I think there is more to it. I recently watched a podcast between a guy who supposedly dedicated half his life to "exposing a conspiracy" about the moon landing and an astronaut from Apollo 16. The podcast is 3-4 hours long, and it's 1:30 in the morning at my place... I can watch it again tomorrow... that is, today, and summarize the main points in a few lines. Unless someone wants to do it before me. Then you can watch this:
Just clicked around and the critic was emotional every time he spoke. He was not the right person for this gig as it's clear he's too emotionally attached to the moon landing never happening to actually evaluate his own facts.
For example, he brings up the destruction of certain films of the landings and even though he asks why would they do that it's purely rhetorical and it doesn't seem like he ever actually engaged with the question himself. It's like the landing being fake was a foregone conclusion so he never stopped to think about why they might do it and what it might mean.
Which suggests one purpose of the fake moon landing conspiracy was to give people an answer before they got the questions so when the questions come up, such as in this interview, it prevents people from engaging with the material to figure out what really happened as they already knew the answer. At least, they would think they know the answer.
The same dynamic observed with the conspiracy theorists can be seen from the other perspective too. When the only alternative presented is the landing being fake it's tempting to dismiss all questions or incongruous facts out of hand because it not happening is so absurd.
The baby is tossed out with the bathwater either way.
My impression too from looking into it shortly. The interviewer already got on my nerves substantially by seemingly constantly running a underlying script of “he is lying or misremembering or he was brainwashed or he is senile“ in everything he asked the poor old astronaut (from the little I saw). Sad that the man didn’t have the opportunity to talk to a much less biased and open podcaster.
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