The Atlantic Conspiracy theorists keep finding new ways to rebrand themselves. Getty / The Atlantic Sometime in the middle of the pandemic year, and sometime in the middle of a prolonged and compulsive scroll through Instagram, the “truth seekers” came into my life. The term was showing up over and over in the bios and captions of the women I followed, so often that I was starting to feel as if I were seeing things. The lockdowns seemed to have inspired a new kind of internet identity: There were truth-seeking fashion bloggers, truth-seeking travel influencers, and truth-seeking expectant moms who prayed that their daughters would be truth seekers too. Some would even seek the truth across platforms, beckoning their followers to new podcasts about the truth, new Telegram group chats in which the truth was up for discussion, or new lines of truth-related merchandise.