Thousands of people are sharing a tweet this week that suggests Disney Cruises sends or sent children to Jeffery Epstein’s private island on snorkeling trips. This claim isn’t true, but it is built around a nugget of truth. It festers in that weird gray area in the popular consciousness, where something that is technically a little true is stripped of context and is used as ironclad proof that a larger, false narrative must also be true. In this case, the larger story is the idea that Disney is an evil pedophile ring posing as a multinational entertainment company.
About 15% of people in the U.S. believe the country is “controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation,” according to a PRRI-IFYC study conducted in March and released publicly in May. I doubt many of those people read Lifehacker, so I’m going to take a closer look at this piece of their complicated conspiracy puzzle to illustrate how conspiracy theories work for everyone—whether they’re about satanic pedophiles or Jefferey Epstein having been murdered. (About 45% of Americans believe in that conspiracy theory. Maybe even you.)
The necessary grain of truth
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The tweet about Disney sending children to Epstein’s Island comes from Twitter user @dom_lucre and contains a page from a website describing a snorkeling trip for kids on Disney cruises that reads in part, “Journey to picturesque Turtle Cove, Buck Island and immerse yourself in an underwater wonderland, where you’re invited to swim and snorkel amidst a school of sea turtles for approximately one hour. Afterward, make your way to your second snorkel stop—Little St James Island—where curious fish dart back and forth in the clear blue water…”
The brochure is from a legitimate tour company, the snorkeling trip is (or was) real, and Little St. James Island did belong to notorious pedophile Jeffery Epstein. These facts provide the seed of truth necessary for the “evidence” of a conspiracy to grow and be used to bolster the larger plot line (namely, again, that Disney is a front for an multinational pedophile cabal). An analogous grain of truth in the “Jeffery Epstein was murdered” conspiracy theory is that cameras outside his cell were not working on the night he became un-alive.
In the case of the Disney cruise, snorkeling in the waters off an island is not the same as visiting the island, and the snorkeling trip wasn’t an official Disney activity anyway—a third party company offered these trips, and Disney only pointed to them as a possible activity for cruise-goers. All available evidence indicates Disney doesn’t, didn’t, and has never brought kids to Epstein’s island to snorkel in close proximity to the presumed pedophiles there.
As for Epstein’s suicide, it’s true that at least one camera outside his cell did not produce useable video on the night of his death, but the Metropolitan Correctional Center where he died has many cameras, and it seems impossible that a murderer could avoid them all when sneaking into a jail to commit a crime. Plus, Epstein had tried to kill himself before, and the medical examiner determined his death was a suicide. Of course, if you are inclined to believe conspiracy theories, these supposed facts probably won’t sway you. And that’s the real problem.
Preconceived ideas versus facts
My immediate reaction to reading about Disney’s supposed dark snorkeling trips was to dismiss it on common sense grounds. Disney funneling children to a pedophile’s island doesn’t make sense because there would be no money in it for them. All available evidence suggests that making a lot of money for executives and shareholders is Disney’s main motivation.
But if I had already swallowed the idea that the world is run by satanic child abusers, and I consumed fringe media that pushed this narrative, I’d have had a different reaction. I’d have thought, “Bringing children to Epstein to be abused is exactly what Disney would do!” It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, given everything I already think I know about Disney’s dark motivations.
And when I first heard Epstein died in his cell, I did think, “damn, someone killed him.” It makes sense at first—he probably had a lot of dirt on powerful people, and sending a hitman to kill him in his cell seems like exactly what those people would do. Plus, it seems awfully convenient that that the camera wasn’t working and the guards fell asleep. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.
But once I looked into the facts around Epstein’s death, it became clear that he killed himself. There is a ton of evidence to back this up, and the only evidence that he was murdered is that it’s possible he was murdered. But just because there’s a reason something might have happened (and a way that it could have happened), doesn’t mean that’s how it actually happened. Especially when there is so much evidence on the other side of the scale.
Occam’s razor is sharp
The Occam’s razor explanation of the Disney cruise snorkeling trips is that a vacation-hosting company stops their boat near St. James Island because there are a lot of colorful fish there. In the same way, it’s more likely that the Metropolitan Correctional Center had janky video equipment, and that overworked guards ignored a suicidal pedophile long enough for him to do the world a favor with a bedsheet. People kill themselves in jail all the time, and no one had more motivation for suicide than Jeffery Epstein.
An isolated event in a conspiracy might be plausible, but it doesn’t hold up in context. To believe Disney is, or was, sending children to be abused, or that Jeffery Epstein was murdered, you also have to also believe other entirely ridiculous things. Why did all the parents on the snorkeling trip go along with it? How did a murderer sneak into a heavily fortified jail? Why did dozens of people from all walks of life risk their professional careers to lie about Epstein’s murder? Why would Disney risk the PR nightmare and legal consequences of being discovered? Why would the murderer wait until Epstein was in jail instead of taking care of it earlier, in the days leading up to his arrest, when it was clear he was going to jail? Why would all the Disney cruise employees and jail personnel help cover up these crimes?
Conspiracy theories are comforting
Conspiracy theorists on all sides of the ideological spectrum generally accept implausible events and reject coincidences because they want to live in a world that make sense, and they crave that little jolt of excitement that comes from thinking they possess secret, hidden knowledge.
A cadre of powerful satanists (or billionaires, or Jews, or reverse vampires) secretly controlling everything may seem like a dark worldview, but it’s actually comforting compared to the reality. In the real world, there is no one driving the car, only drunks fighting for the wheel and seven billion helpless passengers. If history is a series of unpredictable events—unintended consequences created by short-sightedness and ignorance instead of the masterplan of the elite lizard people—what can anyone do about anything? There are no satanists to expose and put on trial. Even if we managed to get rid of all the billionaires, the ones who replaced them would be just as horrible.
All that being said, you can be sure that your children are not going to be dropped on a pedophile island on a Disney cruise, and that Jeffery Epstein killed himself.
Misinformation is everywhere. We’re all out here skimming headlines and not reading articles, letting our biases determine our truths, and being intentionally misled by shady actors and algorithms every day. What People Are Getting Wrong This Week seeks to highlight and correct common misconceptions, mistakes, and the occasional opinion I just don’t like. If you spot someone being wrong on the internet, let me know.