Conspiracy theories are attractive.
It might be easy to dismiss someone who believes that the moon landing was faked or that Covid-19 vaccines aren’t safe, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.
According to the Fight Fake News initiative at Louisiana State University (LSU), “Conspiracy theories are captivating because they provide explanations for confusing, emotional and ambiguous events especially when official explanations seem inadequate.”
People “naturally want to make sense of the world,” the initiative notes, observing that conspiracy theories “provide structured narratives of events that comport with how some people process information.”
So what happens when a conspiracy theory turns out to actually be true? Your brain just exploded at the thought, huh?
People were keen to share information after Redditor BrilliantKrill asked the online community:
“What are some popular conspiracy theories that have been proved?”
“The United States…”
“The United States really did engage in a secret and illegal bombing campaign in Cambodia during the Vietnam war.” ~ Redditor
To which this person replied…
“Yep. Led to the rise of the Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge. If you don’t remember, Pol Pot instigated a massive genocide in Cambodia.” ~ tface23
“He was a world-class drinker…”
“Hemingway went off the grid at the end of his life believing that the FBI was tracking him. He was a world-class drinker and not the best individual.”
“He wasn’t wrong about that.” ~ thatthingdo
To which this person replied…
“The sad part is that being tracked fueled his anxiety which eventually contributed to his decision to kill himself.” ~ TXR22
“The Black Hand…”
“The Black Hand did give Gavrilo Princip the gun he used to kill Archduke Ferdinand. They had other assassins on that route.”
“And even though this hits up all the marks of a conspiracy theory, it’s true.” ~ Bitlong_Salad
To which this person replied…
“The Serbian prime minister knew about the plans and tried to discreetly warn about it but was misunderstood.”
“The original assassination plan included grenades, but every assassin failed, Princip actually intended to kill one of his fellow assassins, who was caught and failed to commit suicide, when the archduke happened to pass by on his way to visit wounded officers in the hospital.” ~ GrandTheftPony
And on that same note…
“When you hear the full story of Ferdinand’s death, it’s much harder to consider it a conspiracy.”
“I mean, everything about it was so poorly thought out down to the fact that Ferdinand was the highest-ranking ally the Black Hand’s cause had within the government at the time.” ~ HandicapperGeneral
But what about phones, eh?
“That older Iphones are purposely being slowed down.” ~ mark484877
But hold up!
“It’s not so black and white, but you are correct. What a lot of people fail to mention is that Samsung does the same thing if not worse because you can ‘speed it back up’ for a fee.” ~ tireddrew
And then this happened:
“Have you heard of Verizon or Google doing the same? My Pixel 2 battery used to last me 2+ days easily before the phone was paid off.”
“Within a week of paying it off, my battery suddenly started lasting me about half a day with minimal use, and the phone started running slowly as well. Come to think of it, the GPS issues started around then too.”
“When using maps, the GPS can tell me where I am, but doesn’t update location once I start navigation.”
Looks like there’s some disagreement here.
“Service providers have no control over when your phone’s hardware clocks out. But a lot of Android phones usually die when they hit the 2-3 year mark.”
“As much as people hate on Apple, I’ve been a user since 2012 and have had an excellent experience. I used to be Android, but I had an LG phone that really soured the experience and now I’ll never go back.” ~ tireddrew
“A proposed CIA operation…”
“Operation Northwoods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods“
“A proposed CIA operation to train Cuban refugees to commit mass shooting sprees in cities like Miami, to help convince the public that we should invade Cuba and kill Castro. Luckily, JFK had the sense to reject the idea.” ~ Redditor
Oh, and speaking of that:
“Operation Northwoods is a classic example of a Western government planning a false flag against civilians to justify war.”
“I do see this example ‘refuted’ in the sense that it was merely in the brainstorming stages and not operationally ready, but it was meant to be implemented fairly soon after the memo was written – US planners anticipated Cuba would sign a defense pact with the Soviet Union in the coming months.”
“Such a pact would’ve tied America’s hands behind its back in trying to thwart the Cuban revolution.”
“I think it’s noteworthy how the generals casually throw in a reference to ‘Remember the Maine’, in connection with planning a false flag. I wonder if it’s an open secret in military/intelligence black ops circles that such incidents were actually carried out from the inside.”
“One scenario from Northwoods – the swapping of civilian airliners with drone aircraft – is thought by some 9/11 Truthers to have been used to carry out the September 11th attacks.” ~ 50YearPlanBro
Okay, okay… just hear me out for a moment here—just one more about this, okay? Okay? Good.
“As in it never got past the memo phase and was never close to being implemented? Have you even read the actual memo the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave JFK.”
“It’s so badly written that it reeks of someone telling their subordinates the government version of ‘I need pictures, pictures of Spiderman’. DoD wanted to prove it could come up with something and it was just….awful.” ~ CitationX_7N11C
And just listen to this observation:
“The term “conspiracy theorist” was coined during the JFK assassination to discredit the people that had a different interpretation from the official story.” ~ OttoManSatire
Is there something here?
“They turned ‘conspiracy’ into a dirty word. People act like it is some mythological creature but it is simply a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.” ~ OMGhateallofyou
According to Karen Douglas, Ph.D., a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, “Believing in conspiracy theories and being suspicious about the actions of others is in some ways quite an adaptive thing to do.”
We don’t necessarily want to trust everyone, she points out, so conspiracy theories have always been around.
Which one will surprise us next by turning out to be true? We have no way to know, but there are at least a few people out there who are bound to feel vindicated.