The frequent bragging could be explained by an "antifragility" logic - if an effort was made to actually hide the "stage," then there would be a risk of everyone simultaneously seeing it for the first time at once. Instead, everyone sees it all the time and sees everyone else seeing it and not doing anything about it, and learns to just stop looking. Eyes on the road. Tune out the peripheral. You really do just start to believe that the glimpses of the stage were functionally your imagination.
It's hard for me to buy into a "the brag as taking credit for whatever is happening anyway" model, even if it's obviously simpler, as 1) there seemingly has to be at least some blending, (9-11, though it was covered with obvious tells, still required actual conspiracy) 2) so much of "everyone" is directly adjacent to the stage that the cliched "conspiracies are impossible, someone would talk" trope has no real foundation.
These days it's easy to look at the stage without the old dissonance. All sorts of obvious brags show up. Funny about the Bomb Trutherism, I didn't know that was a thing until recently; I thought I had just come up with that on my own in February but probably had the idea seeded in my head from online.
The frequent bragging could be explained by an "antifragility" logic - if an effort was made to actually hide the "stage," then there would be a risk of everyone simultaneously seeing it for the first time at once. Instead, everyone sees it all the time and sees everyone else seeing it and not doing anything about it, and learns to just stop looking. Eyes on the road. Tune out the peripheral. You really do just start to believe that the glimpses of the stage were functionally your imagination.
It's hard for me to buy into a "the brag as taking credit for whatever is happening anyway" model, even if it's obviously simpler, as 1) there seemingly has to be at least some blending, (9-11, though it was covered with obvious tells, still required actual conspiracy) 2) so much of "everyone" is directly adjacent to the stage that the cliched "conspiracies are impossible, someone would talk" trope has no real foundation.
These days it's easy to look at the stage without the old dissonance. All sorts of obvious brags show up. Funny about the Bomb Trutherism, I didn't know that was a thing until recently; I thought I had just come up with that on my own in February but probably had the idea seeded in my head from online.
Pretty sure most satellites and non-moon missions were/are real. Maybe not Skylab https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Skylab#/media/File:SL4-150-5074.jpg