Our TVs emit a jarring sound at a frequency we can't actually hear, but it is deliberately set to unsettle us, and make us feel slothful and end up stuck to the sofa watching shit.
There have been documented studies since the 50s about subliminal messages in TV broadcasts - to the extent that laws were brought in to ban/regulate it.
Conspiracy theories presume so much coherent organisation at a high level of government - as if that''s evident at any other time
The thing is, though, that although we gleefully observantly point out all the areas where governments display huge incompetence, to give them credit, governing a country is a massive undertaking that they largely manage very well indeed. To be fair, I think governing a country with 50% success and smoothness would take such immense skill, it truly blows my mind how that can be co-ordinated - and, in spite of all the foul-ups, things are probably run functionally well in reality at least 80% of the time.
There's also the suggestion of the Hegelian Dialectic - where in order to manipulate things to the result that you wish to achieve, you first invent a problem and then 'solve' it. That's one of the accusations levelled at 9/11 wrt the Patriot Act.
I've also wondered about a theory that the government might have deliberately engineered a way of increasing taxes on petrol, by mandating bulking out each litre of actual petrol with 5% of rubbish - on the pretext of helping the environment, even though this just leads to 5% extra tanker journeys, a 5% (or more, if the added stuff causes problems) increase in the amount of litres bought and arguably making cars wear out and need repairs sooner. But that one's obviously just a wacko theory.