Mike Corley

Mike Corley is probably the most prolific and well known conspiracy theorist to post in Usenet. Most long-term Usenet users are familiar with his posts entitled "MI5 Persecution", although they might not know his name.

His Beliefs

As described in his website, Corley believes that the British internal security service, MI5, has a bullying campaign against him as a psychological experiment. He believes that this is mainly conducted through the British TV and radio media in which any use of the word 'mad' or similar is a direct reference to him. He has offered a £20,000 sterling reward for information directly leading to exposing what he calls the "BBC Newscaster Conspiracy", that BBC newscasters are able to watch him via a hidden camera in his TV set. He also believes that his office, home and friends' homes are bugged. Corley freely admits to having suffered from paranoia and having been treated for mental illness, but he therefore considers that he is best placed to know what madness feels like and is confident that the conspiracy is not part of it.

Usenet "Spamming"

Since 1996, Corley has posted tens of thousands of messages detailing his perceived persecution causing substantial disruption to Usenet. In that year, he started to make extensive use of "spam" via anonymous re-mailers to promote his cause. At that time, this was unusual and many users complained bitterly about their wasted time. Long and acrimonious discussions were prompted as to whether Corley was real, mentally ill or trolling. An explanation, popular then, but considered implausible now, is that Corley was a construct developed by a group of sociology or psychiatry students to study reactions to bizarre and paranoid behaviour, which fitted in with the opinion that he was trolling.

See Also

• David Icke

External Links

• Mike Corley's Conspiracy Website