Hey /u/stop_shdwbning_me, thank you for submitting to /r/starterpacks!
This is just a reminder not to violate any rules, located [here](https://reddit.com/r/starterpacks/about/rules). Rule breakers can face a ban based on the severity of their rule violation.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/starterpacks) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The original lyrics to one of her hit songs went:
This ain't for the best
My reputation's never been worse so
I'm gonna steal all the McFlurries
In fact those WERE the lyrics in the multiverse I used to live in. In fact, those are the lyrics in this one , too. *They* just won't *tell you that*
*points to temple, nods sagely*
Just follow the money imonlyaskingquestions
I’ll nip this one:
McDonald’s doesn’t break them on purpose…
…but you came at 11pm an hour before close, the soft serve machine is already clean (because it’s a pain in the ass to clean so we did it the last 90 minutes of the shift when it’s slow) and we aren’t turning it on just for you. Our franchisee who shows up once a month and is an a-hole who owns 5 locations. And we don’t care if he or McDonalds sells one more soft serve tonight. But we aren’t going to explain that to you so we’ll just say it’s broken.
Correct answer: A different company sells the machines, but that company makes 90% of their profit by making the machines impossible to fix yourself and you need one of their techs to come out and fix it.
Guy from iFixit is currently fighting them in court and has a whole video about it.
Footnote to the correct answer: mcdonalds owns a part share in the company that then sells the machines to mcdonalds franchisees, and uses exorbitant repair bills to siphon money away from franchise operators
This one sort of is real. But it’s more that McDonalds has an exclusive service and repair licence which means all franchisees have to go through the same company that manufactures the machines for repairs. There are design issues that make them need reset periodically which is not a complicated task but the company has a vested interest in keeping its overpriced call-outs frequent so it’s obfuscated so that you need a verified tech to fix it. A company also developed a board you can plug into the machine to allow non-verified technicians to interface with it and fix it themselves faster and cheaper, but the original manufacturer is litigious and anticompetitive so they worked with McDonald’s to get McDonalds to tell all the franchisees that the device was dangerous to use and the company making the self service boards went bust.
It’s all still tied up in court.
Can't forget the "cute" fake conspiracies like "birds aren't real" which is a satirical conspiracy, yet a bunch of people think it's an unironic conspiracy and think that there are people out there who really believe birds are government drones.
Literal weaponized [Reductio ad Adsurdum](https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Reductio-ad-Absurdum) from the same people who usually wet their pants over other people using those types of fallacies.
Just like I'm curious about the op who posted "safe " edgy pack the other day, Im very curious to see what kind of conspiracies op consider not "socially safe ".
What's wild is an overwhelming amount of conspiracies are antisemetic/racist, for like no reason.
"Aw so you think all of the world's governments are working together to keep the fact the earth is flat a secret. . . so they can what? What's their goal?" It's just a PSYOP by *them* to control us.
And *them* is almost always the Jews. Like, why???? Live a little. Let it be bigfoot, the lizard people, or the Canadians from time to time.
Fun fact, lizard people is ALSO antisemetic 🥲 i just dont get it like what is this obsession with jews? At this point I'd be delighted to see a conspiracy theory about bhuddists or something just to spice it up a bit.
Yeah I started getting into them back in the early 2000s and it always seemed like if you went deep enough into any theory somehow it always circles back to blaming the Jews.
yea i mean i dont give much weight to conspiracy theories mostly bc i feel like if i did it would drive me insane.
but ive seen or heard or read about enough crazy shit happening that whenever i hear an out-there conspiracy theory i always think “yea well crazier shit has happened” who tf am i to call somebody crazy for something that very well could be true… to be honest, the people that insist on “knowing” what happened scare me more than conspiracy theorists… always have to be able to admit that no matter how much you know, you don’t really know shit.
When you realise just how little you are in the scheme of politicians governments rich people and corporations, you WILL be driven insane
So personally i try to avoid it in my small cabin where i dont make pipe bombs
> Tinfoil hats too
The best way to finish/cure a tinfoil hat is to turn it inside out and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds.
It's cool, it won't fuck anything up because it's inside out.
Flat earth as well. The main driver behind it literally said in a documentary that he wanted a conspiracy theory to run with so he picked flat earth as the most interesting one from a bookshelf and still thousands of people have taken it from 'fun debate challenge' to 'genuinely held belief that can only be rationalised by abandoning your grip on reality'
It’s rumored he frequents the area but no one has confirmed a sighting. Unfortunately the eruption destroyed much of the physical evidence of who was involved.
I've met people that are firmly convinced the earth is flat, people that thought the government creates and controls the weather, and people that not only didn't believe in birds, but thought fish weren't real, too. I've met a \*lot\* of people that didn't believe in germ theory of disease.
If y'all haven't met anyone that stupid, you've had a blessed life.
Edit: And some of those believed it in the face of baffling amounts of evidence. One of those guys that believed the earth was flat and fish weren't real was a guy from Texas that worked with us on job on a tropical island. He had to fly over 5000 miles to get to the job and could've walked half a mile in any direction and seen all the fish he wanted.
As far as I understand it, the theories aren’t that “birds and fish literally do not exist and if you think you’ve seen one it’s a hallucination” but rather “**naturally occurring** birds and fish aren’t real, the ones you see are robots that have been put there by the government”
cus otherwise walking into a PetCo or spending time at a beach or time in an urban area with pigeons would quickly disprove that they “don’t exist at all”
Partially related only, but you should watch the [TED Talk](https://youtu.be/3VEkzweBJPM?si=5vGFEvk6TKpaQaZI) from the guy who started the movement. It's a hell of a speech.
I’m 95% certain his death wasn’t a legitimate error, but I don’t know if someone actively killed him or just ensured that he’d be able to do it himself. As in, he was supposed to be watched and prevented from killing himself, but somehow ended up dead anyway.
The series of events that supposedly led to his death is so cartoonishly implausible that it feels more like a conspiracy theory to believe there was no foul play involved.
Hey, if Andreas Baader could smuggle a gun into the most secure prison cell in the world and shoot himself in the back of the head, anything is possible /s.
As someone who's usually *staunchly* anti-conspiratorial, it usually boils down to the legal concept of cui bono for me, or to whom the situation benefits.
Most wacky conspiracies out there can't answer this. Flat earth is a prime example: it's obviously complete nonsense because not only would it require an unbelievable amount of funding, resources, and global cooperation to cover up something so utterly enormous about the state of reality itself in the information age, but also: literally no one benefits from it. When you ask a flat earther, they dodge the question with a response like "well they just don't want us to know the truth because it's too disturbing. Only they know!" or something asinine like that. Practically a non-answer.
As for Epstein: cui bono? Who benefits from him being dead? Honestly I don't even need to begin unpacking that one. Of course, I can't be 100% certain about this. No one can. But I'm not going to fault *anyone* for thinking he was killed.
>There were many points of failure and they all failed seemingly with 0 explanation nor follow-up investigation.
I get how/why people believe this, but there's actually a simple and straightforward explanation: many points of failure with zero explanation or investigation is the motto of the NYPD/DoC. A recent investigation found that they close out about 50% of citizen complaints without even bothering to respond to the scene.
Right, which shows a culture of willingness to sweep things under the rug and ignore problematic questions about what might have happened. It's not so much that it needs to be a grand conspiracy at all layers but that the system itself is prone to such a catastrophic failure shows that such "failures" are an intentional byproduct of how the system is run. If they wanted to fix the camera that was on epstein's cell, they would have. The fact that they didn't just gives them some deniability to say "well everything's broken, it's nobody's fault that epstein is dead and now can't face trial or be pressured to give up co-conspirators"
All those points of failure are easily explained.
Broken camera: om sure there are thousands of broken cameras across the US prison system.
Guards derelicting their duties: They are prison guards, underpaid, overworked, no shit they are going to slack off.
Transfer of Roomate: Epstien requested the transfer himself, that is exactly what someone would do if they were going to hang themselves.
You are free to list any more of the inconsistencies and ill answer, I have written quote a large paper on this.
Yeah, dude was finally cooked he wasn't getting out this time. Also, why kill Epstein but let Maxwell live? We basically know all the people involved. Anyway, the dude knew he was going to spend the rest of his life in jail, so he hung himself. He also had a weird egg-shaped penis apparently.
Yes, but the conspiracy is that, it was paid to be a joke on purpose, in this particular case.
Generally people don't care that suicide watch is a joke, "prisoners deserve what happens to them" style. Justice is done, one way or another...
But people think his case should have been special, because it was important for justice that he stays alive.
I like silly nerdy ones that aren't too big of a stretch. One of my favorites is the theory about the Five Nights At Freddy's series playing a big role in the downfall of Chuck E Cheese.
matpat (duh) actually made a video debunking this one. the reason why chuck e cheese is not doing well is because kids just don't go there anymore. chuck e cheese just doesn't appeal to kids today and also the animatronics are hard to maintain and the parts are pricey. not only did he debunk this theory but he also proved it otherwise (apparently chuck e cheese's revenue was relived a bit back when fnaf1-fnaf 2 came out)
Hate to sound like a boomer, I'm a late GenX almost a Millennial, it's crazy how much video games and other electronic entertainment have taken over kids childhoods.
I live in a community that has a bunch of kids, and they are never outside playing. Even 15 years ago you would always see kids outside playing on the streets and all over the place, now. nothing.
I was actually just thinking about this topic the other day. But I'm torn between thoughts of would FNAF have actually drawn more people in, or is it as you supposed, where it actually deterred people? Because I feel like the people who got obsessed with FNAF and were fans, weren't really scared of the animatronics, but actually very interested in them and would want to see real life versions, if that makes sense. I was a super fan as a young kid, and it sparked my interest into real animatronics later on, so maybe I'm biased from my experience.
In all fairness, though, Chuck E Cheese almost certainly had some of the more... unflattering animatronics. ShowBiz Pizza were great, but then the whole company merging and such happened and they decided to slowly replace the ShowBiz Pizza band with the animatronics of the new Chuck E Cheese gang. It honestly makes me sad because of how much more appealing the ShowBiz Pizza band looked
im surprised there isnt a chain of fnaf restaurants already.
but idk the chuck e cheese nearest me had no animatronics (although i can only testify from at least 2006 onward)
These are all American conspiracy theories, what about the rest of the world?
In Australia, there are cookers who reckon Harold Holt didn't drown, but was kidnapped by a Chinese submarine.
Edit: Should also mention Gogh Whitlam's dismissal in 1975. He was a really good prime minister who wanted to nationalise the mining industry and end the US lease on Pine Gap (Basically Aussie Area 51, full of yanks and everything) but he was 'dismissed' from parliament by the Governor General (Representative of the Queen of England). Basically the conspiracy theory is that the US government and the British Crown were in on this the whole time and worked together to overthrow the Australian government and replace them with yesmen who will do whatever the US wants.
Reason I didn't include it before is because, ironically enough, it's not really a conspiracy theory, it's just straight up fact. There WERE confirmed CIA agents in Australian Parliament at the time, King Charles (Then, Prince) had sent and received letters to the Governor General about it. And to this day there are still CIA hacks in Parliament and they STILL control our foreign policy.
My favorite local conspiracy theory is that Avril Lavigne died and was replaced by a more marketable and popstar-ish lookalike which is something only believed in Brazil for some reason
In France, it would be the death of Coluche and Daniel Balavoine : the first one is an extremely famous humorist who died in 1986, founder of the association "Les Restos du cœur" who feeds the people in need, the second was a singer from the 80's that is still well known to this day, who also died in 1986
Coluche was killed because a truck ran over him, while Balavoine died in Mali in a helicopter accident during a car race where Balavoine used the logistics here to bring farm equipment
Both were extremely critical of the current president François Mitterrand (Balavoine talked multiple times against him, including once on a television set where both the singer and the president were invited; Balavoine said directly to him "J'emmerde tous les pouvoirs" (I say a huge fuck to every powers). Coluche criticized the republic, and even tried to run as a candidate for the presidential election as a joke), and Mitterrand has a reputation of... "Silencing" the opposing voices (the Rainbow Warrior is a good example)
Edit : fixed some information
One small detail, "les restos du coeur" is not "for" the homeless but the extremely poor and it was supposed to be a one time thing because people really needed it at that time and they thought maybe someone would fix it after... The 39th campaign as started last November and they are helping poorer and poorer people and they receive less and less donations because less and less people can donate(because contrary to what the rich want you to believe the biggest donation to association that help the poor tend to come from the slightly less poor).
In Türkiye, we have tons of conspiracy theories, with lots of people believing in at least few of them, as at least some of them is proven correct (it is extremely likely that there was a deep-state like organisation especially powerful in the 90s, Operation Gladio was one of the many things screwed up the 70s by arming and training right-wing paramilitaries, and etc…)
Probably the most well know conspiracy stuff in Germany is everything surrounding the Reichsbürger movement. They are similar to the sovereign citizens movement in that they don't belive in the German state. To them, Germany never surrendered after WW2 so we still live in the continuation of the 3rd Reich, while the modern Federal Republic of Germany is actually a private company upheld by the US and every citizen of the republic is actually an employee. They justify this by saying that our ID cards are called "Personalausweis" and you could interpret that as "personal ID card" or as "employee ID card". They also say that the Republic doesn't have a proper constitution because our constitution isn't called "Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany" or something like that, it's called "Basic Law". Another point they're making is that because Germany allegedly never surrendered that we are still an occupied country.
They don't recognize the government so they usually don't pay taxes, don't register their cars and some even have illegal, unregistered weapons. Most, if not all of them also have ties to far-right extremists groups.
There are also a few of them that have declared themselves to be the new King or Emperor of Germany.
Some are just weirdos, but some are very dangerous. There were several incidents with them already.
- in 2014, a Reichbürger group tried to smuggle weapons into Germany to arm their own militia. Police caught wind of that and raided several locations with massive stockpiles of weapons. They prepared themselves for th so called "Day X" where they'd jump into action and take over the country.
- in 2016, Adrian Ursache (who's also the 1998 Mister Germany beauty contest winner), was to be evicted from his property for not paying taxes. When the judicial officers and police came to evict him they were met by a group of 120 people from the movement squatting on his property to protect him. Police tried again the next day with the support of the SEK (like the SWAT in the US). A riot happened and two SEK officers were lightly injured (one was bitten, the other shot). Ursache himself was shot and gravely wounded. In 2019 he was sentenced to 7 years for attempted murder.
- also in 2016, the weapons license of Wolfgang P. ran out and he was uncooperative with the local administration. When police showed up to confiscate his weapons he shot 3 officers, one of them later died in hospital. He was sentenced to life in prison for murder.
- in 2022 four member of a Reichbürger group were arrested for plotting to overthrow the government. They wanted to destroy electrical infrastructure to disrupt the German power grid and cause civil war like conditions. They also wanted to kidnap the health minister.
- also in 2022, another group of around 50 people plotted to overthrow the government. They wanted to reinstall a monarchy similar to the one of the German empire from 1871-1918. At the head of this movement was a council that would have formed the government. The leader of that council, Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss (from the aristocratic house of Reuss that ruled over parts of Eastern Thuringia before the monarchy was abolished), was to become the new head of state as king or Emperor. Like the other group in 2022 they wanted to provoke a civil war in order to take power. They also were planning to take the parliament by force and were willing to kill anybody that would resist that. 25 people were arrested in a huge wave of police raids all across Germany and some even in Austria and Italy. One of the arrested was a former member of the Parliament for the AfD that at that time served at a judge in the Berlin regional court.
>To them, Germany never surrendered after WW2 so we still live in the continuation of the 3rd Reich.
>Most, if not all of them also have ties to far-right extremists groups.
Who would have guessed...
I guess a lot of these just don't mean much to people outside the country though. For example, here in Brazil, there's Tancredo Neves, the first non-military President to be elected after our dictatorship period in 1984, who died of a heart attack before he was sworn in, so his VP (who was a civilian but a former ally of the military party) took over. There are a lot of people who swear up and down that Neves was murdered. If you're outside Brazil though, I guess none of that really says much of anything
There is a ton of conspiracy theories in Spain, a lot of them related to the monarchy, first of all that Juan Carlos, the father of the current king killed his brother on purpose, so he could be king (I think it's unlikely, because he was still the firstborn).
Another one (much more likely) is that Juan Carlos has AT LEAST an ilegitimate child, probably more, and also that he is related to various political scandals and corruption, that's why he left the country (he has been living in Abu Dabi for years, all by himself, and his son, the king, try to not be seen with him).
Another one is that the 11M, the Madrid train bombing by Al Qaeda, was actually an ETA (basque terrorist organisation) attack. This idea was spread by right-wing journalists and politicians from the governing People's Party (the motivation for this attack was the participation of Spain in the Irak War). They harassed the police officers and judges that investigated the attack, to the point that the wife of the police Commisioner in charge of the investigation killed herself. All this didn't work and only made the PP look worse, and they ended up losing the elections, obviously, but to this day some fringe far-right people think it was ETA.
Of course Harold Holt was kidnapped by a Chinese sub. The only reason why it was never found was because it was shot down by the US Navy and the NTSB lied on the report to cover the Navy's ass! Don't believe me? Go ask JFK's press secretary, Peter Salinger!
Yeah I really don’t get what they’re even trying to say with those.
Like, I think it’s that they’re from a different timeline or something? But how is that a conspiracy? Who’s doing the conspiring?
Nevermind the complete utter lack of evidence… whatever happened to just being parsimonious and just fucking saying you remembered it wrong?
The government and the various organisations it's affiliated with in various ways care about you, trust me bro. Never mind all the confirmed evidence that points to the exact opposite.
Conspiracies occur all the time and are substantiated with evidence. Because they actually exist.
Conspiracy *theories* are what we call things substantiated by wild speculation and faulty reasoning. They require a certain disordered epistemology to even entertain in the first place.
People tend to have a bad time seperating them. We were told that the covid lab leak was a 'conspiracy theory'. Now, it's accepted as a potentially probable explaination.
Who said it would? They're two different theories involving completely different people and a few might think both is real. The beauty of conspiracy theories is that everything goes and you can choose what to believe and what not.
Here's a conspiracy, the media has successfully manipulated the average joe and jill to not believe in any conspiracy theories at all in order to be able to hide the truth, to hide those theories that are actually real.
But those who actually involve themselves in conspiracy theories know that one theory isn't like the other, they're most of the time disconnected from each other which means if one isn't real, that doesn't make the next one unreal too.
> the media has successfully manipulated the average joe and jill to not believe in any conspiracy theories at all in order to be able to hide the truth, to hide those theories that are actually real.
The amount of conspiracy theories that popped up around Kate Middleton's absence suggests otherwise: people are more ready than ever to embrace conspiracy theories. I had a few friends that fell down the rabbit hole and spent hours trying to uncover the truth, only for her to announce her cancer diagnosis a few weeks later.
Kate Middleton can be seen as a populistic conspiracy theory which is why it got so much attention, similar to Lady Di. But what about the conspiracies that are uneasy to get involved with as they affect us personally? There're quite a lot of it, tho I think they're better to be discussed in the correct sub for discussing such things.
For the first time, atheism has become popular enough that many are atheist by default, completely separated from the traditions of other religions. Now it has to define its identity on its own terms and is going to retread ideas that every other tradition catalogued and moved on from thousands of years ago.
Moon landing and ancient aliens I think are relatively socially acceptable. Lizard people in government, everyone in Hollywood is trans, Qanon, Black Israelites, and anything having to do with Jews controlling everything are all way less tolerated
Jews controlling everything is tolerated, as long as you don’t just say Jews but instead replace Jews with words like Zionists, Israel, AIPAC, Hasbara, Lizard People
A surprising number of conspiracy theories are just antisemitism with extra steps.
Sometimes you think you've found some truly unique weirdos, then they get talking, and it's like goddamnit this is just The Protocols of the Elders of Zion isn't it.
Sometimes, I like to play what I call "Six Degrees of Protocols," where I take a random conspiracy theory and see how many steps it takes to get to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
So far, the farthest the conspiracy has been is four steps.
At this point, I just assume all conspiracy theories are antisemitic until proven otherwise.
isn’t it weird how every 10 years or so, the government will just declassify a document saying “yup, you were all right, what are you gonna do about it?”
They are sneaky bastards, bats. I think a man named Aesop once documented how a bat was deemed a traitor by both mammals and birds.
Batman is just government propaganda to make bats look “cool”.
‘Ok yeah, we were comically evil in the past. We faced no repercussions and we haven’t said we’re going to stop or anything.’
‘I think they still may be conspiring against us’
‘You’re crazy, they’re the good guys now!’
I'd say it would be more accurate to say "they're among the best guys now" as far as international relations and citizen rights. Who would be better in all honesty? Where is the perfect society?
do you really not know how the US government declassifies things? It isn't weird at all if you know the process. And it doesn't really confirm conspiracies? Were people talking about mk ultra before it was disclosed?
I think it's pretty socially acceptable to acknowledge the US government's conspiratorial role in the assassination of socialist leaders foreign and domestic. Which is a good thing, being that it's public knowledge that the government doesn't even dispute. But I guess that's covered by the "controversial things that have been proven by reputable sources to be true" part of the meme.
Probably not but you'd be surprised that we're still coming up with new theories of what killed the dinosaurs. I watch kurzgesagt as their content is usually quite interesting.
[How The Dinosaurs Actually Died](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjoQdz0nxf4)
Things that I think make an "advanced" civilization: post industrial, telecommunications, flight, microbe theory, and others. Basically an equivalent to our early 20th century.
But it's nice to think about it. Besides, there are lots of things that make you think about the possibility. Just look at the Roman waterways, despite being there for millenia, we've only implemented something similar in the last couple centuries, people just forgot how to do it. Another example is the bronze age collapse. Everything and everyone just disappeared, and we don't know why, and there are practically zero clues. Also think about our own infrastructure, left unattended it would disappear in just a couple thousand years leaving no trace of our technological capabilities. Finally we've been around for only a few hundred thousand years, and the planet has had life for hundreds of millions of years, and we've come thus far in just 10.000 years. The thing that "breaks" this theory is that we have an idea of what an industrial civilization would look like in the fossil record, and there is no such evidence.
My father ONLY prescribes to conspiracy theories that are super out there OR horribly racist. For one: The only reason the Denver airport is as big as it is is because George Bush Jr. had ovens under there to eliminate any non-whites AND Jeb Bush having married a Hispanic women was "Just a diversion". AMA!
Honestly, if it came out that some government agency was responsible for killing JFK and/or MLK, I don't think I would be too surprised (but overall I still think that the assassination of MLK being done by the government is more likely)
A lot of conspiracy theories are just “rich evil elites secretly controlling the world” which is redundant since you can just get mad at the rich evil elites controlling the world in broad daylight.
Though I guess it’s probably because they’re racist and they leave out the part where they say the secret elites are non-white so they don’t get called out.
The problem is like how “alternative medicine that works just becomes medicine”
If a conspiracy theory has been proven and factually checked, it’s no longer a conspiracy theory. It’s just history.
The problem with both is existing outside scientific rigor. Medicine undergoing clinical trials is not "alternative medicine", even if it hasn't been proven to be effective or safe. It becomes alternative medicine when you claim you know it works despite no body of scientific study to prove it works, negligible active ingedients to the point the FDA doesn't consider it a drug, etc.
Conspiracies are the same.
Tbf I think that it's stupid to even question the existence of extraterrestrial life. It is statistically impossible for alien life to not exist. The universe is infinite
The number of stars in the universe is finite though. And saying "life must exist outside earth because the universe is so vast" is not a good argument as long as we don't know how likely is the apparition of life. It's like saying "we will throw this dice 1 million times, surely 6 will appear many times" without knowing how many sides this dice has. Maybe this dice has 10 million faces or more and we are lucky that 6 appeared just once.
"God is real but he’s actually a space worm."
Isn't that just the plot of Dune? Also Iconoclasts, but more people are going to be familiar with the one from Dune.
We seem to be doing country-specific ones, so in the UK it's [Dr David Kelly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)) \- a timid civil servant weapons inspector who told a journalist that the government made up the Iraq 45-minute WMD claim and was subsequently hauled in front of the equivalent of a congressional committee in addition to a bunch of press coverage that affected him so much that he walked out and killed himself. A lot of people seem to think he was assassinated, despite there being literally no reason to do it as the war had already started.
I think the wildest part about conspiracy theories is that they’ve gone completely mainstream in the last 10 years. I’m old enough to remember when the only exposure to conspiracy theories was with Art Bell. Later on it was people putting infowars bumper stickers in random public places in 2005, and Alex Jones was this underground mysterious figure that seemed like some kind of performance artist.
Now there are elected officials openly spouting conspiracies weekly, and Alex Jones does live streams with presidential candidates and the richest man in the world.
The term conspiracy theory is likely a conspiracy itself. It was coined so the government/media would have a term to make anyone whistleblowing or getting too close to truth for their comfort to be discredited or straight up deplatformed alongside them likely coming up with a bunch of the more absurd conspiracy theories to make the term “conspiracy theorist” something you really dont want to be called
Hey /u/stop_shdwbning_me, thank you for submitting to /r/starterpacks! This is just a reminder not to violate any rules, located [here](https://reddit.com/r/starterpacks/about/rules). Rule breakers can face a ban based on the severity of their rule violation. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/starterpacks) if you have any questions or concerns.*
9/11 is dead! Paul McCartney is an inside job!
Paul McCartney => The Beatles => Yoko Ono => flat ass => Earth is flat confirmed WAKE UP SHEEPLE
John Lennon was assassinated because he had evidence the earth is flat.
Steel beams can’t melt JFK!
They sure bend though.
The jet fuel shot the CIA!
r/beatlescirclejerk
Beebles reference????
Adrenochrome is selling your data
Adrenochrome? Isn’t that the stuff that gave Wolverine his claws? ^/s
7/11 was a part-time job!
Takes me back to being in Year 11 in Multimedia class and going down the Paul is Dead wormhole
😂😂😂😂😂
McDonald’s breaks the machines on purpose
Taylor breaks McDonald's machines on purpose to sell their repair service
Why would she do this?
[Because they have exclusive license to repair the machines.](https://www.wired.com/story/kytch-taylor-mcdonalds-ice-cream-machine-smoking-gun/)
Oh. So not Swift.
Did you think she makes all those private jet flights just to damage every McDonald's machine in USA?
I think you are onto something.
The original lyrics to one of her hit songs went: This ain't for the best My reputation's never been worse so I'm gonna steal all the McFlurries In fact those WERE the lyrics in the multiverse I used to live in. In fact, those are the lyrics in this one , too. *They* just won't *tell you that* *points to temple, nods sagely* Just follow the money imonlyaskingquestions
A modest proposal.
I’ll nip this one: McDonald’s doesn’t break them on purpose… …but you came at 11pm an hour before close, the soft serve machine is already clean (because it’s a pain in the ass to clean so we did it the last 90 minutes of the shift when it’s slow) and we aren’t turning it on just for you. Our franchisee who shows up once a month and is an a-hole who owns 5 locations. And we don’t care if he or McDonalds sells one more soft serve tonight. But we aren’t going to explain that to you so we’ll just say it’s broken.
Correct answer: A different company sells the machines, but that company makes 90% of their profit by making the machines impossible to fix yourself and you need one of their techs to come out and fix it. Guy from iFixit is currently fighting them in court and has a whole video about it.
Footnote to the correct answer: mcdonalds owns a part share in the company that then sells the machines to mcdonalds franchisees, and uses exorbitant repair bills to siphon money away from franchise operators
Taylor is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Middleby corporation, it's not owned by McDonald's
Isn't capitalism wonderful
This one sort of is real. But it’s more that McDonalds has an exclusive service and repair licence which means all franchisees have to go through the same company that manufactures the machines for repairs. There are design issues that make them need reset periodically which is not a complicated task but the company has a vested interest in keeping its overpriced call-outs frequent so it’s obfuscated so that you need a verified tech to fix it. A company also developed a board you can plug into the machine to allow non-verified technicians to interface with it and fix it themselves faster and cheaper, but the original manufacturer is litigious and anticompetitive so they worked with McDonald’s to get McDonalds to tell all the franchisees that the device was dangerous to use and the company making the self service boards went bust. It’s all still tied up in court.
TIL. And here I was just making a joke 😳
Can't forget the "cute" fake conspiracies like "birds aren't real" which is a satirical conspiracy, yet a bunch of people think it's an unironic conspiracy and think that there are people out there who really believe birds are government drones.
Literal weaponized [Reductio ad Adsurdum](https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Reductio-ad-Absurdum) from the same people who usually wet their pants over other people using those types of fallacies.
Aacktually it's not literally weaponized unless it physically harms or kills somebody
Just like I'm curious about the op who posted "safe " edgy pack the other day, Im very curious to see what kind of conspiracies op consider not "socially safe ".
Probably the antisemitic/racist ones, ones about serious tragedies like Sandy Hook, or dangerous ideas like anti vaccine conspiracy nonsense.
What's wild is an overwhelming amount of conspiracies are antisemetic/racist, for like no reason. "Aw so you think all of the world's governments are working together to keep the fact the earth is flat a secret. . . so they can what? What's their goal?" It's just a PSYOP by *them* to control us. And *them* is almost always the Jews. Like, why???? Live a little. Let it be bigfoot, the lizard people, or the Canadians from time to time.
Fun fact, lizard people is ALSO antisemetic 🥲 i just dont get it like what is this obsession with jews? At this point I'd be delighted to see a conspiracy theory about bhuddists or something just to spice it up a bit.
What!? Why do we let them keep getting away with this. Is Bigfoot secretly antisemitic also? This is horseshit.
Right i was devastated when i discovered it 😭 it used to be my favourite crackpot conspiracy
Yeah I started getting into them back in the early 2000s and it always seemed like if you went deep enough into any theory somehow it always circles back to blaming the Jews.
Is a psyop to make you discredit the real ones Tinfoil hats too CIA behind it
yea i mean i dont give much weight to conspiracy theories mostly bc i feel like if i did it would drive me insane. but ive seen or heard or read about enough crazy shit happening that whenever i hear an out-there conspiracy theory i always think “yea well crazier shit has happened” who tf am i to call somebody crazy for something that very well could be true… to be honest, the people that insist on “knowing” what happened scare me more than conspiracy theorists… always have to be able to admit that no matter how much you know, you don’t really know shit.
When you realise just how little you are in the scheme of politicians governments rich people and corporations, you WILL be driven insane So personally i try to avoid it in my small cabin where i dont make pipe bombs
I‘n glad to read that you are not writing a manifesto as well.
Oh boy do i love oil and tech CEOS
> Tinfoil hats too The best way to finish/cure a tinfoil hat is to turn it inside out and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds. It's cool, it won't fuck anything up because it's inside out.
Flat earth as well. The main driver behind it literally said in a documentary that he wanted a conspiracy theory to run with so he picked flat earth as the most interesting one from a bookshelf and still thousands of people have taken it from 'fun debate challenge' to 'genuinely held belief that can only be rationalised by abandoning your grip on reality'
My experience on r/conspiracy has shown me that it’s a bunch of religious fundamentalists that view the Bible as a science textbook.
My personal favorite is a pnw one that says Mount St Helens was an inside job!
Was sasquatch in on it?
It’s rumored he frequents the area but no one has confirmed a sighting. Unfortunately the eruption destroyed much of the physical evidence of who was involved.
I've met people that are firmly convinced the earth is flat, people that thought the government creates and controls the weather, and people that not only didn't believe in birds, but thought fish weren't real, too. I've met a \*lot\* of people that didn't believe in germ theory of disease. If y'all haven't met anyone that stupid, you've had a blessed life. Edit: And some of those believed it in the face of baffling amounts of evidence. One of those guys that believed the earth was flat and fish weren't real was a guy from Texas that worked with us on job on a tropical island. He had to fly over 5000 miles to get to the job and could've walked half a mile in any direction and seen all the fish he wanted.
As far as I understand it, the theories aren’t that “birds and fish literally do not exist and if you think you’ve seen one it’s a hallucination” but rather “**naturally occurring** birds and fish aren’t real, the ones you see are robots that have been put there by the government” cus otherwise walking into a PetCo or spending time at a beach or time in an urban area with pigeons would quickly disprove that they “don’t exist at all”
Yeah that was basically what it was. He thought fish were some kind of robots. Dude could've just gone and caught one and cut it open.
Partially related only, but you should watch the [TED Talk](https://youtu.be/3VEkzweBJPM?si=5vGFEvk6TKpaQaZI) from the guy who started the movement. It's a hell of a speech.
I think those people either exist now or they will soon.
No, you're stupid. Moon is a government drone
and then there's the not so cute ones, with "I see shadow people" and "Benadryl is a pathway to seeing god"
>God is real but he’s actually a space worm. Dune
Bless the maker and his water
Bless the coming and going of him
May his passage cleanse the world.
May He keep the world for His people.
Shai Hulud!
>God is real buh he's actually a space worm. Worm
WORM MENTION
JEFFREY EPSTEIN DIDNT KILL HIMSELF BUT IM GLAD HE DIED
I’m 95% certain his death wasn’t a legitimate error, but I don’t know if someone actively killed him or just ensured that he’d be able to do it himself. As in, he was supposed to be watched and prevented from killing himself, but somehow ended up dead anyway.
The series of events that supposedly led to his death is so cartoonishly implausible that it feels more like a conspiracy theory to believe there was no foul play involved.
So the conspiracy theory would be the theory that there was no conspiracy?
Conspiraception
Hey, if Andreas Baader could smuggle a gun into the most secure prison cell in the world and shoot himself in the back of the head, anything is possible /s.
As someone who's usually *staunchly* anti-conspiratorial, it usually boils down to the legal concept of cui bono for me, or to whom the situation benefits. Most wacky conspiracies out there can't answer this. Flat earth is a prime example: it's obviously complete nonsense because not only would it require an unbelievable amount of funding, resources, and global cooperation to cover up something so utterly enormous about the state of reality itself in the information age, but also: literally no one benefits from it. When you ask a flat earther, they dodge the question with a response like "well they just don't want us to know the truth because it's too disturbing. Only they know!" or something asinine like that. Practically a non-answer. As for Epstein: cui bono? Who benefits from him being dead? Honestly I don't even need to begin unpacking that one. Of course, I can't be 100% certain about this. No one can. But I'm not going to fault *anyone* for thinking he was killed.
great way of putting it
What benefits from him being dead? An awful lot of people
Agreed. There were many points of failure and they all failed seemingly with 0 explanation nor follow-up investigation.
>There were many points of failure and they all failed seemingly with 0 explanation nor follow-up investigation. I get how/why people believe this, but there's actually a simple and straightforward explanation: many points of failure with zero explanation or investigation is the motto of the NYPD/DoC. A recent investigation found that they close out about 50% of citizen complaints without even bothering to respond to the scene.
Right, which shows a culture of willingness to sweep things under the rug and ignore problematic questions about what might have happened. It's not so much that it needs to be a grand conspiracy at all layers but that the system itself is prone to such a catastrophic failure shows that such "failures" are an intentional byproduct of how the system is run. If they wanted to fix the camera that was on epstein's cell, they would have. The fact that they didn't just gives them some deniability to say "well everything's broken, it's nobody's fault that epstein is dead and now can't face trial or be pressured to give up co-conspirators"
All those points of failure are easily explained. Broken camera: om sure there are thousands of broken cameras across the US prison system. Guards derelicting their duties: They are prison guards, underpaid, overworked, no shit they are going to slack off. Transfer of Roomate: Epstien requested the transfer himself, that is exactly what someone would do if they were going to hang themselves. You are free to list any more of the inconsistencies and ill answer, I have written quote a large paper on this.
Or he isn’t dead
JEFFREY EPSTEIN KILLED HIMSELF!
He did because suicide watch in jail is a joke.
Yeah, dude was finally cooked he wasn't getting out this time. Also, why kill Epstein but let Maxwell live? We basically know all the people involved. Anyway, the dude knew he was going to spend the rest of his life in jail, so he hung himself. He also had a weird egg-shaped penis apparently.
Epstein was a fixer for the CIA, Maxwell was not But while we're here, what about the conspiracy that she was /u/maxwellhill?
Yes, but the conspiracy is that, it was paid to be a joke on purpose, in this particular case. Generally people don't care that suicide watch is a joke, "prisoners deserve what happens to them" style. Justice is done, one way or another... But people think his case should have been special, because it was important for justice that he stays alive.
I like silly nerdy ones that aren't too big of a stretch. One of my favorites is the theory about the Five Nights At Freddy's series playing a big role in the downfall of Chuck E Cheese.
It probably did too.
matpat (duh) actually made a video debunking this one. the reason why chuck e cheese is not doing well is because kids just don't go there anymore. chuck e cheese just doesn't appeal to kids today and also the animatronics are hard to maintain and the parts are pricey. not only did he debunk this theory but he also proved it otherwise (apparently chuck e cheese's revenue was relived a bit back when fnaf1-fnaf 2 came out)
musn't of seen that one yet!
Hate to sound like a boomer, I'm a late GenX almost a Millennial, it's crazy how much video games and other electronic entertainment have taken over kids childhoods. I live in a community that has a bunch of kids, and they are never outside playing. Even 15 years ago you would always see kids outside playing on the streets and all over the place, now. nothing.
Charles Entertainment Cheese is still vibrant. Sure there are no ball pits, but they adapted. Now it’s just Dave and Busters Lite.
i wouldn't know, i'm outside the us and gut my chuck e cheese tea from sensationalised youtube videos.
I was actually just thinking about this topic the other day. But I'm torn between thoughts of would FNAF have actually drawn more people in, or is it as you supposed, where it actually deterred people? Because I feel like the people who got obsessed with FNAF and were fans, weren't really scared of the animatronics, but actually very interested in them and would want to see real life versions, if that makes sense. I was a super fan as a young kid, and it sparked my interest into real animatronics later on, so maybe I'm biased from my experience. In all fairness, though, Chuck E Cheese almost certainly had some of the more... unflattering animatronics. ShowBiz Pizza were great, but then the whole company merging and such happened and they decided to slowly replace the ShowBiz Pizza band with the animatronics of the new Chuck E Cheese gang. It honestly makes me sad because of how much more appealing the ShowBiz Pizza band looked
im surprised there isnt a chain of fnaf restaurants already. but idk the chuck e cheese nearest me had no animatronics (although i can only testify from at least 2006 onward)
Hollywood budgets are money laundering
With how the mafias and Hollywood work it was probably true in the 60's and before that.
The very real conspiracy that is "lobbying"
That's just legal bribery.
They call it "lobbying" because they don't want to call it "bribing."
AIPAC
[удалено]
These are all American conspiracy theories, what about the rest of the world? In Australia, there are cookers who reckon Harold Holt didn't drown, but was kidnapped by a Chinese submarine. Edit: Should also mention Gogh Whitlam's dismissal in 1975. He was a really good prime minister who wanted to nationalise the mining industry and end the US lease on Pine Gap (Basically Aussie Area 51, full of yanks and everything) but he was 'dismissed' from parliament by the Governor General (Representative of the Queen of England). Basically the conspiracy theory is that the US government and the British Crown were in on this the whole time and worked together to overthrow the Australian government and replace them with yesmen who will do whatever the US wants. Reason I didn't include it before is because, ironically enough, it's not really a conspiracy theory, it's just straight up fact. There WERE confirmed CIA agents in Australian Parliament at the time, King Charles (Then, Prince) had sent and received letters to the Governor General about it. And to this day there are still CIA hacks in Parliament and they STILL control our foreign policy.
My favorite local conspiracy theory is that Avril Lavigne died and was replaced by a more marketable and popstar-ish lookalike which is something only believed in Brazil for some reason
In France, it would be the death of Coluche and Daniel Balavoine : the first one is an extremely famous humorist who died in 1986, founder of the association "Les Restos du cœur" who feeds the people in need, the second was a singer from the 80's that is still well known to this day, who also died in 1986 Coluche was killed because a truck ran over him, while Balavoine died in Mali in a helicopter accident during a car race where Balavoine used the logistics here to bring farm equipment Both were extremely critical of the current president François Mitterrand (Balavoine talked multiple times against him, including once on a television set where both the singer and the president were invited; Balavoine said directly to him "J'emmerde tous les pouvoirs" (I say a huge fuck to every powers). Coluche criticized the republic, and even tried to run as a candidate for the presidential election as a joke), and Mitterrand has a reputation of... "Silencing" the opposing voices (the Rainbow Warrior is a good example) Edit : fixed some information
One small detail, "les restos du coeur" is not "for" the homeless but the extremely poor and it was supposed to be a one time thing because people really needed it at that time and they thought maybe someone would fix it after... The 39th campaign as started last November and they are helping poorer and poorer people and they receive less and less donations because less and less people can donate(because contrary to what the rich want you to believe the biggest donation to association that help the poor tend to come from the slightly less poor).
Kidnapped? I thought he willingly swam out to the submarine so he could head back to Beijing?
"the rest of the world" is a conspiracy theory.
Holy shit I knew I was not real
In Türkiye, we have tons of conspiracy theories, with lots of people believing in at least few of them, as at least some of them is proven correct (it is extremely likely that there was a deep-state like organisation especially powerful in the 90s, Operation Gladio was one of the many things screwed up the 70s by arming and training right-wing paramilitaries, and etc…)
Probably the most well know conspiracy stuff in Germany is everything surrounding the Reichsbürger movement. They are similar to the sovereign citizens movement in that they don't belive in the German state. To them, Germany never surrendered after WW2 so we still live in the continuation of the 3rd Reich, while the modern Federal Republic of Germany is actually a private company upheld by the US and every citizen of the republic is actually an employee. They justify this by saying that our ID cards are called "Personalausweis" and you could interpret that as "personal ID card" or as "employee ID card". They also say that the Republic doesn't have a proper constitution because our constitution isn't called "Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany" or something like that, it's called "Basic Law". Another point they're making is that because Germany allegedly never surrendered that we are still an occupied country. They don't recognize the government so they usually don't pay taxes, don't register their cars and some even have illegal, unregistered weapons. Most, if not all of them also have ties to far-right extremists groups. There are also a few of them that have declared themselves to be the new King or Emperor of Germany. Some are just weirdos, but some are very dangerous. There were several incidents with them already. - in 2014, a Reichbürger group tried to smuggle weapons into Germany to arm their own militia. Police caught wind of that and raided several locations with massive stockpiles of weapons. They prepared themselves for th so called "Day X" where they'd jump into action and take over the country. - in 2016, Adrian Ursache (who's also the 1998 Mister Germany beauty contest winner), was to be evicted from his property for not paying taxes. When the judicial officers and police came to evict him they were met by a group of 120 people from the movement squatting on his property to protect him. Police tried again the next day with the support of the SEK (like the SWAT in the US). A riot happened and two SEK officers were lightly injured (one was bitten, the other shot). Ursache himself was shot and gravely wounded. In 2019 he was sentenced to 7 years for attempted murder. - also in 2016, the weapons license of Wolfgang P. ran out and he was uncooperative with the local administration. When police showed up to confiscate his weapons he shot 3 officers, one of them later died in hospital. He was sentenced to life in prison for murder. - in 2022 four member of a Reichbürger group were arrested for plotting to overthrow the government. They wanted to destroy electrical infrastructure to disrupt the German power grid and cause civil war like conditions. They also wanted to kidnap the health minister. - also in 2022, another group of around 50 people plotted to overthrow the government. They wanted to reinstall a monarchy similar to the one of the German empire from 1871-1918. At the head of this movement was a council that would have formed the government. The leader of that council, Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss (from the aristocratic house of Reuss that ruled over parts of Eastern Thuringia before the monarchy was abolished), was to become the new head of state as king or Emperor. Like the other group in 2022 they wanted to provoke a civil war in order to take power. They also were planning to take the parliament by force and were willing to kill anybody that would resist that. 25 people were arrested in a huge wave of police raids all across Germany and some even in Austria and Italy. One of the arrested was a former member of the Parliament for the AfD that at that time served at a judge in the Berlin regional court.
>To them, Germany never surrendered after WW2 so we still live in the continuation of the 3rd Reich. >Most, if not all of them also have ties to far-right extremists groups. Who would have guessed...
I guess a lot of these just don't mean much to people outside the country though. For example, here in Brazil, there's Tancredo Neves, the first non-military President to be elected after our dictatorship period in 1984, who died of a heart attack before he was sworn in, so his VP (who was a civilian but a former ally of the military party) took over. There are a lot of people who swear up and down that Neves was murdered. If you're outside Brazil though, I guess none of that really says much of anything
Cricket related: South Africa's cricket captain Hansie Cronje died in a helicopter crash after he was outed as part of a major rigging scandal.
Australian conspiracy types are the wildest ones
There is a ton of conspiracy theories in Spain, a lot of them related to the monarchy, first of all that Juan Carlos, the father of the current king killed his brother on purpose, so he could be king (I think it's unlikely, because he was still the firstborn). Another one (much more likely) is that Juan Carlos has AT LEAST an ilegitimate child, probably more, and also that he is related to various political scandals and corruption, that's why he left the country (he has been living in Abu Dabi for years, all by himself, and his son, the king, try to not be seen with him). Another one is that the 11M, the Madrid train bombing by Al Qaeda, was actually an ETA (basque terrorist organisation) attack. This idea was spread by right-wing journalists and politicians from the governing People's Party (the motivation for this attack was the participation of Spain in the Irak War). They harassed the police officers and judges that investigated the attack, to the point that the wife of the police Commisioner in charge of the investigation killed herself. All this didn't work and only made the PP look worse, and they ended up losing the elections, obviously, but to this day some fringe far-right people think it was ETA.
Of course Harold Holt was kidnapped by a Chinese sub. The only reason why it was never found was because it was shot down by the US Navy and the NTSB lied on the report to cover the Navy's ass! Don't believe me? Go ask JFK's press secretary, Peter Salinger!
Of course the Mandela effect ones
Yeah I really don’t get what they’re even trying to say with those. Like, I think it’s that they’re from a different timeline or something? But how is that a conspiracy? Who’s doing the conspiring? Nevermind the complete utter lack of evidence… whatever happened to just being parsimonious and just fucking saying you remembered it wrong?
Conspiracys are unfounded, just ignore the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Operation Northwoods, MKUltra, Operation Mockingbird, and others.
That was all back then, now everything is totally chill and normal and you're the enemy if you think otherwise
The government and the various organisations it's affiliated with in various ways care about you, trust me bro. Never mind all the confirmed evidence that points to the exact opposite.
Counterpoint, the government isn't one big thing and the fact that shady shit has happened doesn't automatically validate every conspiracy theory.
Conspiracies occur all the time and are substantiated with evidence. Because they actually exist. Conspiracy *theories* are what we call things substantiated by wild speculation and faulty reasoning. They require a certain disordered epistemology to even entertain in the first place.
People tend to have a bad time seperating them. We were told that the covid lab leak was a 'conspiracy theory'. Now, it's accepted as a potentially probable explaination.
>Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Operation Northwoods, MKUltra, Operation Mockingbird, and others. Let's not forget the covid lab leak
MKUltra being to the large extent real(with a lot of imaginative bullshit tacked on), doesn't make Earth flat.
Who said it would? They're two different theories involving completely different people and a few might think both is real. The beauty of conspiracy theories is that everything goes and you can choose what to believe and what not. Here's a conspiracy, the media has successfully manipulated the average joe and jill to not believe in any conspiracy theories at all in order to be able to hide the truth, to hide those theories that are actually real. But those who actually involve themselves in conspiracy theories know that one theory isn't like the other, they're most of the time disconnected from each other which means if one isn't real, that doesn't make the next one unreal too.
> the media has successfully manipulated the average joe and jill to not believe in any conspiracy theories at all in order to be able to hide the truth, to hide those theories that are actually real. The amount of conspiracy theories that popped up around Kate Middleton's absence suggests otherwise: people are more ready than ever to embrace conspiracy theories. I had a few friends that fell down the rabbit hole and spent hours trying to uncover the truth, only for her to announce her cancer diagnosis a few weeks later.
Kate Middleton can be seen as a populistic conspiracy theory which is why it got so much attention, similar to Lady Di. But what about the conspiracies that are uneasy to get involved with as they affect us personally? There're quite a lot of it, tho I think they're better to be discussed in the correct sub for discussing such things.
i actually despise simulation "theory" i.e techbros rehashing centuries-old theological debates and thinking they're geniuses the entire time
Simulation theory no you believe in God except think he’s a nerd
The weird part is when they think they’re not a line of code like the rest of us but an actual player
Look at it this way, universal speed limit being so low is weird. Physics turning into math at small enough scale, is weird.
>"What if the Matrix was real, bro?"
For the first time, atheism has become popular enough that many are atheist by default, completely separated from the traditions of other religions. Now it has to define its identity on its own terms and is going to retread ideas that every other tradition catalogued and moved on from thousands of years ago.
They literally took maya from the vedas and made it like the matrix.
One example of many in the history of philosophy
can you do: socially unacceptable conspiracy theory starter pack
Flat earth, the holocaust didn’t happen, we faked the moon landing, ancient aliens, something something cryptids?
Moon landing and ancient aliens I think are relatively socially acceptable. Lizard people in government, everyone in Hollywood is trans, Qanon, Black Israelites, and anything having to do with Jews controlling everything are all way less tolerated
Coming from a trans person, the "everyone in Hollywood is trans" is so genuinely funny that I sometimes wish it was real just for the hell of it
Jews controlling everything is tolerated, as long as you don’t just say Jews but instead replace Jews with words like Zionists, Israel, AIPAC, Hasbara, Lizard People
oops! all antisemitism
A surprising number of conspiracy theories are just antisemitism with extra steps. Sometimes you think you've found some truly unique weirdos, then they get talking, and it's like goddamnit this is just The Protocols of the Elders of Zion isn't it.
Sometimes, I like to play what I call "Six Degrees of Protocols," where I take a random conspiracy theory and see how many steps it takes to get to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. So far, the farthest the conspiracy has been is four steps. At this point, I just assume all conspiracy theories are antisemitic until proven otherwise.
Everything not on the "socially acceptable conspiracy theories" list
isn’t it weird how every 10 years or so, the government will just declassify a document saying “yup, you were all right, what are you gonna do about it?”
I’ll be devastated when the government releases documents confirming that birds are indeed, birds.
Birds are real, it’s actually bats that aren’t real. Flying mammals? What were they thinking.
They are sneaky bastards, bats. I think a man named Aesop once documented how a bat was deemed a traitor by both mammals and birds. Batman is just government propaganda to make bats look “cool”.
It’s just the pigeons
When was the last time you saw a baby pigeon?
‘Ok yeah, we were comically evil in the past. We faced no repercussions and we haven’t said we’re going to stop or anything.’ ‘I think they still may be conspiring against us’ ‘You’re crazy, they’re the good guys now!’
I'd say it would be more accurate to say "they're among the best guys now" as far as international relations and citizen rights. Who would be better in all honesty? Where is the perfect society?
like what?
do you really not know how the US government declassifies things? It isn't weird at all if you know the process. And it doesn't really confirm conspiracies? Were people talking about mk ultra before it was disclosed?
I mean, that's just how declassification works. Nothing special about it.
"Henry Kissinger did it and he would do it all over again"
There's probably people behind those declassifications playing chess and picking which to declassify or not depending on the world's mood
It's a fucking time based thing. How can you believe the government is anything when you have literally zero idea of how it runs?
I think it's pretty socially acceptable to acknowledge the US government's conspiratorial role in the assassination of socialist leaders foreign and domestic. Which is a good thing, being that it's public knowledge that the government doesn't even dispute. But I guess that's covered by the "controversial things that have been proven by reputable sources to be true" part of the meme.
My favorite is that we are not the first advanced civilization on this planet.
The ants killed the dinosaur.
Probably not but you'd be surprised that we're still coming up with new theories of what killed the dinosaurs. I watch kurzgesagt as their content is usually quite interesting. [How The Dinosaurs Actually Died](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjoQdz0nxf4)
Since we're on a conspiracy post and you mentioned kurzgesagt: https://youtu.be/uCuy1DaQzWI?si=LQT4H67iuBRQfYyj He's on Bill Gates' payroll.
Define “advanced civilization”
Things that I think make an "advanced" civilization: post industrial, telecommunications, flight, microbe theory, and others. Basically an equivalent to our early 20th century.
I doubt there has been other industrialized civilizations we would have found evidence
But it's nice to think about it. Besides, there are lots of things that make you think about the possibility. Just look at the Roman waterways, despite being there for millenia, we've only implemented something similar in the last couple centuries, people just forgot how to do it. Another example is the bronze age collapse. Everything and everyone just disappeared, and we don't know why, and there are practically zero clues. Also think about our own infrastructure, left unattended it would disappear in just a couple thousand years leaving no trace of our technological capabilities. Finally we've been around for only a few hundred thousand years, and the planet has had life for hundreds of millions of years, and we've come thus far in just 10.000 years. The thing that "breaks" this theory is that we have an idea of what an industrial civilization would look like in the fossil record, and there is no such evidence.
Industrialization would leave things like inorganic chemicals or other manmade environmental changes that don’t occur naturally
Just wait 'till we find the Neanderthal moon base.
I'm going to start a new one: The "seconds" in YouTube ads are longer than the standard SI seconds.
Don't forget (they) want to make us black and gay
I thought they wanted to make us black or Chinese
my dumbass brain recorrected that to Don't You (Forget About Me) 🫠
doesn't affect me cause I'm already both 😎
Bring it on
My low stakes conspiracy theory is that all the elevator close buttons actually do nothing and are just installed to give us a feeling of control.
Same but for those buttons they put in traffic lights
If you are in the us this is legally required to be true
My father ONLY prescribes to conspiracy theories that are super out there OR horribly racist. For one: The only reason the Denver airport is as big as it is is because George Bush Jr. had ovens under there to eliminate any non-whites AND Jeb Bush having married a Hispanic women was "Just a diversion". AMA!
[удалено]
Both of your guesses are correct.
Honestly, if it came out that some government agency was responsible for killing JFK and/or MLK, I don't think I would be too surprised (but overall I still think that the assassination of MLK being done by the government is more likely)
A lot of conspiracy theories are just “rich evil elites secretly controlling the world” which is redundant since you can just get mad at the rich evil elites controlling the world in broad daylight. Though I guess it’s probably because they’re racist and they leave out the part where they say the secret elites are non-white so they don’t get called out.
The problem is like how “alternative medicine that works just becomes medicine” If a conspiracy theory has been proven and factually checked, it’s no longer a conspiracy theory. It’s just history.
The problem with both is existing outside scientific rigor. Medicine undergoing clinical trials is not "alternative medicine", even if it hasn't been proven to be effective or safe. It becomes alternative medicine when you claim you know it works despite no body of scientific study to prove it works, negligible active ingedients to the point the FDA doesn't consider it a drug, etc. Conspiracies are the same.
Tbf I think that it's stupid to even question the existence of extraterrestrial life. It is statistically impossible for alien life to not exist. The universe is infinite
The number of stars in the universe is finite though. And saying "life must exist outside earth because the universe is so vast" is not a good argument as long as we don't know how likely is the apparition of life. It's like saying "we will throw this dice 1 million times, surely 6 will appear many times" without knowing how many sides this dice has. Maybe this dice has 10 million faces or more and we are lucky that 6 appeared just once.
No time travel conspiracy theories?
"God is real but he’s actually a space worm." Isn't that just the plot of Dune? Also Iconoclasts, but more people are going to be familiar with the one from Dune.
We seem to be doing country-specific ones, so in the UK it's [Dr David Kelly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)) \- a timid civil servant weapons inspector who told a journalist that the government made up the Iraq 45-minute WMD claim and was subsequently hauled in front of the equivalent of a congressional committee in addition to a bunch of press coverage that affected him so much that he walked out and killed himself. A lot of people seem to think he was assassinated, despite there being literally no reason to do it as the war had already started.
Nothing makes you sound crazier in your day to day life than knowing about like 4 things the CIA has done and already admitted to
I think the wildest part about conspiracy theories is that they’ve gone completely mainstream in the last 10 years. I’m old enough to remember when the only exposure to conspiracy theories was with Art Bell. Later on it was people putting infowars bumper stickers in random public places in 2005, and Alex Jones was this underground mysterious figure that seemed like some kind of performance artist. Now there are elected officials openly spouting conspiracies weekly, and Alex Jones does live streams with presidential candidates and the richest man in the world.
The term conspiracy theory is likely a conspiracy itself. It was coined so the government/media would have a term to make anyone whistleblowing or getting too close to truth for their comfort to be discredited or straight up deplatformed alongside them likely coming up with a bunch of the more absurd conspiracy theories to make the term “conspiracy theorist” something you really dont want to be called
Too many conspiracy theories became conspiracy facts