow section of the population that constitutes decision-makers at TV, radio, and print media organisations. Now, they are being challenged in all sorts of vital ways.

People who have never had a way for their voice to reach others at scale before are finding themselves having a real influence on the communities in which they live.

This has overwhelmingly been a good thing, and even traditional newsrooms are more diverse and are covering subjects that they never would have in the past. The most striking example is #MeToo, a social media hashtag that brought scores of powerful sexual abusers tumbling down in real life.

Do we want to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Do we want to accept insidious conspiracy campaigns along with the ability for each and everyone one of us to make our voices heard? We don't have a choice.

The internet is not going back into the box. What we must do is seek to understand it, take what happens online seriously, and remember that behind every avatar is a person who wants to feel like they belong somewhere.