LW, do you happen to be a journalist of some description or is this just a hobbyist thing from sitting on teh interwebz?
When I was a child, first going to school, because I was an early-riser and the school was just down the road I'd usually be there before any teachers even arrived. And because my school was right next to a newspaper factory, we'd get stacks of free newspapers. It'd plant the seeds of my incandescent interest in the world; its past, its present state and how the present state's machinations would unfold in the future. The shady stuff is just a branch of this interest, as I find it entertaining and useful to try and see behind the lines, so to speak, and get a bigger picture. There's a particular high one gets when they see an article detailing how a political coalition failed because one MEP withdrew, and then you recall that MEP had a meeting with a certain commissioner weeks prior, you know? Plus as a general hobby when I write stories but fail to come up with any ideas, I lurk communities just shitposting conspiracy theories as whether true or not, they're bloody creative. And when you
do see something true rising to the surface, like pedophile hollywood directors making cuckold porn on children's TV shows, an impending mass killing or mass shooting being prepared by individuals or governments, or buildups of military troops on foreign borders, taking control of vital bridges in what could only be the preparation of a dirty war... Well, damn. Shit gets real.