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.
Hmm not sure I like the framing here, liberals are 100% culpable as well
That’s just observable facts.
The first one is just political strategy, it’s known as starve the beast
That’s not even a conspiracy it’s the explicit neoliberal plan
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.
deleted by creator
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.
deleted by creator
Self assured STEM dorks and their consequences
deleted by creator
“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.
Zelda BOTW
Zelda BOTW BTFO, damn
it actually plays better on the wiiu, because it can process more than a calculator
Sure, I’ll add that to my worldview
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
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.
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
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.
See also: Eurovision.
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.
deleted by creator
I always thought the Saints winning the Superbowl right after Katrina was sus
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.
Frosted Flakes are not great, they’re just paying Tony the Tiger to say that.
THEY’RE GRRRRRRFINE!
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
Removed by mod
Don’t use “whore” as a pejorative
deleted by creator
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!
The Sonic movie deliberately used an ugly design for the first trailer as a marketing stunt
“Smart” consumer products are intentionally spying on you. Full stop.
That’s why it’s so hard to find a not “smart” anything. The added material cost is well worth the additional surveillance, be it for the sake of ruling class parasites buying and selling the surveillance data, or for their buddies
this isn’t a conspiracy theory. they literally do this and cooperate with the feds
It’s low stakes because I believe it isn’t just done but it’s done at such a staggeringly wide scale and not many people notice or even care.
I’ve gotten into arguments about this with the cryptofash over at programming.dev lmao. literally had one of them tell me to “get over it”.
Yeah fuck that im still mad over horse armor.
NEVER FORGIVE. NEVER FORGET. Todd Howard will pay for his crimes.
The version I hear the most is “everyone does it” as if that makes it somehow acceptable, and its associated cliche “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” from so-called “hackers” that get their takes from so called “Hacker News.”
Removed by mod
Your shirt about missing a time when you could get away with sex pestery/bigotry is getting so many questions asked about the shirt you’re wearing that implies that you used to get away with sex pestery/bigotry.
I had “nothing to hide” back when cancel culture wasn’t a thing and the “rules” weren’t in constant flux
From another recent comment of yours, for context.
(When really Milo was just outed as a pedo, which is how most people get canceled these days)
HMMM.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
Sure is a bad thing that “canceling” happens that way to you, huh?
Removed by mod
Not a conspiracy theory. It’s basically how modern marketing works since…2012 or so, and why it’s in a death spiral (you can either afford the data sets or not and that’s what determines if your advertising is effective)
I call it a conspiracy theory by way of the deliberate absence/omission of non “smart” choices. It’s unspoken but it’s there, and it’s systemic.
Well, if you make and sell a non-“smart” TV or whatever, you’re leaving money on the table. It’s hardly any more expensive to add, and you get the extra recurring revenue stream from selling surveillance data, and maybe subscriptions or service upsells.
I don’t think that’s a conspiracy they’re pretty up-front about that. The bigger not-a-conspiracy is that they can remotely brick all that shit when they decide to stop supporting it, meaning that your expensive smart-house set up might end up being worthless overnight.
Doctorow’s “Unauthorized Bread” short story lays it out in a humorous short-fiction format.
This is a big reason that high quality TVs are getting so much more affordable. The revenue from selling data subsidizes the cost to bring the price way down. “Telly” is one such company taking this to the extreme and offering the device to consumers free of charge.
When something is free (or cheap) the consumer is often the product. :sus:
often the product
always the product
If someone raids a dumpster successfully, that stuff is technically free.
This is a big reason that high quality TVs are getting so much more affordable.
There’s a lot of reasons like improved technology and efficiency but yeah, the ability to play such targeted ads based off what you’re doing is pretty insane and they have a vested interest to sell at less profit.
And at the end of the day the amount of people who are willing to just not connect their TV to the internet in the first place or find a way to circumvent them is low. Like it still shocks me every time I see a YouTuber not have adblock on.
is there a way to remove the offending programs from tv sets?
Run local DNS server and configure it to block the domains. Pihole is easy one to do this. Can also block advertisement.
If it’s an android TV you may be able to use a custom ROM on it, otherwise it’s unlikely.
You can start by taking it off the internet completely, I suppose.
Toby 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?
There was that where were you on 9/11 song
Nope just Toby Keith. No reason to look any further. Case closed.
I think the story about the passengers fighting back on United flight 93 is fake and it was shot down by the military.
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.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
100% believe it
feel like most people on this site believe this one
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.
Veganism is the correct path forward.
Low SteaksThe lottery is a trap designed to catch time travelers.
There’ve never been any time travellers because the time traveller detection agency always spots them winning the stock market and neutralizes them, .
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.
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!
The guy literally just copied this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Guinefort
There’s a lot of that stuff going around. The oldest house in Bath is the same.
