Inside National Conspiracy Writing Month, a challenge for creating fan fiction about reality

Next week, a tiny group of researchers will feverishly devote themselves to unmasking the shadowy forces that control the world. Thirty days later, they will reveal a series of shocking conspiracies that only the most perceptive — some might even say paranoid — sleuths could possibly uncover. And if they succeed in their mission, nobody will believe a word of it.

The project is called National Conspiracy Writing Month, an unofficial spinoff of the long-running National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) challenge. Where NaNoWriMo requires participants to write a 50,000-word novel, the inaugural NaCoWriMo asks them to produce a “deep, viable, and complete conspiracy theory.” Its creator Tim Hwang hopes these fake plots can illuminate a...

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