Basic Information
A staple of conspiracy games. A tinfoil hat is worn by someone who believes in the conspiracy, to keep the conspiracy from reading or altering their mind.
This is pretty much the portable form of lining the walls of your house/trailer home with foil for much the same purposes.
Presenting someone with a tinfoil hat is a common shorthand for telling them that you consider their opinions insane, especially where they related to conspiracy-theories, authoritarianism or the activities of any large organisation. This can be entirely justified ridicule, a form of media blackwash or just common or garden well-poisoning, depending on who is doing it and why.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- Of course, these may actually work in your setting - or at least some form of insulating, reflective or deconductive headgear may provide protection against psychic powers, orbital mind control lasers or whatever… whether a hat made from kitchen foil actually works, or whether you need something a little better is to be decided.
- Of course, someone who thinks they are protected may be easier to read/influence than someone who is aware that they are being targeted and is actively resisting.
- And if They are really clever, they can do something to the tinfoil instead of using lasers.
- An amulet against mind control magic might take the form of a hat made out of tinfoil.
- Of course, someone who thinks they are protected may be easier to read/influence than someone who is aware that they are being targeted and is actively resisting.
- It is traditional to dismiss anyone in a tinfoil hat as delusional - however, being paranoid does not mean that no-one is conspiring against you.
- Actual monitoring may be due to entirely justified checks on what the unstable mentally ill person is doing, to actual gaslighting against a dissident to the subject being a victim of something like MKULTRA that the agency responsible is still keeping tabs on.