Like many here, I&#x27;ve read ZeroHedge for a few years. I loosely agree with the analysis that the tone has become &quot;conspiratorial,&quot; but this argument fails to disambiguate between a &quot;conspiratorial&quot; tone and the <i>intentionally provocative rhetoric</i> of the ZeroHedge authors. They KNOW their content falls under all those labels so derisively ascribed to it, because that is their intention.<p>My reading of the [conspiratorial|far-fetched|proto-facist] content on ZeroHedge is that it&#x27;s not meant to be literal, but a veneer of SHOCK VALUE that serves two purposes. First, it gets readership due to classic clickbait psychology. Second, its mere existence demonstrably proves ZeroHedge is an &quot;alternative&quot; media site undiluted by editorial filters. This distinguishes it from every mainstream media publication, and that alone makes it worth reading (provided you can find <i>some</i> signal worth your time).<p>The shock value signals to astute readers that ZeroHedge is not a traditional site, and that yes, you SHOULD take everything they say with a grain of salt. But the logical jump from &quot;you should take it with a grain of salt&quot; to &quot;you should ignore it&quot; misses the simple fact that its writers INTEND for the content to be provocative. They WANT you to take it with a grain of salt.<p>Taking things &quot;with a grain of salt&quot; is GOOD for you. It means you are THINKING CRITICALLY. People should be taking <i>everything</i> with a grain of salt. What alarms me most about ZeroHedge is not its content, but the attempted ostracizing of that content by other publications, as if the shock value justifies ignoring it all together. Incidentally, this is the same smear tactic that mainstream media sites are applying to Donald Trump: he says &lt;thing&gt; we find offensive, therefore &lt;every other thing&gt; he says must be invalid. If we applied this logic to all information, there would be no difference of opinion in the world.<p>To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, the person yelling &quot;fire&quot; might be the one worth listening to, and we should always question our own beliefs and fear consensus. To quote him directly, they [0] were &quot;the ones shouting fire when there really was a fire in a very crowded theatre indeed... [W]ho’s going to decide?&quot; [1] [2]<p>[0] &quot;They&quot; were the socialist party of philadelphia, who opposed the draft of WWI, &quot;on the grounds that military conscription constituted involuntary servitude, which is prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment.&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Schenck_v._United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Schenck_v._United_States</a><p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=X3Hg-Y7MugU" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=X3Hg-Y7MugU</a> (thanks to HN commenter in another thread for linking to this today)<p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;documents.ariadacapo.net&#x2F;borrowed&#x2F;2006_11_christopher_hitchens&#x2F;christopher_hitchens_2006_11_talk_transcript.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;documents.ariadacapo.net&#x2F;borrowed&#x2F;2006_11_christopher...</a>