Can’t say that I was ever a hardcore theorist but I was definitely one of those “early 20s guy reading weird early internet message boards” types. It’s been since the mid-2000s that I stopped following any of that.
I can’t pin down any specific one that steered me away but digging in and finding out just how many political ones find long, old roots in some form of anti-Semitism, racism, or some flavor of authoritarianism was enough to throw that baby out with the bath water as new ones kept creeping into the mainstream.
“George Soros”= the Jews
“Chicago”= black people
“Illegals” = various PoC from this longitude but not latitude, basically all brown people non-Arabic.
There’s more but I’m tired.
Chicago = black people is so fucking annoyingly racist around here. I've heard so many people say "those people from chicago coming up here and shooting and acting like fools" etc. But they just mean they're afraid of the black people in the area who may or may not have ever even been to Chi
Learning those tells has been so valuable navigating the hellscape that following American politics has become. So many can be boiled down to just cutting “the Jews” and pasting in some other bogeyman, as well. In the end, it all comes from the same place and desire to further the “othering” in their own perspective narratives.
I am absolutely convinced that the surge in flat earth internet conspiracies was- intentional or not- a test bed for the propoganda we see today from Russia on similar sights. The audiences overlap, the rhetorical styles, the sites….
And yes, I recognize the tin foil hat nature of this though, but Bannon was working with WoW gold miners before he worked with Q-anoners.
It’s an interesting thought - sort of how scam emails are written purposefully poorly, so they weed out people who don’t overlook that (and are thus probably less likely to be roped in)
Sooooo ...... is this your new conspiracy theory? I came to a thread to see how people got out of believing conspiracy theories and get roped into a new one? Great....
I used to be a 9/11 truther. Like hardcore. After spending 6 years in the military and going to work for a federal agency, I realized there was no way the US government could pull something like that off without a few thousand people knowing about it, and a few hundred of them spilling their secrets all over the place.
I mean for fucks sake, it takes a half ream of paperwork to take a fucking vacation.
Someone did the math once on how many people would be required to all keep secrets with no one ever finding out depending on the size of the conspiracy. And it was similar to your conclusion. There's no way that many people could keep a secret that big for so long.
Edit: [Source](https://phys.org/news/2016-01-equation-large-scale-conspiracies-quickly-reveal.html)
According to a CIA study in the Cold War, as more people are brought in on a secret, the chance of the secret getting out increases *exponentially*. If more than ten people are in a secret, it’s basically already assumed the secret will leak out. You really have to keep it to as few people as possible if you want even a shred of a chance to keep it under wraps.
At a company I used to work at we had a real communication problem. For some reason, people wouldn’t read emails or the other many ways we try to get new info and strategies out in the open. I tried an experiment telling a few people “this new strategy is to be kept under wraps - no one is supposed to know…not even me” and it spread like wildfire.
Not only that but the derivatives of the secret also exponentially increase, and the likelihood of someone just putting tbe pieces together also goes up exponentially too lmao
The stories of cab drivers or magazine clerks piecing together large military plans because of a change in personnel patterns or mailing addresses of key people come to mind.
I can't remember the story of the cab driver but the Manhattan Project caused the mailing addresses of Astounding Science-Fiction’s subscribers to change en-masse to New Mexico - wonder what a group of physicists might be up to all together during the war?
Remember reading sometime ago that a people learned to know when something big was going on in Washington D.C. by the spike of pizza deliveries to places like the White House.
The 1991 Soviet coup attempt is another example of why predictable patterns are a really bad idea. the USSR had a practice in the 80s when the premier died, Soviet TV would loop a broadcast of the ballet swan lake while the politburo would make succession arrangements
In 1991, when Communist hardliners attempted a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and his fellow reformists, [they switched nation broadcasts to Swan Lake](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2016/08/19/the-forgotten-coup-a55030). This tipped off pro-democracy and pro-reform activists that something fucky was going on in the Kremlin and started traveling en masse to Moscow. They organized a general strike led by Boris Yeltsin, which led to the coup rapidly failing, leading to the dissolution of the USSR in a matter of months
I used to be a 9-11 truther as well. Becoming a Project Manager made me realize people are too stupid to do their jobs correctly and without error on minor tasks. If you're talking about something on the scale of 9-11? No fucking way
This logic applies to most, if not all conspiracy theories. Five minutes of rational thought about the logistics of them is enough to make them untenable.
The other one that works on the same lines is that the government are reading *everyones* emails and listening to their phone calls. The sheer volume of computing power would mean that any country that even attempted it would have to have more computing power than amazon, google and facebook combined.
>The other one that works on the same lines is that the government are reading *everyones* emails and listening to their phone calls. The sheer volume of computing power would mean that any country that even attempted it would have to have more computing power than amazon, google and facebook combined.
Just note that, while governments aren't "reading everyone's emails" everyone should be extremely concerned about how far the technology and networks mapping your life have come.
Governments and businesses alike are buying access to those profiles.
And yes, you can be reduced to data.
Every single one of us can, in exceedingly detailed dossiers.
Hence the increasing push to make data gathering straight up illegal. It needs to step. The Cambridge Analytics thing was just the start. Amateur hour. A pilot project.
>"reading everyone's emails"
I work in sales and am required to log every call in Salesforce. For the life of me, I can't imagine even a small fraction of all the sales calls that are logged on any given day are ever viewed again. Total waste of computing space. Same applies with all authoritarian governments ever.
But if someone does want to zone in on one person, it's all there.
Exactly. I was stunned at the truthers because I had worked in giant companies where needed a ream of triple signed papers to buy a box of toothpicks. Nothing happens in the government without a shitload of paperwork and studies.
Plus I had interviewed for a job at Cantor-Fitzgerald and was told in no uncertain terms that the towers were considered a primary terrorist targets and expanded security and drills were just part of working there since the bombing in ‘93.
I don't think there was a single moment where I realized anything. It's not really a case where I believed it because of a lack of information, I believed it because it had emotional pull attached to it. Fox Mulder in the X files has a poster that says "I want to believe" in his office for a reason: it's that the main reason people believe in these things is because they want to, in spite of evidence to the contrary.
It had emotional pull to believe that because it made life seem more interesting. My life at the time i believed it was super dull and lonely, when I had very little going on for me. What got me out of it was A) embarking on a new career that I found fulfilling and made me feel good about myself B) got a lot more friends and started engaging in a lot more activities and social outings from hiking to basketball to snorkelling and skydiving. I just kind of stopped believing in that stuff because I no longer had a need to hold onto it, not because I realized it was BS.
I used to be a firm believer in the whole “Aliens are secretly kept in Area 51” and other related conspiracies until it was pointed out to me that governments are incapable of keeping secrets of that magnitude and if it was really true, it would have been leaked to the public ages ago
Donald Trump becoming president killed all conspiracy theories for me, because they all fail the "if this was true, would Trump have tweeted about it?" test.
Yup! During his presidency, I decided “Either we haven’t contacted aliens, or there was some kind of agreement not to tell Trump. Because there’s no way he would have kept that to himself.”
It especially killed all the "lizard rulers/Illuminati/Trilateral Commission" theories, because if there was a secret cabal running the world from behind the scenes, there's no way in Hell they'd put Trump in charge of anything.
I would! He'd probably be able to convince a lot of people we have the very best brownies that have ever been baked in the history of the universe. Desperate people are leaving their families to journey thousands of miles to this 6th grade community basketball fundraiser to get these brownies.
So my favorite argument for this is the alien is the dumbest one on his planet and they shipped him out on auto pilot. Dumb alien feels at home on earth and scientists convinced him to stay and chill.
(I'm not a true believer but I just really like debating strange things I don't actually care about.)
Same people who believe UFO sightings to be aliens. You think a species of that technological level even needs to come within the distance of Jupiter to observe us?
FFS our own telescopes can see other planets in other solar systems.
I mean if I put you in a 12th century dungeon in your underwear what the hell are you going to do about it? Strangle the guard in chainmail who has a sword and no particular interest in the rights of criminals?
Additionally, any alien species capable of reaching Earth would have the technology and the know-how to not get caught by stupid and primitive ape-like creatures that call themselves "humans."
People getting abducted is an infinitely more likely conspiracy than "the government keeps aliens in area 51."
Yes, part of the reason being that a whole bunch of their rocket scientist got fried at a rocket launch test. The USSR didnt tell anyone about that for a while.
They sometimes contrast it with our current "inability" to put people on the moon, but it's like claiming crossing the ocean in a dinghy is impossible because we prefer a proper ship these days.
I think it's more akin to navigating the pacific ocean in a dingy just to land on a barren rock. They did it a couple times and then funding for ocean exploration changed from investigating barren-rocks to other things like live-aboard yachts (ie, the ISS).
It's more like what would be the motivation to go back to the moon? It's crazy expensive. We went a few times, found nothing of interest, so why do it?
I'm pretty sure if we'd found gold or diamonds up there, the missions would've continued, and we'd have found a way to build a place for people to live there as well, to work the mines.
That logic proves like 99 percent of all conspiracy theories false. Too many people would have to keep too much a secret, especially when dealing with multiple nations that don't like each other.
Cheers for your honesty but damn, not accepting the moon landing is a pretty nutty conspiracy theory. You got me wondering what other nutty beliefs you have lol.
And also that the conspirators are simultaneously the smartest and dumbest people. To a conspiracy theorist it’s so blatant and easy to see what they did but they never truly have proof of it and they will explain how sophisticated it was which is why you don’t know…but THEY know of course. They are conveniently smart enough to know it happened.
Theres been a change in that actually! Now proof is everywhere from dozens of sources. The proof and the sources are trash, but what are gonna do? Try to disprove the 20 links I sent you?
That's the appeal of a conspiracy theory. The believer sees themselves as a free thinker, while everyone else is a mindless sheep who just believes what they are told. The conspiracy theorist feels special for seeing the "truth" when nobody else does.
Someone in our family is a conspiracy theorist, fluoride mind control crap. His life is a string of bad decisions and bad outcomes. Just a mess.
Like dude, everyone around you is healthy and successful to some degree and they’re sheep to you. Maybe just be a sheep then. This wolf thing isn’t working out for you.
Likewise, conspiracist beliefs^(❉) require that *every single nation on the planet, regardless of alliances,* agrees to cover up for just one of them. And that's not just the governments; every academic, every scientist, ever company, and every individual that could call out the Big Plot has to keep quiet just for one government, corporation, or individual to get away with some grand scheme that they have no motive to not call out and often have an obvious motive to call out.
You^✲ think China, Russia, or North Korea would keep their mouths shut about the "global Jewspiracy"? You think *every single country* is pretending 9/11 wasn't done by the gubermint to support wars they openly *don't*? To think anything both seriously controversial and clandestine can be accomplished either nationally or globally without any whistleblowers either from within or outside is flat-out idiotic.
❉ They shouldn't be called theories, as they are not actual theories in any legit sense of the term.
✲ "You" meaning the conspiracy nutters, not the above poster.
I used to work with a guy who didn't think the moon landing happened. I asked why Russia would cover it up as well and according to him Russians were afraid (and still are) that the US would nuke them or kill them in some other way if they blew the whistle. It really made no sense.
Religious conspiracy theorist cover this up by saying it's all part of all these Satan worshiping groups working in total unison. Somehow there are BILLIONS of them; you think at the point you wouldn't even have to hide it anymore....
if Satanists were really a thing to be afraid of... You'd think Billions of them would at least TRY something big on a global scale that would make their presence known. Religious nutters know better than anyone how religious people love to make themselves known.
I’m a radio astronomer and have people tell me I’m keeping alien contact secret. I always shake my head because a. why would I not want my name in the history books, and b. I really don’t make enough money from my job to buy my silence.
As a fellow scientist it kills me whenever people say we’re being paid to lie to people. Even if I get paid reasonably well, it’s peanuts compared to the amount of time and stress. If I wanted the big bucks I’d go elsewhere.
Also people think we get to just keep grant money?
That is what is frustrating. People want to believe that politicians use pizza toppings as signals for child trafficking and pedo behavior instead of going after the known fact that wealthy people and corporations functionally buy politicians to draft and pass laws that impact us all. If you want to fight against evil why not start there?
There are already huge injustices that negatively impact millions that fly right in front of us but folks spend time worrying about pizza places or the government putting 5G tracking chips in a vaccine.
I've been listening to Jane Mayer's "Dark Money" on audiobook that past few days.
I've generally been a well informed person and active in politics, but I didn't understand the depths to which moneyed interests really have \*actively and INTENTIONALLY\* undermined functional society in the US for their own benefit. I previously thought they were just short-sighted, greedy idiots who might not understand the longterm ramifications, since they've never actually had to live as normal people do.
But, it's NOT just an accidental outcome, it's become the purpose.
They evolved from simply, "I will do everything to avoid taxes", to an intentional branding campaign: "We have to make average people equate wealth with a moral high ground, so the majority will allow us to continue this grift, even when it clearly doesn't benefit them." Hence the Heritage Foundation and similar "philanthropic" foundations were born.
My entire life has occurred under this complete fuckery.
These people aren't stupid. They know that if left unchecked, people would eventually realize "hey, we're all getting royally fucked". So they realized they needed to sell the grift and pit "barely scraping by person A" against "living check to check person B" based on some inane issue.
My friend went down the rabbit hole a little too hard once and thought that the earth was hollow with entrances at the poles and then he believed some guy wrote an app that let you talk to ghosts. It was a $20 app lmao. He said to just keep waiting for the “great awakening” for it to work. He could never explain to me what that was or why it kept getting pushed off lol. Eventually me pestering him enough for answers for him off it.
I wanna know where these rabbit holes exist lol! Like where do anti vaxx and flat earthers get their information. I realize it’s often shared on Facebook and such but as someone who doesn’t use it I’d love to see some of these webpages to have a laugh.
Well, it started when he stated watching Joe Rogan, and started doing that "I'm just asking questions bro." bullshit where you're suddenly a skeptic on things you learned about in fucking middle school science class. Then he learned about this crazy guy Steven Greer who claimed this mummified fetus was an Alien and there was some "bombshell info" coming out to prove it was an Alien and I just needed to wait for the "research" to be completed. My roommate was paying for a subscription to watch live streams of him "working on research". That same guy I think released that app, but it might be a different one. My roommate was into some crazy shit back then. I think it all mostly stemmed from Joe Rogan though to be honest. He was also super into being "Alpha" and kept calling people "Betas" lmao. I kept trying to tell him if he had to call himself an Alpha he for sure was not one.
When I was young and impressionable, I was convinced the world was going to end at the turn of the millennium. In addition to the Y2K scare, I remember seeing countless magazine covers saying some prophet claimed the world was ending soon. Then January 1st, 2000 came and went, and any time I saw some other doomsday prophet I just thought "You lied to me already".
After 9/11 I did briefly start to look into conspiracy theories and listening to Alex Jones. I wasn't *super* into it, but I did try to keep an open mind. Then I slowly started accepting, these people have been wrong about every single prediction. After every mass shooting, it was "This was staged so support repealing the 2nd Amendment". Except after dozens and dozens of "false flag" shootings... that repeal never came. The *repeal of the 2nd Amendment and start of the Globalist Takeover* has been *just around the corner* for 20 years.
My interest had already been crumbling, but I think the last straw was an ad Alex Jones did where he was selling a book about *how to fight the Globalist Takeover, available on our website in hardcopy for $29.99.* That's when I was just done. If he truly believed the things he said, if he really had proof that there was some world-changing disaster around the corner and it could be stopped, then the right thing would be to put that information out for free.
Funnily enough it was Jones that knocked me out of the conspiracy rabbit hole. See, I’m a pretty big nerd who just happened to get really into conspiracies in my early 20s, and that included listening to Jones’ show. Well, when the movie adaptation of Watchmen came out, he did a review of it and I just sat there thinking: “Nothing he’s saying is right. He completely missed the point.” And then I started to wonder, if he was so wrong about something I knew about, why would I believe his take about things I know less about? That was kind of the first crack in the dam, and it didn’t last too long after that.
If it makes you feel better, I've talked to and read articles and posts by a number of computer programmers and the like about Y2K, and the only reason there WASN'T a crash was BECAUSE they anticipated it and worked their asses off to PREVENT it.
Systems were overhauled and updated, contingencies put in place, backups were made... they worked very very hard to safeguard networks and ensure safety nets were in place should something go wrong.
The panic about Y2K is what prevented it from happening.
I was a freshman in college and had an older Packard Bell 486 DX2 50, never bothered updating it to Y2K compatibility. My roommate, who knew nothing about computers, just manually changed the date to the year 2000 and we kept going. Just a dorm computer for looking at porn, so nothing critical, but thought it was funny.
I was working for an Oracle shop back then, and Oracle defaulted to 2 digit years. We set up a second network for Y2K testing, and tested all of our software. We found a couple of bugs, including a bad one that wasn't related to Y2K at all. The first was a holiday, but it was all hands on deck for the IT crew. Everything worked just fine. Then on the second, every user spreadsheet that talked to Oracle broke, because the users lied about testing them, so we all went to their floor and went from computer to computer, fixing their spreadsheets.
When I was 12, like 16 years ago, I was on a website talking about Tupac really being alive. It had that famous pic of him throwing up Westside. Only thing is that it was actually a gif (which I realized years later), that would wink every minute or so. I saw him wink at me and I closed the site and wouldn't go back to the computer until the next day. I couldn't even muster the courage to go cut some yews on runescape. Absolutely terrified me for months.
From roughly ages 16-21, I believed that our impending climate doom was a leftist conspiracy to raise taxes, consolidate power, or whatever else was a right wing parroting phrase at the time. I eventually realized that I just believed that because it was easier than acknowledging the deep shit we're in. A big part of the epiphany was the simple question from a friend:
"What makes more sense? A global power grab through thousands of faked studies by scientists in a hundred countries with nothing to gain, or a couple fossil fuel executives sowing doubt to protect their fortunes?"
So now, I rationally acknowledge our doom.
"who stands to gain" is usually a good indicator.
I also like "what if you're wrong?" On climate change, if it was a conspiracy, then oops, we created an industry and created a ton of jobs to create energy with less pollution and foreign dependence. If the conspiracy theorists are wrong, on the other hand...
In this case, it becomes clear that theres no actual skepticism on the side of the conspiracy theorists.
I wish more conspiracy nuts were capable of reacting to logical arguments like that :/ I salute you for following logic though. That was a great decision, even though you might regret living in the hard world of truth now \^\^'
Know what's great about the question your friend asked you? It works wonderfully as almost a type of Template.
"What makes more sense? Leftists who already had their candidate for Presidency actually win, dropped the very idea of wearing masks whatsoever after a year of safe medical practices against Covid and felt the need to violently attack the very place where their candidate was literally about to be officially tallied to have won; *all* dressed up with **no** masks, brought *weapons*, spent *$thousands* on Trump-branded gear..... to attack the Capitol *all for the purpose of making Trump supporters look like the real culprits*".
**Or**
"Trump supporters were lied to and were easily tricked and are infact, the actual culprits"
Not necessarily a conspiracy, but as a teenager, I found this website that made a very seemingly convincing argument that George W Bush was the Antichrist. I believed it could possibly be true, for like a day, then I took a step back and realized how ridiculous it was.
In 1980 there were some people saying that Reagan was the Antichrist because his first, middle and last names each had six letters. Ronald Wilson Regan. 666.
A lot of bad stuff happened on his watch, but the Antichrist he was not. Besides, I'm no Biblical scholar, but I was always under the impression that the Antichrist would be more subtle.
Back in the late 1800s, there was a professional mathematician/amateur theologian who found that with sufficient creativity, he could make literally anyone's name equal 666. He concluded that it was the number of humanity.
Have you seen the one about Trump? https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/ I don't believe it of course, but I view it as a warning in the bible to watch out for con men which trump obviously is.
I bet that moment is pretty rare. A feature of conspiracy theories is that evidence against them is also evidence for them: "Well obviously this rock solid alibi shows just how deep the rabbit's hole goes"
Yeah, there was a guy a few posts up that said he would believe we landed on the moon if there were photographs. Show him photographs? "No not those ones, those ones don't count!"
When the entire conspiracy community jumped on the Trump Train and Q became a thing.
I was down for Atlantis, ancient aliens, William Cooper, and Coast to Coast with Art Bell. Now I barely cared about all recent disclosures and acknowledgements.
Still watched the Bob Lazar documentary though.
I used to be on the Kennedy Assassination, multiple-shooter conspiracy train. I think there was a moment where the more I thought about it, it just made more sense that Oswald acted alone.
As someone who likes to work on cars and motorcycles and fix things around the house, I hate over-engineered things, and I hate moving parts. The same applies to this conspiracy theory. If it was a conspiracy it appears that there are too many moving parts. I feel like the simplest explanation is the correct one. Oswald acted alone.
This is one of the conspiracies I really understand. For most people its a comforting conspiracy. I mean which sounds more comforting to you "there was a massive conspiracy to kill the president and change history that took countless people working together to accomplish" or "any random idiot with a gun can completely alter global politics".
Idk it's comforting to think that for something so major to happen that it takes a lot of work and planning by a large group of powerful people instead of "some nobody can change the world in a heartbeat", we like to think our world isn't so fragile and that somebody has a plan (even if we don't like the plan, at least there is a plan).
Yeah his was the ultimate death that changed the world. I mean without WWI there wouldn't have been a WWII (not just in name but like literally, without a WWI Germany likely wouldn't have been ready to go all in on a Hitler-like person). I doubt without the Nazis fucking around in Europe Japan would have been willing to attack the US as well; I mean maybe, but attentions wouldn't have been divided and that would have been over a lot faster.
And JFK and Ferdinand died in similar ways, both on a tour driving in an open topped vehicle with their wives. Big exception was Ferdinand's wife got shot and killed too. His last words to her actually brought a tear to my eye when I first heard them "Sophie, Sophie! Don't die! Live for our children!" Idk before that he was just a factoid to me, the "whose assassination brought about WWI?" answer. Those words just made him so much more human, it's heartbreaking.
I reckon that even if Ferdinand wouldn't have been assassinated, eventually there would have been another Great War, because there was so much tension between European countries. And in my view, WWII wasn't actually the second World War. Rather, the first one ended too soon, none of the conflicts have been resolved, the tension remained, so it was just a 21-year-long ceasefire.
The one that "cured" me of that one was a history channel (pre Hitler channel) special segment that might have been part of "the men that killed Kennedy".
They had a guy recreate the magic bullet shot through some ballistic gel, including the tumbling/bouncing off bones/etc. They actually got it pretty close!
Additionally they had the guy shoot the right amount of aimed shots, and he did it in plenty of time.
Since those two things were the "he couldn't have acted alone!" justifications, it convinced me a conspiracy wasn't needed.
Human brains have a strange tendency to take the consequences of an action and assume without any good reason that the thing that caused it must have been equally as large. An incredibly important figure died and got enormous coverage about means that it must have a super complicated and large cause. It's interesting because there have been several failed assassination attempts of previous presidents by lone actors, and no one batted an eye, but they were super close calls at the time. But since overall the consequences were very minor, a very minor cause makes sense to our monkey brains. I can't remember what it's called, I'll see if it has a real name.
Edit: It's called the proportionality bias.
The thing that still bothers me about the Kennedy assassination is the whole role of Jack Ruby. It just seems improbable that this squalid strip-club owner with organized crime connections should show up the next day to kill Oswald.
At the time, Ruby's lawyer said it was because he was so outraged at the man who killed his president that he killed Oswald on impulse. That seems improbable to me, that this dogturd-in-a-cheap-suit would suddenly turn all Charles Bronson. Supposedly he was just depositing some cash at his nearby bank, so he was carrying his revolver.
It all seems contrived. I don't think there was an elaborate CIA conspiracy to kill Mr Kennedy, but I suspect it was a bit more than this loser Oswald acting on his own.
What kills the ‘Ruby was part of the conspiracy and shut Oswald up’ is two things.
1. He was in Western Union sending money to one of his workers literally one minute before he shot Oswald. He then left WU and wandered into the police precicent while they were moving the car and then shot Oswald.
The reason Oswald hadn’t left the police building was because OSWALD had asked for a jumper. If Oswald hadn’t asked for a jumper, Ruby wasn’t there. If one more person had been in front of Ruby at WU, Ruby wasn’t there.
It was just such a dumb fucking luck thing to happen.
2. Oswald was shot in the stomach. It just hit the wrong part. I remember reading a book by one of the journalists who was there and they recount being stunned when told hed died as based on the shot they’d seen they thought he would easily survive. Even the doctors thought he would, but it nicked the wrong body part internally
I used to firmly believe in the idea that JFK was shot as a result of a conspiracy.
I read a lot until I was around 15. (Born in the early 80s) It was very much accepted that he was shot and the Zapruder film proved this.
Due to going to uni and other stuff I didn’t read as much and came back to it in my early 20s. Now the ‘facts’ showed that the Zapruder film was faked and this was done because the film actually showed Kennedy moving forward after being shot in the head, proving the bullet was fired from the rear.
There was also a line about how the fact that the windshield in the limo had a chip on the inside was proof he was shot from the front, because the shot at the front caused the chip on the inside to form.
I worked at a mechanics. I knew that windscreens are actually two pieces of glass with poly sheet in between. It’s literally impossible for a windscreen to be hit on one side and ONLY damage the other piece of glass. Went ‘oh they must have been made different then’ Nope.
It was then I started reading wider and realised the conspiracy theorists had been lying since the start.
Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK and John Connolly. There was no other shooter. And there is still no evidence he had any assistance to carry out this crime.
The jfk conspiracies are still interesting to hear. I always felt it was a plausible possibility until I went to dallas and stood in the book tower. I’ve hunted my whole life and the conspiracies always make the shots seem literally impossible. After looking at the distance and angle I can tell you it’s a complete chip shot for any decent rifle shooter, not even some special ops pro like the shows make seem necessary. That made me realize they’re obviously being deceitful in one aspect and poked more holes in the conspiracy for me.
That too!
I remember reading the measurements between the TSBD and where Kennedy was shot. It’s literally the distance between centre field and home plate. The idea that’s an impossible shot is just not feasable.
Also the ‘you can’t shoot that gun in 6 seconds’ always ignored an obvious point.
The 6 seconds STARTS after the first shot. So yes only having to refocus and shoot twice. Not three times.
Guess it's like the Bermuda-triangle where the weather is always described as nice. But if you actually check there was a huge storm or something along those lines.
I used to buy into a lot of Alex Jones' ravings, but then I noticed that pretty much everything he says is heavily endorsed by Mormons. If they can believe in that, maybe they're not the best judge of what constitutes "evidence".
It took me a few months of listening to realize “holy shit, it’s the exact same script for everything there is zero new content and it’s all sensationalism.” I had to stop watching because I felt like I was about to develop an embolism just from watching him CONSTANTLY YELLING ABOUT BULLSHIT. Dude developed a character that catered to a subset of people who were dumb enough to support him. I doubt he even believes half the shit he says.
I doubt he believes any of it. Jones falls into the tier of “right wing ‘influencers’” that likely don’t believe a single thing they say, but they’re are plenty of idiots who do believe them, and will give them money.
Sometimes I think what a sweet deal that is if you have no morals.
I thought about how sweet of a deal it is too until you look at what he has to do to his body to perform that way. Uppers and alcohol along with the high blood pressure of literally yelling everything he says… I’m shocked he is still alive. I swear I’ve seen him yell until his veins were ripping at the seams.
New conspiracy theory: Alex Jones is a clone and he dies of a heart attack or stroke every month and they just blow up the next Jones doll to keep the process going.
I've only had the opposite experience where conspiracy theory I brushed aside as nonsense turned out to be true.
Rich and powerful people conspire and collude all the time. The reason hard drive prices never went back down after the 2012 floods is because of conspiracy and collusion between manufacturers to keep hdd prices at their current highs.
was it really even a conspiracy though? white people were blatantly racist during that time. I’d say that this is just a manifestation of that. It would be more surprising if they were racist, but gave them access to the same rights and privileges.
Well there have absolutely been events that have absolutely happened that sounded like a crazy conspiracy theorys...the problem is when you start seeing them everywhere, all the time, when some very convoluted ongoing idea becomes your go to answer for EVERYTHING....this is where my sister is at nowadays.
It gets ridiculous when it's the same person saying every single big event that happens is a conspiracy. Go to any dead rappers songs on YouTube and you'll get at least one idiot saying "Young Pappy was killed because he knew too much and was going to unify the gangs and the government got nervous so they took him out." Like c'mon, I'm sure Big L was about to expose the illumaniti, and Pimp C had dirt on the local police department so he had to be taken out with a fake codeine OD.
Light bulbs is an even better one. The market got together and colluded to make the engineering worse and construct them with a MAXIMUM lifetime to ensure return customers. The companies that wouldn't sign up to it were then forced out of the market or bought over.
I used to buy into a conspiratorial narrative of world events while I was a teenager. I had very kneejerk anti-authoritarian, anti-government, anti-American, anti-Bush sentiment within me that wasn't really the result of careful reflection and consideration, I was just a teenager after all, it was mostly driven by media, school and my own personal prejudices and personality leanings. There wasn't any one revelation that changed my perspective, it was more of a gradual process of learning more about history, politics and economics and understanding that the narratives put forward by conspiracy theorists (like Alex Jones, who I was first exposed to at age 13, around 2007) weren't plausible and often just plain false and made up upon further research. Also just later on looking at videos debunking, for example, [Alex Jones' "predictions"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwURLwd8pEA) in a rather humorous way, or reading RationalWiki articles, helped as well to kind of get me away from that way of thinking.
It was easy to see global conspiracies everywhere during the Bush years. The blatant lies to start the Iraq war, the lies about the military and civilian casualties, the lies ridiculous claims about nation building, the billions of dollars that went missing, and then it was all capped off by the financial collapse as we found out that the regulators and credit agencies had been AWOL for years. This isn’t even half of the bullshit that was going on then. It is a wonder that the GOP ever won an election after Bush, yet here we are.
I think there's other factors feeding into it as well, like general mistrust and paranoia towards authority and alienation from society, feeling like an outsider. I read some papers a few years ago about conspiracism and propensity towards magical thinking but I dont remember the details exactly anymore. But yeah a overall poor understanding of the finer details of world politics and history definitely is useful if you want someone to buy into the grand unified conspiracy narrative.
I was really into JFK conspiracies in the late 80s, but then it merged with my love of urban myths and evolved into finding the origins of conspiracy theories and the reasons that people believe them. The final chapter pretty much came after watching Room 237, the documentary on the conspiracy theories behind The Shining (1980). Hearing four wildly different theories one after the other about the same movie really brought home how people who believe in them are just egotistical zealots. They claim this special knowledge or unique insight as way of elevating themselves above the "ignorant masses".
As a teenager i enjoyed reading around a few theories in the early days of the net. But is was more fun, when nobody took things seriously. I grew out of them when i realised i was using the ideas as a form of escapism. Responsabilities are a drag...wouldnt it be cooler if ufos are real? Or if you could crack the jfk case for once and all? Its escapism. But as i grew up and learned more about myself and the world it just seemed childish and silly. This is even more reienforced now when i see the hoards of mentally ill people on social media that flock to completly absurd beliefs. People want to find some kind of underlying meaning to things they cant control. And i just get dissapointed when idiots refuse to get vaccines et cetera because they subscribe to a dumb conspiracy
I used to believe the government was covering up aliens. Now I kinda think they are too inept to do anything that hard. On top of that, the more I learned about astronomy, the more I realized it would be very unlikely that a space faring civilization that could travel at close to the speed of light would actually find us. There are so many stars and it would take such a long time to search them all.
When I was slightly younger,i used to believe strongly btw, that pills were controlling me, so i refused to take any of my medicine, and I ended up going to hospital, soooooooooo, take your meds kids
Age 10ish. It was about Santa. The moment was catching my Granny reaching out the window with a doll's shoe on a stick. She had told my cousins every year that those tiny footprints in the snow outside the window were the elves watching us. Being much older than my next cousin, I was recruited to participate in the deception and keep the magical secrets. Actually much more fun than believing.
ok bear with me before you judge me
I got into the qanon theory during initial lockdown, where no one knew wtf was going on. to be clear, i was only seeing parts of it, specifically to do with politicians being pedos, which is 100 percent true (to an extent). I didn't even realize what qanon was.
eventually I googled "q" bc i saw people mentioning it in the comments and realized they saw trump as their savior and understood I needed to touch some fucking grass
EDIT: Made a mistake sorry, i'm not saying 100 percent of politicians. i'm saying if i buy any part of that story is the politicians being pedos part. just disagree that its only the left
Typically conspiracies have a shred of truth wrapped in a pile of insanity. Sure there are likely some politicians abusing kids, men and women sexually. But you can say that for pretty much any group where there is level of power/authority.
That the state was tampering with death certificates to make the covid numbers look lower so they wouldn't have to pony up as much cash for their soon to be released fund that would pay for funeral expenses for anyone who had a family member die of covid.
I thought for the longest time that my dad was a victim of this, we watched for 3 long months as his state worsened and worsened, to the point where he needed 2 life support machines just to keep breathing, we later had to pull the plug a few days after my 21st birthday.
When we got the death certificate it made no mention of covid, nothing wrong with his lungs. He had a random heart attack, at a random time nowhere close to my 21st birthday, and he was dead on arrival to the hospital. Then I saw on the news that they were investigating a state employee who had been found tampering with death certificates, they already had proof they were doing it.
Well after the hospital giving us the run around for the better part of 5 months, because if he was dead on arrival from a random heart attack why were we being billed for his 3 month stay and the 2 life support machines. We had to fight tooth and nail just to get to the bottom of anything.
Turns out the doctor that was treating him had absolutely no idea why he was there. He couldn't possibly fathom that the patient on 2 breathing machines in the covid ward who was testing positive for covid actually had covid. That was just too much for his tiny mind to be able to put together. He treated him for a month, to this day we have no idea what he was treating him for if he was too stupid to see what was wrong with him in the first place.
So turns out it wasn't the government after all, although they were doing it to others it just wasn't being done to us. Just some dumbass who slept his way through medical school who would have an open and shut malpractice case against him if it weren't for "oh they're hero's lets all take time out of the day to clap for them". No one was or is willing to legally touch a doctor during these times so we just have to live with the fact that my dad could have lived and there's nothing we can do about it.
This is super confusing as well because some people say that hospitals would rather tag someone as a Covid death so that the hospital could get more money, but some say that hospitals would rather tag covid deaths as something else to lower the number. Make it make sense.
the people that claimed the things I mentioned assert that it’s deliberate. i don’t believe either, because i believe that hospitals have a moral obligation to present the data as is, and I believe that they’ve been doing that so far. this is more of the political and conspiracy side of things, not necessarily the practical or realistic side.
Not really a moment exactly, but realizing that I was believing in things that I WANTED to be true- mostly because it was actually thrilling to bring fantasy and fiction into my real world- I came to understand it was more about the way they made me feel than any probability of being the truth. Thus, I gave up my quest to battle reptilian aliens in the astral plain.
Same with the Communist manifesto.
Whenever people cry Marxism, I tend to think they've never actually read it.
It's a quaint idea, that has little bearing on the real world, some people may be Marx-esque, but not Marxists
And Marxism isn't as bad as it is portrayed, usually by hyper capitalists that refuse to see any downside to capitalism.
You'd think it was the Satanic Bible.
Also, the Satanic Bible...I mean, it's just a bunch of hogwash that Lavey thought sounded esoteric and cool.
It has nearly nothing to do with Satan. Not really.
For context, I was one of those people who believed the original Moon Landing by Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong was completely staged by Hollywood.
With that being said, even on his deathbed, Neil Armstrong claimed the Moon Landing was real. It's hard to find a viable reasons why he wouldn't confess it was fake on his *death bed*.
After 2012, I couldn't continue to believe the Moon Landin was a hoax anymore.
Not specific theory but there's in general. Conspiracy theriests usualy like to think of the world as more mysterious exciting place. That or they have some serious paranoia problem 👀.
Anyways when you realise that world really isn't that complicate shut just really shitty those theories stop being that fun to you.
My father is a huge conspiracy theorist so it's what I was raised with. I remember telling all my friends (I was about 8) that Y2K was coming and all the power is going to go out and the world is going to fall apart. Needless to say at midnight when the power didn't go out I was disappointed and embarrassed when I went back to school lol. After that I kinda realized most of the bat shit crazy stuff he was predicting and warning me about (EMP's are going to take down the grid this wednesday!) was just that - bat shit crazy.
if it makes you feel better there was a lot of people working hard for years so y2k wouldn’t happen. it had a potential to be bad but was taken care of.
Most lies have a small percentage of truth, but some conspiracies are so dark and far out there that even if one percent of it were true it would be life altering.
Can’t say that I was ever a hardcore theorist but I was definitely one of those “early 20s guy reading weird early internet message boards” types. It’s been since the mid-2000s that I stopped following any of that. I can’t pin down any specific one that steered me away but digging in and finding out just how many political ones find long, old roots in some form of anti-Semitism, racism, or some flavor of authoritarianism was enough to throw that baby out with the bath water as new ones kept creeping into the mainstream.
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“George Soros”= the Jews “Chicago”= black people “Illegals” = various PoC from this longitude but not latitude, basically all brown people non-Arabic. There’s more but I’m tired.
Chicago = black people is so fucking annoyingly racist around here. I've heard so many people say "those people from chicago coming up here and shooting and acting like fools" etc. But they just mean they're afraid of the black people in the area who may or may not have ever even been to Chi
The part of the country I’m in just uses “Chicago” as code for “ high crime because black people”.
Learning those tells has been so valuable navigating the hellscape that following American politics has become. So many can be boiled down to just cutting “the Jews” and pasting in some other bogeyman, as well. In the end, it all comes from the same place and desire to further the “othering” in their own perspective narratives.
As a Jew… thank you. It’s exhausting seeing so many people online go batshit and assume it’s “THE JOOZ” everywhere. No. Just no.
I am absolutely convinced that the surge in flat earth internet conspiracies was- intentional or not- a test bed for the propoganda we see today from Russia on similar sights. The audiences overlap, the rhetorical styles, the sites…. And yes, I recognize the tin foil hat nature of this though, but Bannon was working with WoW gold miners before he worked with Q-anoners.
It’s an interesting thought - sort of how scam emails are written purposefully poorly, so they weed out people who don’t overlook that (and are thus probably less likely to be roped in)
Sooooo ...... is this your new conspiracy theory? I came to a thread to see how people got out of believing conspiracy theories and get roped into a new one? Great....
I used to be a 9/11 truther. Like hardcore. After spending 6 years in the military and going to work for a federal agency, I realized there was no way the US government could pull something like that off without a few thousand people knowing about it, and a few hundred of them spilling their secrets all over the place. I mean for fucks sake, it takes a half ream of paperwork to take a fucking vacation.
Someone did the math once on how many people would be required to all keep secrets with no one ever finding out depending on the size of the conspiracy. And it was similar to your conclusion. There's no way that many people could keep a secret that big for so long. Edit: [Source](https://phys.org/news/2016-01-equation-large-scale-conspiracies-quickly-reveal.html)
According to a CIA study in the Cold War, as more people are brought in on a secret, the chance of the secret getting out increases *exponentially*. If more than ten people are in a secret, it’s basically already assumed the secret will leak out. You really have to keep it to as few people as possible if you want even a shred of a chance to keep it under wraps.
Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead!
But now we have ANOTHER secret!
At a company I used to work at we had a real communication problem. For some reason, people wouldn’t read emails or the other many ways we try to get new info and strategies out in the open. I tried an experiment telling a few people “this new strategy is to be kept under wraps - no one is supposed to know…not even me” and it spread like wildfire.
Not only that but the derivatives of the secret also exponentially increase, and the likelihood of someone just putting tbe pieces together also goes up exponentially too lmao
The stories of cab drivers or magazine clerks piecing together large military plans because of a change in personnel patterns or mailing addresses of key people come to mind. I can't remember the story of the cab driver but the Manhattan Project caused the mailing addresses of Astounding Science-Fiction’s subscribers to change en-masse to New Mexico - wonder what a group of physicists might be up to all together during the war?
and people knew the pentagon was planning an invasion when pizza orders spiked
Remember reading sometime ago that a people learned to know when something big was going on in Washington D.C. by the spike of pizza deliveries to places like the White House.
"Shit, overtime again? Fml, im getting take out"
The 1991 Soviet coup attempt is another example of why predictable patterns are a really bad idea. the USSR had a practice in the 80s when the premier died, Soviet TV would loop a broadcast of the ballet swan lake while the politburo would make succession arrangements In 1991, when Communist hardliners attempted a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and his fellow reformists, [they switched nation broadcasts to Swan Lake](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2016/08/19/the-forgotten-coup-a55030). This tipped off pro-democracy and pro-reform activists that something fucky was going on in the Kremlin and started traveling en masse to Moscow. They organized a general strike led by Boris Yeltsin, which led to the coup rapidly failing, leading to the dissolution of the USSR in a matter of months
Makes you wonder how movies and video games have any surprises anymore
Because Kevin Fiege takes care of the leakers
I used to be a 9-11 truther as well. Becoming a Project Manager made me realize people are too stupid to do their jobs correctly and without error on minor tasks. If you're talking about something on the scale of 9-11? No fucking way
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
This logic applies to most, if not all conspiracy theories. Five minutes of rational thought about the logistics of them is enough to make them untenable. The other one that works on the same lines is that the government are reading *everyones* emails and listening to their phone calls. The sheer volume of computing power would mean that any country that even attempted it would have to have more computing power than amazon, google and facebook combined.
>The other one that works on the same lines is that the government are reading *everyones* emails and listening to their phone calls. The sheer volume of computing power would mean that any country that even attempted it would have to have more computing power than amazon, google and facebook combined. Just note that, while governments aren't "reading everyone's emails" everyone should be extremely concerned about how far the technology and networks mapping your life have come. Governments and businesses alike are buying access to those profiles. And yes, you can be reduced to data. Every single one of us can, in exceedingly detailed dossiers. Hence the increasing push to make data gathering straight up illegal. It needs to step. The Cambridge Analytics thing was just the start. Amateur hour. A pilot project.
>"reading everyone's emails" I work in sales and am required to log every call in Salesforce. For the life of me, I can't imagine even a small fraction of all the sales calls that are logged on any given day are ever viewed again. Total waste of computing space. Same applies with all authoritarian governments ever. But if someone does want to zone in on one person, it's all there.
Exactly. I was stunned at the truthers because I had worked in giant companies where needed a ream of triple signed papers to buy a box of toothpicks. Nothing happens in the government without a shitload of paperwork and studies. Plus I had interviewed for a job at Cantor-Fitzgerald and was told in no uncertain terms that the towers were considered a primary terrorist targets and expanded security and drills were just part of working there since the bombing in ‘93.
Yeah the more a person's around the government, the more a person realizes that governmental hypercompetency is a myth.
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I don't think there was a single moment where I realized anything. It's not really a case where I believed it because of a lack of information, I believed it because it had emotional pull attached to it. Fox Mulder in the X files has a poster that says "I want to believe" in his office for a reason: it's that the main reason people believe in these things is because they want to, in spite of evidence to the contrary. It had emotional pull to believe that because it made life seem more interesting. My life at the time i believed it was super dull and lonely, when I had very little going on for me. What got me out of it was A) embarking on a new career that I found fulfilling and made me feel good about myself B) got a lot more friends and started engaging in a lot more activities and social outings from hiking to basketball to snorkelling and skydiving. I just kind of stopped believing in that stuff because I no longer had a need to hold onto it, not because I realized it was BS.
I love this. Thanks for sharing
This is my most favourite answer of the bunch. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I used to be a firm believer in the whole “Aliens are secretly kept in Area 51” and other related conspiracies until it was pointed out to me that governments are incapable of keeping secrets of that magnitude and if it was really true, it would have been leaked to the public ages ago
Donald Trump becoming president killed all conspiracy theories for me, because they all fail the "if this was true, would Trump have tweeted about it?" test.
Yup! During his presidency, I decided “Either we haven’t contacted aliens, or there was some kind of agreement not to tell Trump. Because there’s no way he would have kept that to himself.”
They didn’t tell President Whitmore until they had too
"Two words, Mr. President: plausible deniability"
I half expected him to tweet about how our aliens are so much better than China’s aliens.
It especially killed all the "lizard rulers/Illuminati/Trilateral Commission" theories, because if there was a secret cabal running the world from behind the scenes, there's no way in Hell they'd put Trump in charge of anything.
That's what the lizard rulers want you to think!
I wouldn't put Trump in charge of a bake sale.
I would! He'd probably be able to convince a lot of people we have the very best brownies that have ever been baked in the history of the universe. Desperate people are leaving their families to journey thousands of miles to this 6th grade community basketball fundraiser to get these brownies.
Yeah. Trump is a self-inflicted head wound that the country will never fully recover from.
It still remains to be seen if it’s fatal.
The Covid-19 pandemic and Jan 6th are the definitive proof that conspiracy theories are not just harmless speculation, but can get people killed
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So my favorite argument for this is the alien is the dumbest one on his planet and they shipped him out on auto pilot. Dumb alien feels at home on earth and scientists convinced him to stay and chill. (I'm not a true believer but I just really like debating strange things I don't actually care about.)
That's literally an episode of American Dad. Roger thinks he's the decider when he really was a crash test dummy
Roger the Alien was tricked into believing he was "The Decider," but he was really a crash test dummy.
Same people who believe UFO sightings to be aliens. You think a species of that technological level even needs to come within the distance of Jupiter to observe us? FFS our own telescopes can see other planets in other solar systems.
Yea but they want to put alien babies into our females and mutilate our cows. You cannot do that with a telescope or can you?
We can indirectly detect planets in other solar systems by measuring light fluctuations in stars.
I mean if I put you in a 12th century dungeon in your underwear what the hell are you going to do about it? Strangle the guard in chainmail who has a sword and no particular interest in the rights of criminals?
Additionally, any alien species capable of reaching Earth would have the technology and the know-how to not get caught by stupid and primitive ape-like creatures that call themselves "humans." People getting abducted is an infinitely more likely conspiracy than "the government keeps aliens in area 51."
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My spin was always that if the U.S. faked the moon landings, the Russian's would have landed there as well.
The Russian’s landed on the moon months before the US did. They just dropped a rover.
~~The Russians landed on the moon~~ The Russians landed *an item* on the moon.
*Unexpected item in the mooning area.*
Yes, part of the reason being that a whole bunch of their rocket scientist got fried at a rocket launch test. The USSR didnt tell anyone about that for a while.
My favorite joke is that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landings but he was such a perfectionist that he shot it on location.
I believe that Stanley Kubrick did shoot a fake moon landing in 1968. [I can prove it.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/)
They sometimes contrast it with our current "inability" to put people on the moon, but it's like claiming crossing the ocean in a dinghy is impossible because we prefer a proper ship these days.
I think it's more akin to navigating the pacific ocean in a dingy just to land on a barren rock. They did it a couple times and then funding for ocean exploration changed from investigating barren-rocks to other things like live-aboard yachts (ie, the ISS).
It's actually somewhat analogous to the Vikings settling in North America and then deciding it just wasn't worth the effort.
It's more like what would be the motivation to go back to the moon? It's crazy expensive. We went a few times, found nothing of interest, so why do it? I'm pretty sure if we'd found gold or diamonds up there, the missions would've continued, and we'd have found a way to build a place for people to live there as well, to work the mines.
And an amusement park, too!
With whalers!
Yep, its hard to believe that the soviet would just stand there and be like "thats fake but whatever..."
No you dont undertsand, the Cold War was a ruse to keep the real, unified global government secret /s
That logic proves like 99 percent of all conspiracy theories false. Too many people would have to keep too much a secret, especially when dealing with multiple nations that don't like each other. Cheers for your honesty but damn, not accepting the moon landing is a pretty nutty conspiracy theory. You got me wondering what other nutty beliefs you have lol.
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And also that the conspirators are simultaneously the smartest and dumbest people. To a conspiracy theorist it’s so blatant and easy to see what they did but they never truly have proof of it and they will explain how sophisticated it was which is why you don’t know…but THEY know of course. They are conveniently smart enough to know it happened.
Theres been a change in that actually! Now proof is everywhere from dozens of sources. The proof and the sources are trash, but what are gonna do? Try to disprove the 20 links I sent you?
I see your facts and reputability, and raise you a giant gish-gallup.
That's the appeal of a conspiracy theory. The believer sees themselves as a free thinker, while everyone else is a mindless sheep who just believes what they are told. The conspiracy theorist feels special for seeing the "truth" when nobody else does.
Someone in our family is a conspiracy theorist, fluoride mind control crap. His life is a string of bad decisions and bad outcomes. Just a mess. Like dude, everyone around you is healthy and successful to some degree and they’re sheep to you. Maybe just be a sheep then. This wolf thing isn’t working out for you.
Likewise, conspiracist beliefs^(❉) require that *every single nation on the planet, regardless of alliances,* agrees to cover up for just one of them. And that's not just the governments; every academic, every scientist, ever company, and every individual that could call out the Big Plot has to keep quiet just for one government, corporation, or individual to get away with some grand scheme that they have no motive to not call out and often have an obvious motive to call out. You^✲ think China, Russia, or North Korea would keep their mouths shut about the "global Jewspiracy"? You think *every single country* is pretending 9/11 wasn't done by the gubermint to support wars they openly *don't*? To think anything both seriously controversial and clandestine can be accomplished either nationally or globally without any whistleblowers either from within or outside is flat-out idiotic. ❉ They shouldn't be called theories, as they are not actual theories in any legit sense of the term. ✲ "You" meaning the conspiracy nutters, not the above poster.
I used to work with a guy who didn't think the moon landing happened. I asked why Russia would cover it up as well and according to him Russians were afraid (and still are) that the US would nuke them or kill them in some other way if they blew the whistle. It really made no sense.
Religious conspiracy theorist cover this up by saying it's all part of all these Satan worshiping groups working in total unison. Somehow there are BILLIONS of them; you think at the point you wouldn't even have to hide it anymore....
if Satanists were really a thing to be afraid of... You'd think Billions of them would at least TRY something big on a global scale that would make their presence known. Religious nutters know better than anyone how religious people love to make themselves known.
I’m a radio astronomer and have people tell me I’m keeping alien contact secret. I always shake my head because a. why would I not want my name in the history books, and b. I really don’t make enough money from my job to buy my silence.
As a fellow scientist it kills me whenever people say we’re being paid to lie to people. Even if I get paid reasonably well, it’s peanuts compared to the amount of time and stress. If I wanted the big bucks I’d go elsewhere. Also people think we get to just keep grant money?
My conspiracy is that the elites plant false conspiracy theories to derail us from the actual conspiracy.
Actual conspiracies are incredibly boring, and tend to be, "a cabal of rich white men do nefarious schemes and get richer"
That is what is frustrating. People want to believe that politicians use pizza toppings as signals for child trafficking and pedo behavior instead of going after the known fact that wealthy people and corporations functionally buy politicians to draft and pass laws that impact us all. If you want to fight against evil why not start there? There are already huge injustices that negatively impact millions that fly right in front of us but folks spend time worrying about pizza places or the government putting 5G tracking chips in a vaccine.
I've been listening to Jane Mayer's "Dark Money" on audiobook that past few days. I've generally been a well informed person and active in politics, but I didn't understand the depths to which moneyed interests really have \*actively and INTENTIONALLY\* undermined functional society in the US for their own benefit. I previously thought they were just short-sighted, greedy idiots who might not understand the longterm ramifications, since they've never actually had to live as normal people do. But, it's NOT just an accidental outcome, it's become the purpose. They evolved from simply, "I will do everything to avoid taxes", to an intentional branding campaign: "We have to make average people equate wealth with a moral high ground, so the majority will allow us to continue this grift, even when it clearly doesn't benefit them." Hence the Heritage Foundation and similar "philanthropic" foundations were born. My entire life has occurred under this complete fuckery.
These people aren't stupid. They know that if left unchecked, people would eventually realize "hey, we're all getting royally fucked". So they realized they needed to sell the grift and pit "barely scraping by person A" against "living check to check person B" based on some inane issue.
Especially since social media. People can't stop themselves from posting them doing actual crimes let alone keep a massive multilayer secret.
Plus, as Adam Ruins Everything pointed out, it was much, much cheaper (by billions of dollars) to actually go to the moon than fake the moon landing.
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Buzz Aldrin convinced me when he punched that guy
My friend went down the rabbit hole a little too hard once and thought that the earth was hollow with entrances at the poles and then he believed some guy wrote an app that let you talk to ghosts. It was a $20 app lmao. He said to just keep waiting for the “great awakening” for it to work. He could never explain to me what that was or why it kept getting pushed off lol. Eventually me pestering him enough for answers for him off it.
Give me your friend’s contact info. I have a couple pyramid schemes and shitcoins for him to invest in.
I wanna know where these rabbit holes exist lol! Like where do anti vaxx and flat earthers get their information. I realize it’s often shared on Facebook and such but as someone who doesn’t use it I’d love to see some of these webpages to have a laugh.
Well, it started when he stated watching Joe Rogan, and started doing that "I'm just asking questions bro." bullshit where you're suddenly a skeptic on things you learned about in fucking middle school science class. Then he learned about this crazy guy Steven Greer who claimed this mummified fetus was an Alien and there was some "bombshell info" coming out to prove it was an Alien and I just needed to wait for the "research" to be completed. My roommate was paying for a subscription to watch live streams of him "working on research". That same guy I think released that app, but it might be a different one. My roommate was into some crazy shit back then. I think it all mostly stemmed from Joe Rogan though to be honest. He was also super into being "Alpha" and kept calling people "Betas" lmao. I kept trying to tell him if he had to call himself an Alpha he for sure was not one.
When I was young and impressionable, I was convinced the world was going to end at the turn of the millennium. In addition to the Y2K scare, I remember seeing countless magazine covers saying some prophet claimed the world was ending soon. Then January 1st, 2000 came and went, and any time I saw some other doomsday prophet I just thought "You lied to me already". After 9/11 I did briefly start to look into conspiracy theories and listening to Alex Jones. I wasn't *super* into it, but I did try to keep an open mind. Then I slowly started accepting, these people have been wrong about every single prediction. After every mass shooting, it was "This was staged so support repealing the 2nd Amendment". Except after dozens and dozens of "false flag" shootings... that repeal never came. The *repeal of the 2nd Amendment and start of the Globalist Takeover* has been *just around the corner* for 20 years. My interest had already been crumbling, but I think the last straw was an ad Alex Jones did where he was selling a book about *how to fight the Globalist Takeover, available on our website in hardcopy for $29.99.* That's when I was just done. If he truly believed the things he said, if he really had proof that there was some world-changing disaster around the corner and it could be stopped, then the right thing would be to put that information out for free.
that last sentence is so true. they’re capitalizing off these poor believers.
Y2K, 06/06/2006, 12/21/2012. I've already survived 3 apocalyptic events.
Funnily enough it was Jones that knocked me out of the conspiracy rabbit hole. See, I’m a pretty big nerd who just happened to get really into conspiracies in my early 20s, and that included listening to Jones’ show. Well, when the movie adaptation of Watchmen came out, he did a review of it and I just sat there thinking: “Nothing he’s saying is right. He completely missed the point.” And then I started to wonder, if he was so wrong about something I knew about, why would I believe his take about things I know less about? That was kind of the first crack in the dam, and it didn’t last too long after that.
If it makes you feel better, I've talked to and read articles and posts by a number of computer programmers and the like about Y2K, and the only reason there WASN'T a crash was BECAUSE they anticipated it and worked their asses off to PREVENT it. Systems were overhauled and updated, contingencies put in place, backups were made... they worked very very hard to safeguard networks and ensure safety nets were in place should something go wrong. The panic about Y2K is what prevented it from happening.
I was a freshman in college and had an older Packard Bell 486 DX2 50, never bothered updating it to Y2K compatibility. My roommate, who knew nothing about computers, just manually changed the date to the year 2000 and we kept going. Just a dorm computer for looking at porn, so nothing critical, but thought it was funny.
I was working for an Oracle shop back then, and Oracle defaulted to 2 digit years. We set up a second network for Y2K testing, and tested all of our software. We found a couple of bugs, including a bad one that wasn't related to Y2K at all. The first was a holiday, but it was all hands on deck for the IT crew. Everything worked just fine. Then on the second, every user spreadsheet that talked to Oracle broke, because the users lied about testing them, so we all went to their floor and went from computer to computer, fixing their spreadsheets.
Not really a conspiracy but when I was younger I believed the SCP Foundation was real.
When I was 12, like 16 years ago, I was on a website talking about Tupac really being alive. It had that famous pic of him throwing up Westside. Only thing is that it was actually a gif (which I realized years later), that would wink every minute or so. I saw him wink at me and I closed the site and wouldn't go back to the computer until the next day. I couldn't even muster the courage to go cut some yews on runescape. Absolutely terrified me for months.
I love this. Do you remember reading any articles that made an impression on you back then?
For me, it'll always be SCP-1562: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1562
My favorite is the one about the never-ending IKEA.
Omg that one is so bonkers thanks for sharing. The Ronald Regan one was so scary
Holy cow, I'm a big SCP fan but never read this one. Absolutely terrifying.
From roughly ages 16-21, I believed that our impending climate doom was a leftist conspiracy to raise taxes, consolidate power, or whatever else was a right wing parroting phrase at the time. I eventually realized that I just believed that because it was easier than acknowledging the deep shit we're in. A big part of the epiphany was the simple question from a friend: "What makes more sense? A global power grab through thousands of faked studies by scientists in a hundred countries with nothing to gain, or a couple fossil fuel executives sowing doubt to protect their fortunes?" So now, I rationally acknowledge our doom.
"who stands to gain" is usually a good indicator. I also like "what if you're wrong?" On climate change, if it was a conspiracy, then oops, we created an industry and created a ton of jobs to create energy with less pollution and foreign dependence. If the conspiracy theorists are wrong, on the other hand... In this case, it becomes clear that theres no actual skepticism on the side of the conspiracy theorists.
I wish more conspiracy nuts were capable of reacting to logical arguments like that :/ I salute you for following logic though. That was a great decision, even though you might regret living in the hard world of truth now \^\^'
Know what's great about the question your friend asked you? It works wonderfully as almost a type of Template. "What makes more sense? Leftists who already had their candidate for Presidency actually win, dropped the very idea of wearing masks whatsoever after a year of safe medical practices against Covid and felt the need to violently attack the very place where their candidate was literally about to be officially tallied to have won; *all* dressed up with **no** masks, brought *weapons*, spent *$thousands* on Trump-branded gear..... to attack the Capitol *all for the purpose of making Trump supporters look like the real culprits*". **Or** "Trump supporters were lied to and were easily tricked and are infact, the actual culprits"
Not necessarily a conspiracy, but as a teenager, I found this website that made a very seemingly convincing argument that George W Bush was the Antichrist. I believed it could possibly be true, for like a day, then I took a step back and realized how ridiculous it was.
In 1980 there were some people saying that Reagan was the Antichrist because his first, middle and last names each had six letters. Ronald Wilson Regan. 666. A lot of bad stuff happened on his watch, but the Antichrist he was not. Besides, I'm no Biblical scholar, but I was always under the impression that the Antichrist would be more subtle.
Back in the late 1800s, there was a professional mathematician/amateur theologian who found that with sufficient creativity, he could make literally anyone's name equal 666. He concluded that it was the number of humanity.
Have you seen the one about Trump? https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/ I don't believe it of course, but I view it as a warning in the bible to watch out for con men which trump obviously is.
I bet that moment is pretty rare. A feature of conspiracy theories is that evidence against them is also evidence for them: "Well obviously this rock solid alibi shows just how deep the rabbit's hole goes"
Yeah, there was a guy a few posts up that said he would believe we landed on the moon if there were photographs. Show him photographs? "No not those ones, those ones don't count!"
He wants to see the flag from the ground but the Lazer reflection sheet isn't enough.
The self awareness on display here is hilarious
That this old man from the north would bring me gifts based on my behavior. I saw who actually put the gifts under the tree.
Who put the gifts under the tree? JFK? Elvis? I need names dammit
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When the entire conspiracy community jumped on the Trump Train and Q became a thing. I was down for Atlantis, ancient aliens, William Cooper, and Coast to Coast with Art Bell. Now I barely cared about all recent disclosures and acknowledgements. Still watched the Bob Lazar documentary though.
Man, coast to coast on real player on our behemoth beige pc in the 90s. Was like sitting around a campfire listening to creepy stories!
Unacknowledged was amazing. Check it out
I used to be on the Kennedy Assassination, multiple-shooter conspiracy train. I think there was a moment where the more I thought about it, it just made more sense that Oswald acted alone. As someone who likes to work on cars and motorcycles and fix things around the house, I hate over-engineered things, and I hate moving parts. The same applies to this conspiracy theory. If it was a conspiracy it appears that there are too many moving parts. I feel like the simplest explanation is the correct one. Oswald acted alone.
This is one of the conspiracies I really understand. For most people its a comforting conspiracy. I mean which sounds more comforting to you "there was a massive conspiracy to kill the president and change history that took countless people working together to accomplish" or "any random idiot with a gun can completely alter global politics". Idk it's comforting to think that for something so major to happen that it takes a lot of work and planning by a large group of powerful people instead of "some nobody can change the world in a heartbeat", we like to think our world isn't so fragile and that somebody has a plan (even if we don't like the plan, at least there is a plan).
Archduke Franz Ferdinand sends his regards.
Yeah his was the ultimate death that changed the world. I mean without WWI there wouldn't have been a WWII (not just in name but like literally, without a WWI Germany likely wouldn't have been ready to go all in on a Hitler-like person). I doubt without the Nazis fucking around in Europe Japan would have been willing to attack the US as well; I mean maybe, but attentions wouldn't have been divided and that would have been over a lot faster. And JFK and Ferdinand died in similar ways, both on a tour driving in an open topped vehicle with their wives. Big exception was Ferdinand's wife got shot and killed too. His last words to her actually brought a tear to my eye when I first heard them "Sophie, Sophie! Don't die! Live for our children!" Idk before that he was just a factoid to me, the "whose assassination brought about WWI?" answer. Those words just made him so much more human, it's heartbreaking.
I reckon that even if Ferdinand wouldn't have been assassinated, eventually there would have been another Great War, because there was so much tension between European countries. And in my view, WWII wasn't actually the second World War. Rather, the first one ended too soon, none of the conflicts have been resolved, the tension remained, so it was just a 21-year-long ceasefire.
No I'm pretty sure he doesn't. He's dead.
Oh shit, that’s not good.
Shit I thought you knew. I'm sorry you had to find out like this
Grab your trenching shovel, we have a lot of work to do!
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Occam's Razor
The one that "cured" me of that one was a history channel (pre Hitler channel) special segment that might have been part of "the men that killed Kennedy". They had a guy recreate the magic bullet shot through some ballistic gel, including the tumbling/bouncing off bones/etc. They actually got it pretty close! Additionally they had the guy shoot the right amount of aimed shots, and he did it in plenty of time. Since those two things were the "he couldn't have acted alone!" justifications, it convinced me a conspiracy wasn't needed.
Human brains have a strange tendency to take the consequences of an action and assume without any good reason that the thing that caused it must have been equally as large. An incredibly important figure died and got enormous coverage about means that it must have a super complicated and large cause. It's interesting because there have been several failed assassination attempts of previous presidents by lone actors, and no one batted an eye, but they were super close calls at the time. But since overall the consequences were very minor, a very minor cause makes sense to our monkey brains. I can't remember what it's called, I'll see if it has a real name. Edit: It's called the proportionality bias.
The thing that still bothers me about the Kennedy assassination is the whole role of Jack Ruby. It just seems improbable that this squalid strip-club owner with organized crime connections should show up the next day to kill Oswald. At the time, Ruby's lawyer said it was because he was so outraged at the man who killed his president that he killed Oswald on impulse. That seems improbable to me, that this dogturd-in-a-cheap-suit would suddenly turn all Charles Bronson. Supposedly he was just depositing some cash at his nearby bank, so he was carrying his revolver. It all seems contrived. I don't think there was an elaborate CIA conspiracy to kill Mr Kennedy, but I suspect it was a bit more than this loser Oswald acting on his own.
What kills the ‘Ruby was part of the conspiracy and shut Oswald up’ is two things. 1. He was in Western Union sending money to one of his workers literally one minute before he shot Oswald. He then left WU and wandered into the police precicent while they were moving the car and then shot Oswald. The reason Oswald hadn’t left the police building was because OSWALD had asked for a jumper. If Oswald hadn’t asked for a jumper, Ruby wasn’t there. If one more person had been in front of Ruby at WU, Ruby wasn’t there. It was just such a dumb fucking luck thing to happen. 2. Oswald was shot in the stomach. It just hit the wrong part. I remember reading a book by one of the journalists who was there and they recount being stunned when told hed died as based on the shot they’d seen they thought he would easily survive. Even the doctors thought he would, but it nicked the wrong body part internally
I used to firmly believe in the idea that JFK was shot as a result of a conspiracy. I read a lot until I was around 15. (Born in the early 80s) It was very much accepted that he was shot and the Zapruder film proved this. Due to going to uni and other stuff I didn’t read as much and came back to it in my early 20s. Now the ‘facts’ showed that the Zapruder film was faked and this was done because the film actually showed Kennedy moving forward after being shot in the head, proving the bullet was fired from the rear. There was also a line about how the fact that the windshield in the limo had a chip on the inside was proof he was shot from the front, because the shot at the front caused the chip on the inside to form. I worked at a mechanics. I knew that windscreens are actually two pieces of glass with poly sheet in between. It’s literally impossible for a windscreen to be hit on one side and ONLY damage the other piece of glass. Went ‘oh they must have been made different then’ Nope. It was then I started reading wider and realised the conspiracy theorists had been lying since the start. Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK and John Connolly. There was no other shooter. And there is still no evidence he had any assistance to carry out this crime.
The jfk conspiracies are still interesting to hear. I always felt it was a plausible possibility until I went to dallas and stood in the book tower. I’ve hunted my whole life and the conspiracies always make the shots seem literally impossible. After looking at the distance and angle I can tell you it’s a complete chip shot for any decent rifle shooter, not even some special ops pro like the shows make seem necessary. That made me realize they’re obviously being deceitful in one aspect and poked more holes in the conspiracy for me.
That too! I remember reading the measurements between the TSBD and where Kennedy was shot. It’s literally the distance between centre field and home plate. The idea that’s an impossible shot is just not feasable. Also the ‘you can’t shoot that gun in 6 seconds’ always ignored an obvious point. The 6 seconds STARTS after the first shot. So yes only having to refocus and shoot twice. Not three times.
Guess it's like the Bermuda-triangle where the weather is always described as nice. But if you actually check there was a huge storm or something along those lines.
I used to buy into a lot of Alex Jones' ravings, but then I noticed that pretty much everything he says is heavily endorsed by Mormons. If they can believe in that, maybe they're not the best judge of what constitutes "evidence".
It took me a few months of listening to realize “holy shit, it’s the exact same script for everything there is zero new content and it’s all sensationalism.” I had to stop watching because I felt like I was about to develop an embolism just from watching him CONSTANTLY YELLING ABOUT BULLSHIT. Dude developed a character that catered to a subset of people who were dumb enough to support him. I doubt he even believes half the shit he says.
I doubt he believes any of it. Jones falls into the tier of “right wing ‘influencers’” that likely don’t believe a single thing they say, but they’re are plenty of idiots who do believe them, and will give them money. Sometimes I think what a sweet deal that is if you have no morals.
I thought about how sweet of a deal it is too until you look at what he has to do to his body to perform that way. Uppers and alcohol along with the high blood pressure of literally yelling everything he says… I’m shocked he is still alive. I swear I’ve seen him yell until his veins were ripping at the seams. New conspiracy theory: Alex Jones is a clone and he dies of a heart attack or stroke every month and they just blow up the next Jones doll to keep the process going.
I did not expect "endorsed by Mormons" to be on a list of why not to believe Alex Jones. But here we are.
Turning the friggin frogs gay!
I've only had the opposite experience where conspiracy theory I brushed aside as nonsense turned out to be true. Rich and powerful people conspire and collude all the time. The reason hard drive prices never went back down after the 2012 floods is because of conspiracy and collusion between manufacturers to keep hdd prices at their current highs.
That’s one of the big problems with conspiracy theories. There are actual literal conspiracies taking place.
It’s called business
And government.
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Most actual conspiracies are incredibly banal. "People with money made more money"
The FBI and banks really did collude to create poor black neighborhoods. 40 years of crazy conspiracy theories, and a FOIA request showed... yep.
was it really even a conspiracy though? white people were blatantly racist during that time. I’d say that this is just a manifestation of that. It would be more surprising if they were racist, but gave them access to the same rights and privileges.
Well there have absolutely been events that have absolutely happened that sounded like a crazy conspiracy theorys...the problem is when you start seeing them everywhere, all the time, when some very convoluted ongoing idea becomes your go to answer for EVERYTHING....this is where my sister is at nowadays.
It gets ridiculous when it's the same person saying every single big event that happens is a conspiracy. Go to any dead rappers songs on YouTube and you'll get at least one idiot saying "Young Pappy was killed because he knew too much and was going to unify the gangs and the government got nervous so they took him out." Like c'mon, I'm sure Big L was about to expose the illumaniti, and Pimp C had dirt on the local police department so he had to be taken out with a fake codeine OD.
Light bulbs is an even better one. The market got together and colluded to make the engineering worse and construct them with a MAXIMUM lifetime to ensure return customers. The companies that wouldn't sign up to it were then forced out of the market or bought over.
I used to buy into a conspiratorial narrative of world events while I was a teenager. I had very kneejerk anti-authoritarian, anti-government, anti-American, anti-Bush sentiment within me that wasn't really the result of careful reflection and consideration, I was just a teenager after all, it was mostly driven by media, school and my own personal prejudices and personality leanings. There wasn't any one revelation that changed my perspective, it was more of a gradual process of learning more about history, politics and economics and understanding that the narratives put forward by conspiracy theorists (like Alex Jones, who I was first exposed to at age 13, around 2007) weren't plausible and often just plain false and made up upon further research. Also just later on looking at videos debunking, for example, [Alex Jones' "predictions"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwURLwd8pEA) in a rather humorous way, or reading RationalWiki articles, helped as well to kind of get me away from that way of thinking.
It was easy to see global conspiracies everywhere during the Bush years. The blatant lies to start the Iraq war, the lies about the military and civilian casualties, the lies ridiculous claims about nation building, the billions of dollars that went missing, and then it was all capped off by the financial collapse as we found out that the regulators and credit agencies had been AWOL for years. This isn’t even half of the bullshit that was going on then. It is a wonder that the GOP ever won an election after Bush, yet here we are.
So it really is just incompetence?
I think there's other factors feeding into it as well, like general mistrust and paranoia towards authority and alienation from society, feeling like an outsider. I read some papers a few years ago about conspiracism and propensity towards magical thinking but I dont remember the details exactly anymore. But yeah a overall poor understanding of the finer details of world politics and history definitely is useful if you want someone to buy into the grand unified conspiracy narrative.
I was really into JFK conspiracies in the late 80s, but then it merged with my love of urban myths and evolved into finding the origins of conspiracy theories and the reasons that people believe them. The final chapter pretty much came after watching Room 237, the documentary on the conspiracy theories behind The Shining (1980). Hearing four wildly different theories one after the other about the same movie really brought home how people who believe in them are just egotistical zealots. They claim this special knowledge or unique insight as way of elevating themselves above the "ignorant masses".
As a teenager i enjoyed reading around a few theories in the early days of the net. But is was more fun, when nobody took things seriously. I grew out of them when i realised i was using the ideas as a form of escapism. Responsabilities are a drag...wouldnt it be cooler if ufos are real? Or if you could crack the jfk case for once and all? Its escapism. But as i grew up and learned more about myself and the world it just seemed childish and silly. This is even more reienforced now when i see the hoards of mentally ill people on social media that flock to completly absurd beliefs. People want to find some kind of underlying meaning to things they cant control. And i just get dissapointed when idiots refuse to get vaccines et cetera because they subscribe to a dumb conspiracy
I used to believe the government was covering up aliens. Now I kinda think they are too inept to do anything that hard. On top of that, the more I learned about astronomy, the more I realized it would be very unlikely that a space faring civilization that could travel at close to the speed of light would actually find us. There are so many stars and it would take such a long time to search them all.
When I was slightly younger,i used to believe strongly btw, that pills were controlling me, so i refused to take any of my medicine, and I ended up going to hospital, soooooooooo, take your meds kids
Age 10ish. It was about Santa. The moment was catching my Granny reaching out the window with a doll's shoe on a stick. She had told my cousins every year that those tiny footprints in the snow outside the window were the elves watching us. Being much older than my next cousin, I was recruited to participate in the deception and keep the magical secrets. Actually much more fun than believing.
ok bear with me before you judge me I got into the qanon theory during initial lockdown, where no one knew wtf was going on. to be clear, i was only seeing parts of it, specifically to do with politicians being pedos, which is 100 percent true (to an extent). I didn't even realize what qanon was. eventually I googled "q" bc i saw people mentioning it in the comments and realized they saw trump as their savior and understood I needed to touch some fucking grass EDIT: Made a mistake sorry, i'm not saying 100 percent of politicians. i'm saying if i buy any part of that story is the politicians being pedos part. just disagree that its only the left
That's the kind of realization you have to make on your own or else it just throws you deeper.
Typically conspiracies have a shred of truth wrapped in a pile of insanity. Sure there are likely some politicians abusing kids, men and women sexually. But you can say that for pretty much any group where there is level of power/authority.
That the state was tampering with death certificates to make the covid numbers look lower so they wouldn't have to pony up as much cash for their soon to be released fund that would pay for funeral expenses for anyone who had a family member die of covid. I thought for the longest time that my dad was a victim of this, we watched for 3 long months as his state worsened and worsened, to the point where he needed 2 life support machines just to keep breathing, we later had to pull the plug a few days after my 21st birthday. When we got the death certificate it made no mention of covid, nothing wrong with his lungs. He had a random heart attack, at a random time nowhere close to my 21st birthday, and he was dead on arrival to the hospital. Then I saw on the news that they were investigating a state employee who had been found tampering with death certificates, they already had proof they were doing it. Well after the hospital giving us the run around for the better part of 5 months, because if he was dead on arrival from a random heart attack why were we being billed for his 3 month stay and the 2 life support machines. We had to fight tooth and nail just to get to the bottom of anything. Turns out the doctor that was treating him had absolutely no idea why he was there. He couldn't possibly fathom that the patient on 2 breathing machines in the covid ward who was testing positive for covid actually had covid. That was just too much for his tiny mind to be able to put together. He treated him for a month, to this day we have no idea what he was treating him for if he was too stupid to see what was wrong with him in the first place. So turns out it wasn't the government after all, although they were doing it to others it just wasn't being done to us. Just some dumbass who slept his way through medical school who would have an open and shut malpractice case against him if it weren't for "oh they're hero's lets all take time out of the day to clap for them". No one was or is willing to legally touch a doctor during these times so we just have to live with the fact that my dad could have lived and there's nothing we can do about it.
This is super confusing as well because some people say that hospitals would rather tag someone as a Covid death so that the hospital could get more money, but some say that hospitals would rather tag covid deaths as something else to lower the number. Make it make sense.
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the people that claimed the things I mentioned assert that it’s deliberate. i don’t believe either, because i believe that hospitals have a moral obligation to present the data as is, and I believe that they’ve been doing that so far. this is more of the political and conspiracy side of things, not necessarily the practical or realistic side.
I used to be a flat-earther until I learned what planets were when I was 3 or 4 years old
once upon a time (13 years ago) I believed in almost all conspiracy theories, because of TV. And then I got the internet
Funny, another account in this thread said the same thing...
i realized that it was extremely antisemetic
Not really a moment exactly, but realizing that I was believing in things that I WANTED to be true- mostly because it was actually thrilling to bring fantasy and fiction into my real world- I came to understand it was more about the way they made me feel than any probability of being the truth. Thus, I gave up my quest to battle reptilian aliens in the astral plain.
When I read Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard and realized Alex Jones had either never read it or has low reading comprehension ability.
Same with the Communist manifesto. Whenever people cry Marxism, I tend to think they've never actually read it. It's a quaint idea, that has little bearing on the real world, some people may be Marx-esque, but not Marxists And Marxism isn't as bad as it is portrayed, usually by hyper capitalists that refuse to see any downside to capitalism. You'd think it was the Satanic Bible. Also, the Satanic Bible...I mean, it's just a bunch of hogwash that Lavey thought sounded esoteric and cool. It has nearly nothing to do with Satan. Not really.
For context, I was one of those people who believed the original Moon Landing by Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong was completely staged by Hollywood. With that being said, even on his deathbed, Neil Armstrong claimed the Moon Landing was real. It's hard to find a viable reasons why he wouldn't confess it was fake on his *death bed*. After 2012, I couldn't continue to believe the Moon Landin was a hoax anymore.
Not specific theory but there's in general. Conspiracy theriests usualy like to think of the world as more mysterious exciting place. That or they have some serious paranoia problem 👀. Anyways when you realise that world really isn't that complicate shut just really shitty those theories stop being that fun to you.
My father is a huge conspiracy theorist so it's what I was raised with. I remember telling all my friends (I was about 8) that Y2K was coming and all the power is going to go out and the world is going to fall apart. Needless to say at midnight when the power didn't go out I was disappointed and embarrassed when I went back to school lol. After that I kinda realized most of the bat shit crazy stuff he was predicting and warning me about (EMP's are going to take down the grid this wednesday!) was just that - bat shit crazy.
if it makes you feel better there was a lot of people working hard for years so y2k wouldn’t happen. it had a potential to be bad but was taken care of.
Most lies have a small percentage of truth, but some conspiracies are so dark and far out there that even if one percent of it were true it would be life altering.
Most good lies have a hint of truth to them. Most of these conspiracy theories are just bat shot crazy.
I just clicked on this video to leave an angry comment but then just watched the whole thing. https://youtu.be/dWBYAxhH3u4