What is your favourite conspiracy theory?

[julieca]

I love the crazy conspiracy theories. So my favourite ones are that birds arent real and that Paul McCartney is dead and the man we see now is a lookalike.
What about you?

[Maskless]

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

Others I just find very sad. The people I know who believe them are just unable to cope with real life, they're invariably damaged and vulnerable individuals who have to believe what they do as some sort of self preservation and coping mechanism.

Depends which others, though? Many people have it firmly in their heads that believing (or considering) any conspiracy theories is the sign of an unwell or crazy person - whether it's the replacing pigeons' batteries or royal reptilian ones or suspicions about the true manner of Robin Cook and David Kelly's deaths.

Conspiracies do exist - otherwise people would not be arrested and found guilty of 'conspiracy to [commit a crime]'. What leads to the initial inquiries and arrests if not technically 'conspiracy theories'?

For example, I don't think anybody doubts that it was a conspiracy that led to 9/11 - it's just a case of whom you believe was responsible for that conspiracy.

People don't like to believe that the USA could have been responsible for killing their own citizens, but when you have potential issues such as a tower being reported as having collapsed whilst it's still standing, learner pilots achieving feats that ace pilots with many years of experience have stated they couldn't have confidently done, passports surviving unscathed where metal has burnt to a crisp, the Patriot Act being all oven-ready to bring in straight afterwards....

Regardless of what straightforward explanations there may be for these things, I really don't see why you can blanket-accuse anybody who questions them of being a friendless, vulnerable person with severe mental health problems.

Jimmy Savile was an open secret at the BBC. He spent over a decade of Christmas Days with Margaret & Dennis Thatcher and was a trusted advisor to Charles & Diana, but you'd have to be crazy to assume that he was anything but an enigmatic lone wolf, wouldn't you? Same with another certain royal who's currently hiding very low indeed: is it only the absolute crazies who question if, just maybe, something terrible and criminal might have been going on with him in cahoots with his powerful friends?

I think it's just as ridiculous believing that there are NO far-reaching conspiracies going on in the world as it is to believe that ALL of them are true.

Superb post.

I was just about to write a similar post, but you saved me the trouble.

The biggest conspiracy theory is, surely, convincing most people that nobody has ever conspired to do something evil and actually got away with it.

Convince them, then you can do anythin gand get away with it because people don't believe conspiracies exist, and will label and ridicule anyone who sees through the cover up.

Genius, really!

Anyone who thought Jimmy Savile was interfering with kids would have been labelled a C.S. right up until the police started the investigation!

[EsmeraldaFudge]

That you could buy trafficked women and kids off Wayfair with them appearing to be sold as wardrobes ranging from between £2000 upwards

[BayesianBlues]

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

Going on that conspiracy chart, George Bush and Gordon Brown must have been amongst the biggest wackos ever, as they were always going on about their hopes for a New World Order.

Nowhere near as much as David Rockefeller, though, who wrote the following in his memoirs:

"For more than a century, ideological extremists, at either end of the political spectrum, have seized upon well-publicized incidents, such as my encounter with Castro, to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal, working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists,' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years......It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.”

I don't think that George Bush and Gordon Brown were referring to the thinly veiled (or often unveiled) anti-semtiic trope of the New World Order conspiracy theory which is basically an updated version of the protocols of the elders of zion (the ultimate conspiracy theory).

Of course there are conspiracies but rarely involving more than a few people as, inevitably, people talk, get pissed off, disagree - whatever.

[WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll]

Also, on that chart, it just states a single word, phrase or name without going into the vast spectrum of beliefs behind it and what it represents to different people.

Not that its on there (as far as I can see - a lot of it is blurry, however much I zoom in), but take the suggestion that the huge global oil companies are part of an evil conspiracy. Do people believe that they were solely responsible for the deliberate murder of Stan Meyer, in order to stop him and his discoveries/patents from utterly destroying their business? Some do. Now, if you ask whether people believe that they have lobbied and tried to influence governments and powerful decision-makers and maybe tried damage limitation in the media to try to cover up the extent of the pollution and related alleged deaths and disasters caused in their pursuit of profits, what's the result? Many people believe that. Finally, if you ask merely if they would be 'keen' to do whatever they need to do to maintain the many billions of dollars income that they make each year from a product universally acknowledged to be extremely harmful and polluting, rather than do the 'honourable' thing and work to wind down their business. Most people would be on board with that.

For many years, the cigarette industry fought to deny and suppress clear scientific proof of the harmfulness of their product, until they could no longer get away with it. Now, they can't claim that their products are harmful.... but do we think they seriously work together in actively seeking a healthy way to help people beat their addictions and an ultimate goal of reducing their colossal annual income down to nothing, for the good of the world's health and in order not to be corporately responsible for millions of deaths worldwide each year? If we don't believe that, it sounds like we may be straying dangerously into crazy conspiracy theory territory....

Also, to take the princess Diana one, if we're including people who expressed a sincere belief in 'dark forces' in (or working for) the royal family that wanted to kill her and were going to plan a fatal car crash to get rid of her, then one of the biggest believers in the Princess Diana murder theory was Princess Diana.

[BayesianBlues]

Pretty sure that the Princess Diana's paranoid state is highlighting the fact that conspiracy theories are generally well-rooted in paranoia.

[BayesianBlues]

I highly recommend Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World" to understand how the anti-science movement has led to the increase in conspiracy theories.

[Furries]

I think we need a task force, made up of people with no skin in the game, to examine the Top Ten conspiracy theories.

They will be able to access all available data and info from multiple platforms (media, files from multiple agencies etc).

Either their findings will be interesting/boring, or they will all succumb to an innocuous demise - which will result in a whole new level of CTs.

[BayesianBlues]

m.dailykos.com/stories/2021/12/6/2067897/-The-Trump-Cult-Has-Much-Higher-COVID-Death-Rates-and-FOX-News-Isn-t-Telling-Them

Here's one CT I do believe in. Fox news is evil.

[WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll]

I don't think that George Bush and Gordon Brown were referring to the thinly veiled (or often unveiled) anti-semtiic trope of the New World Order conspiracy theory which is basically an updated version of the protocols of the elders of zion (the ultimate conspiracy theory).

But the thing is (as I expanded in my later post), we don't know what they were referring to; just as we don't categorically know what anybody referring to the NWO believes in. Many of them are anti-Semites, but many of them are not.

I think it's far too easy to take a wide general term, attach a single one-size-fits-all understanding to it and then, based on that strict definition, condemn everybody believing in some aspect of it for something that many of them have no truck with whatsoever.... unless they're world leaders, in which case they're allowed to make it mean whatever they personally choose to.

For example, this is exactly the same kind of blurred thinking that many deeply unpleasant sorts do with their concept of Islam, going on a completely syllogistic mental journey from "some people who claim to be Muslims are terrorists" via "all Muslims who don't constantly condemn Islamist terrorists are sympathisers" and then "most Muslims are broadly not in disagreement with Islamist terrorism" and then ending up with "virtually all Muslims are in favour of terrorism". All falsely yet arguably 'plausibly' captured under the umbrella of 'Islamist terrorism'.

Closer to home, we see feminists who are keen to defend women's hard-won sex-based rights automatically painted as 'transphobic bigots' - #nodebate.

It's frighteningly easy to assert what a certain 'group' of people with one or more things loosely in common ALL 'believe' and then to condemn them as one for that imputed belief, whether it applies to them fully, partially, not at all or indeed if they have actively campaigned against those who believe it.

[WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll]

Pretty sure that the Princess Diana's paranoid state is highlighting the fact that conspiracy theories are generally well-rooted in paranoia.

You may very well be correct - but whatever the facts behind it, Diana did end up dying as she feared directly as the result of a car crash - and, as it happened, one that took place in a tunnel widely said to be historically linked to sacrifice to the goddess Diana added into the mix.

[Simonjt]

An ex colleague firmly believed that Australia doesn’t exist, instead pilots (who are all in on the lie) fly you to south America. These areas of South America are populated by actors and overseen by the special services of multiple countries. Native australians are actors who are actually from Africa and just happen to be brilliant at putting on accents and looking nothing like their real ethnicity…

Weirdly she believed in New Zealand and couldn’t explain how you can fly from New Zealand to South America in just over three hours!

She also thinks the Holocaust was fake, she thinks it was faked so that Jewish people will be pitied so they can form a super race, take over the world and enslave anyone who isn’t Jewish. The reasons Jewish people don’t eat meat and dairy together is because they control the food industry who put chemicals in food that are only activated when you eat both meat and dairy together, these chemicals mean Jewish people can control you easier and make you believe in the Holocaust etc. The Nazis are simply people who discovered what the Jews were doing and tried to save the world from them, the Jews decided to invent the Holocaust to stop people supporting the Nazis.

So crazy and a raging racist.

[HerRoyalNotness]

@Viviennemary

Moon landings didn't happen. They didn't. Footage totally faked.

We’ll find out for sure in 3 years when they go back.

[Sitchervice]

Fake moon landing. I like winding my husband up with those 😁

Speaking of husband, the Finland one would be conserving. He's gone on business trips there 😬

[RobertSmithsLipstick]

I've just thought of another one.
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.

[Insert1x20p]

But they could have made it 'cool', had it been true and had they wanted to. Somebody has to start things like that, so why wouldn't a powerful and well-liked celebrity couple be the ideal ones to do it?

No they couldn't , because in 2006 he wasn't a well known and powerful person- few people outside the US had even heard of him and he was a rank outsider in the nominations. So if Michelle really was trans, he never would have become president because people who didn't want him to be president would have leaked it during either the nomination campaign or the presidential campaign and he wouldn't have been elected- him being black was a stretch at that time in terms of electability.

Look- I think we agree that MO is not trans, but that people even think it's possible shows they are completely devoid of critical thinking.

[Aria999]

I dislike all conspiracy theories. America is probably going to lose its democracy to them.

Of course it's possible for conspiracies to exist, but the very nature of a conspiracy theory is to have unsound methodology. Its adherents cherry pick and make up some facts and ignore others that are inconvenient. So yes I assume they are all batshit (and harmful) until there is some good quality evidence from reliable sources.

[MangoSeason]

The most amazing thing about most conspiracy theories is the amount of evil competence and efficiency governments would need to pull them off. I mean, governments just aren’t capable of being competent and efficient. Or is that what they want us to think?

[SnoopsCaliforniaRoll]

I find the "Michelle Obama is a man" really horrible actually. Black women have been perpetually dehumanised historically, told they are "masculine", "not delicate" or "aggressive" etc, and I find this conspiracy theory is straight along those lines. Nasty stuff.

[SnoopsCaliforniaRoll]

@EsmeraldaFudge

That you could buy trafficked women and kids off Wayfair with them appearing to be sold as wardrobes ranging from between £2000 upwards

Omg I had forgotten this. People started doing reconciliations between (USA) missing persons lists and the names of various Wayfair products (cabinets, lockers, wardrobes etc). Going to have to hunt online to find out where this ended up...!

[unname]

@SnoopsCaliforniaRoll

I find the "Michelle Obama is a man" really horrible actually. Black women have been perpetually dehumanised historically, told they are "masculine", "not delicate" or "aggressive" etc, and I find this conspiracy theory is straight along those lines. Nasty stuff.

Me too. It’s just openly racist misogyny.

[BayesianBlues]

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

Pretty sure that the Princess Diana's paranoid state is highlighting the fact that conspiracy theories are generally well-rooted in paranoia.

You may very well be correct - but whatever the facts behind it, Diana did end up dying as she feared directly as the result of a car crash - and, as it happened, one that took place in a tunnel widely said to be historically linked to sacrifice to the goddess Diana added into the mix.

She died in a car crash. No evidence to suggest any other factors at play. The fact that she was paranoid about people wanting her dead doesn't make her death some conspiracy.

To then bring some sacrifices in a tunnel , as though even if the car crash had been planned, it could have been planned exactly where, is bonkers beyond belief. If people had wanted her dead, they wouldn't give a shit about historical sacrifices.

[Werehamster]

@MsInsomniac

Jim Morrison faked his own death and came back as Barry manilow

Don't be ridiculous!!

Everyone knows that Jim Morrison actually replaced Rush Limbaugh when he died unexpectedly.

I read that Justin Trudeau's father is actually Fidel Castro.

I agree there definitely are conspiracies out there. Look at the situation with Peng Shuai the Chinese tennis player. But, this thread is about kind of bonkers conspiracy theories, isn't it?

[Werehamster]

I also think the stuff about Michelle Obama is really offensive and doesn't need repeating.

[FearlessSwiftie]

The birds aren't real
www.audubon.org/news/are-birds-actually-government-issued-drones-so-says-new-conspiracy-theory-making

[BooseysMom]

My ex firmly believed cancer was invented somehow by the government so that chemotherapy could be sold by the big pharmaceuticals. By simply eating a few apple pips a day you would be protecting yourself from cancer because they contain cyanide (vit b17) which is the true cure. Also apricot seeds.