We’ve got a bunch of new people now so let’s bring back a classic post. What low stakes conspiracy theory do you believe that you cannot prove but feels right to you?
I’ll start: I believe that dating apps have made a concerted effort to smear in person meeting people and tie it to being “creepy” through social media so you are forced to meet people online(which was the creepy option just 15 years ago)
Public programs are purposely underfunded to make it easy for people to point to why they don’t work (the average person doesn’t think about/care whether they get funding), making it easier to continue the process of privatizing everything.
Many conspiracy theories aren’t actually conspiracy theories but a consequence of profit-driven motives that give the illusion of a conspiracy theory.
That’s not even a conspiracy it’s the explicit neoliberal plan
The first one is just political strategy, it’s known as starve the beast
That’s just observable facts.
Hmm not sure I like the framing here, liberals are 100% culpable as well
Public programs are purposely underfunded to make it easy for people to point to why they don’t work (the average person doesn’t think about/care whether they get funding), making it easier to continue the process of privatizing everything.
I 420.69% believe this is 100% true. It’s such a great feedback loop for someone wanting to dismantle it. It doesn’t work so no one uses it, no uses it because it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work because it was underfunded and ill-equipped, and it was underfunded and ill-equipped because they didn’t want it to work. It doesn’t work so no one uses it, its perceived value is lessened so it then doesn’t work.
And then you can make great use of absolute numbers over more contextualized relative numbers/ Here’s a made up example:
why did it cost 700 million to vaccinate every American??
$700 million / 300 million Americans = $2.33 per vaccination, insanely cheap. Less than you spent on gas tax getting to and from work today.I’m always immediately suspicious when someone starts throwing around absolute numbers like that.
I’m always immediately suspicious when someone starts throwing around absolute numbers like that.
Agreed! Anyone who uses tries to use math to justify why a bad thing is a good thing goes to super hell. The one where the Doom Slayer just goes buck wild. That’s where they go.
Self assured STEM dorks and their consequences
It’s also super frustrating that these STEM dweebs have have lucrative skillsets that the “Mark€t™️©️®️ “ “values”. Because of this they can’t justify to themselves why they should go into the public sector for the betterment of the people. STEM dorks across the board would be so much cooler if they were used for public welfare and social good.
I totally understand why a regular non-CHUD publicly educated STEMheads would go private sector. They have bills and debt and all that jazz, and sadly the public sector jobs can’t give out those sorts of attractive salaries and benefits.
All of this further perpetuates the cycle original post was talking about. Nerds get their education in the public then leave to private sector which hallows out the public sector. It’s just a vicious and vile cycle.
As someone who works with houseless folks this is absolutely without a doubt a thing. There are for profit companies springing up that do similar social services that I do, too, so the privatization part even applies. It’s fucked
Yeah, afaik this is pretty widely acknowledged. Both the GOP and the Dems do it. The notable example I can think of is all the public housing projects the US grudgingly built in response to Soviet housing programs, then deliberately starved of resources to convince people they don’t work.
Starving education of resources so it can be privatized has been ongoing program for decades. Everyone’s in on it - Tech Billionaires wanted to control education so they could proletarianize coding and they largely won. Christian Fascists wanted Charter Schools so they could re-impose segregation. Democrats wanted to privatize everything so they could loot public education funds and divert the money to magnet and charter schools, while also stripping resources going to minorities. The whole purpose of property-tax funded education was to ensure that class was rigidly enforced.
I think the story about the passengers fighting back on United flight 93 is fake and it was shot down by the military.
feel like most people on this site believe this one
United flight 93
Idea for a bit: Hexbear passengers on United Flight 93 having a struggle session on whether it’s okay to critically support our hijackers if they really do intend to fly the plane into the Capitol building.
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I could see Mel Brooks or Monty Python pulling that. I don’t know who the equivalent screwball black comedy people are these days. Eric Andre?
Even That Mitchell and Webb Look is a decade old at this point.
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ohhhh, I never heard this one
honestly sounds true
Both can be true. The story is entirely plausible, though. People had cell-phones and the towers had already been hit.
I think there’s a cultural memory hole thing going on - Hijackings used to be really, really common and were usually resolved without too much violence. Being hijacked would definitely ruin your day, but the general wisdom was to just sit tight and wait to be rescued or ransomed or whatever. A lot of the time passengers would be released after the hijacker’s demands were met.
Pretty much the only reason 9/11 worked as well as it did is because up until then no one had tried it. Once the people on 93 knew what the stakes were it was, what, 150? 200 people against four or five armed with small knives? Most people aren’t fighters but those are still really, really bad odds.
Were cell phones usable on planes in 2001?
No, but back then some planes had payphones on the seat back where the touch screen entertainment systems are now.
100% believe it
“Nobody cares” tier stakes, but I think Nintendo made games in the dying days of the Wii U that didn’t use the gamepad at all so they could later easily directly port them over to other consoles and thus sell them to people twice.
Sure, I’ll add that to my worldview
Zelda BOTW
Zelda BOTW BTFO, damn
it actually plays better on the wiiu, because it can process more than a calculator
I totally believe this, they really did give up on that controller
It would be so cool if the next console could stream menus to a Switch haha
if the next console isn’t just a switch with the same form factor and dock and controllers but a different, slightly better graphics chip and CPU, i’m going to be very unhappy
The Switch is running on a mobile chipset from like eight years ago, the next one better be more than just a little better, lol
It’s Nintendo, they love to shake things up even when it’s not necessary. The next console is going to be a bicycle with an AR windshield or something
Incredibly low stakes but still technically a conspiracy theory.
There’s a town in Wales called Beddgelert. They have a story about how the town is named after a loyal hound who was mistakenly killed in revenge by Llewellyn the Great who believed Gelert killed his infant son. They have a statue and all the typical tourist trap shit.
Cute story except for one thing.
It’s all a lie. The story of Gelert was made up in the 18th century by the owner of a local hotel, David Pritchard, who was looking to drum up tourism. There’s no record of the story before then, the burial mound was erected some time shortly before he started circulating the myth, Gelert wasn’t a name before then. The town was actually named after Celert, an 8th century missionary who settled there, and 13th century censuses that list the town as Bedkelert seem to support this assumption.
Eryri tourist board has taken you for fools!
There’s a lot of that stuff going around. The oldest house in Bath is the same.
The guy literally just copied this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Guinefort
Dating apps deliberately match you with incompatible people so you keep returning and paying for premium.
there’s no way this isn’t true. i have personally experienced this on those apps.
Probably it is like slot machine programming. Average is bad, but will give out a minor win timed so that you still believe that it is possible.
When I am using dating apps, I completely delete my account and remake it every few weeks.
From my experience, they give your profile a lot of extra reach in the first 2-3 weeks or so before throttling it.
It’s been a while since I’ve done this, though, I imagine they’ll eventually start combating that strategy if they’re not doing it already.
Do you mean they hide people you would be compatible with?
I wonder if there’s a way to game it so you actually get matched with people you are compatible with, ie. by pretending to be someone else as far as the algorithm is concerned. Or if their algorithms are so good that you can’t even get away with that.
I go back and forth. But this week I 100% believe Justin from Canada is Fidel’s kid.
I like this one.
Also, Hua Guofeng was Mao Zedong’s son. I mean think about it, they were both Chinese and they both had the same haircut.
There is a small but self-sustaining breeding population of cougars living in the Adirondacks and possibly most of upstate New York, but this will never be officially confirmed by the various government environmental agencies because then they would have to take real action to protect them. Cougars have everything they need there and there’s really no reason to believe they’re just walking 1800 miles and not breeding.
This is the case for a lot of other heavily forested places east of the Rockies as well.
is this a conspiracy??? Im from up there and everyone seems to just accept it there
I think it’s more like they can’t acknowledge it or people start frothing at the mouth and organizing hunting parties, sorta like how we decimated the wolf populations across the country
We don’t really have that much livestock (the old joke is farming here is a great way to make a small fortune if you start with a big one) and it was mostly ranchers that wanted to kill wolves for having the audacity to kill cows the ranchers didn’t want to spend money to fence in.
Just had this discussion around a campfire in the Adirondacks. Nearly everyone agreed Wolves and Mountain Lions are in upstate NY except for the one person who said, “Well the DEC hasn’t said so, therefore they’re actually Coyotes and Bobcats”.
Even if it isn’t full blown wolves we’ve got coydogs which are a mix of coyotes and wolves which are just bigger meaner coyotes
From the adirondacks, this is absolutely true. Every old timer that’s spent decades in the woods has a cougar story.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen one but it was dark so I can’t be certain
oh hey, it’s the Gippsland Panther but in America
Also the Tasmanian Tiger still exists, and proclaiming it extinct was actually the best way to protect it
Major sports leagues are not rigged in the sense that winners are pre-determined, but the refs are told to keep games, serieses, and playoff races close, because blowouts and dominance are boring.
An NBA ref got busted for betting on games and IIRC talked about how the league would make the above obvious to refs (at least in the postseason). There’s too much money changing hands and too little accountability for shady shit to not happen at all, and this is the type of thing all owners could have a handshake agreement on because they’ll all profit from it and it doesn’t really prejudice any team specifically.
I 100% believe this is true and it’s what I thought of when I saw this thread. I’m a fan of a small-market team and it’s obvious that the teams with large markets are given preferential treatment. If you’re an owner, would you rather have 3 million people watching the finals or 30 million people? Their financial interest demands that bigger teams be more successful
Revenue sharing makes that part a lot more believable, but I still find it hard to buy the idea that one group of billionaires (small market owners) would allow a group of their peers (big market owners) to fuck over their hobby (the team) for the sake of ultimately an incremental amount of money. But maybe I’m thinking too small and too recently.
I always thought the Saints winning the Superbowl right after Katrina was sus
See also: Eurovision.
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i dont necessarily believe it but i think the conspiracy theory that justin trudeau is castro’s kid is funny
it is funny. Love that oneI consider it more likely true than false, as far as I know nothing has refuted this version of events at all
Frosted Flakes are not great, they’re just paying Tony the Tiger to say that.
John Harvey Kellogg was a surgeon who performed circumcisions. He believed they were an effective treatment for “addiction to masterbation”.
There are conspiracy theories (misconceptions?) that he popularized circumcisions in America. Or that Corn Flakes were created to curb masterbation urges - because they are so bland that obviously no one would want to jerk it after eating that.
Idk where I’m going with this, but John Harvey Kellogg was a weird fucking dude.
lol. If you haven’t heard it, I very much recommend The Dollop episode 46: The Cereal Men.
Well I know what I’m listening to during work today
Enjoy!
He did actually make cornflakes to stop people from masturbating though. It was something to do with spicy food making you horny
Is this a misconception? I’ve never looked into that but heard it before. I’m skeptical of googling this haha
THEY’RE GRRRRRRFINE!
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Don’t use “whore” as a pejorative
“Whores” should be venerated in the hustle-grindset-gig-economy the world has created but strangely are not.
On the real though, sex work is so weirdly moralized in the market economy when everything else isn’t. They want you to monetize your free time, your thoughts, your interests, your relationships, but you monetize your sexuality they get all
it’s part of the apparatus of control over female-bodied people
Aren’t there male sex workers as well?
yes, of course, but people are usually mad at them for being gay, not for being sex workers
Also, this guy looks an awful lot like Flat Dallas!
I’m 100% convinced that “vape disease” was just Covid. 90% sure Covid was developed in a lab. 70% sure that lab was in USA and that Covid was spread at the military games in Wuhan.
The lottery is a trap designed to catch time travelers.
The odds would have to be much longer for it to be effective. Sure when it’s one in one hundred million there’s almost no chance that *you" will win, but with millions of players playing every day there’s practically a guarantee that someone will win eventually.
The SEC are the real time cops. They’re a front for the Hyperextended Interval Temporal Legislation and Entropic Reduction Society (don’t panic about the acronym, they started as private bodyguards and then their mission expanded as chronological abuse became more widely known). It’s a lot easier to vet people buying Amazon and Apple stock at IPO. If you’ve got no history until 1980, then buy 10,000 shares of apple on IPO day, then do absolutely nothing else in the market for decades, then dump all 10k shares at peak that’s a pretty easy to spot profile of a time traveler.
Smart enough to time travel, but not smart enough to conceal suspicious trading patterns.
They’re different specialties, and
since the late 2400s we’ve had access tothere are ways of detecting much more complex Jump, Pump and Dump (JPD) schemes
Or quantum suicidal people that try to deceive and hack the machinery of the universe.
There’ve never been any time travellers because the time traveller detection agency always spots them winning the stock market and neutralizes them, .
Veganism is the correct path forward.
Low SteaksToby Keith had “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” pre-written years before 9/11 and wrote it generically enough so that it could apply to whatever war Amerikkka entered next.
Is Toby Keith considered the typical pro-USA pro-war country star post 9/11? Or is there another famous guy who is even more emblematic of that?
Nope just Toby Keith. No reason to look any further. Case closed.
There was that where were you on 9/11 song
The feds are running Pokémon Go (and possibly other copycat AR games) to harvest data on human movement and shopping patterns, and the feds are the ones who forced Niantic to dismantle the remote raiding economy and focus almost entirely on in person raids.
A development studio deliberately stopping whales from dumping money into them (ie the previously unlimited remote raid passes) is kind of a jaw dropping moment.
I’m fully on board with this one. The update to “scan” pokestops(take a video of everything around you) followed by the gutting of mobile raids sells this one for me.
To quote comrade Finger, they had a good thing going. Whales would dump money into remote raiding and that backbone supported dolphins and minnows who could both host and join raids via pokegenie, which was a completely independent third party organization that Niantic didn’t have to manage or moderate. All Niantic had to do was continue their normally scheduled content treadmill and reap the benefits.
The whole ‘but the whales are burning through content too fast, Niantic had to stop them’ explanation doesn’t hold water for me. Wouldn’t Niantic rather have some portion of whales get burnt out and drop off the game for a while until the next content release rather than shut off that revenue stream entirely?
I dunno, to me the only explanation that makes sense is there’s something about human movement tracking that Niantic really, really wants.
It used to be that Go had a proximity tracker that helped you search for the one’s you wanted. It was like a simpler, stress-free version of my day job. Every update since they got rid of it has been a half measure.
The feds have had to tell soldiers etc multiple times to stop using jogging apps and uploading their routes to social media. They’re posting detailed maps of where everything is at military bases and government facilitites.
