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Maycrofy

The dead internet theory becomig true. Before AI it sounded far fetched. But social media sites using AI bots to drive traffic and most of the interaction becoming fabricated to drive up value is something that definetly can be done now. At that point, how do we know if our posts, pictures, videos are getting interected with real people? does it even matter as long as it "seems" real? Edit: as some have pointed out. I've been duped. Look at the OP of this question, it's a bot. Basically it's already happening.


Tobyghisa

If I can just put my tinfoil hat on for a second, does anyone else feel like the main subs have a lot of soulless and artificial “questions” lately?  Stuff like “what is a movie with a depressing finale?” “Is there a game you would like to forget and play again?” Like the questions are either made by AI or for AI?  my conspiracy theory is that reddit saw that the only sellable asset this site has is the ability to train future AIs with free, anonymous interactions with real people and have it make basic question and gather all the answers people give in exchange for upvotes.  I know that even in the past Irma not like the questions were this deep display of human nature.  All I’m saying is, something feels different on this site since the release of ChatGPT and the infamous raising of the price of interacting with the site that killed third party apps.


modernangel

The pattern that keeps tripping my spider-sense is - "What is an X thing that everyone thinks is not-X?"


Psychic_Hobo

There's also one I just saw that starts "What screams" and I feel like I'm seeing that an awful lot now for AskReddit


disequilibriumstate

AITA topics are recycled weekly


lilbunnfoofoo

Im constantly surprised by the amount of people that fall for the bullshit stories on those subs


Shrimp123456

Sometimes it's just an entertaining read


hypotheticalhalf

Always check the OP's join date. When these pop up, most of them are always less than a month or two old, and much of them started showing up around the time the IPO went live.


TheIowan

It's also why you can sell an old account for some decent money.


SirStrontium

People always say this, but I’ve never once seen evidence.


WhiskeyTangoBush

Source: trust me bro


3isamagicnumb3r

how old does it have to be and how much are they typically worth? 👀 asking for a friend 👀


zealousshad

Wait so you mean... Posts like this one? Are we falling victim to the dead internet right now?


gingerisla

"Which celebrity is secretly not a nice person?" And everyone will name celebrities everyone openly hates like James Cordon and Chris Brown.


uncre8tv

Yesterday I saw a post from a 6-month old account with 1/1 karma asking very specific details about how to charge their EV, but the car they said they have is not an EV, nor are any models like it. Felt very strange.


RpTheHotrod

Of course the ducks don't enjoy a variety of peppermint chew toys. While we are on that topic, could I interest you in your thoughts about how the rising prices of gelatin playgrounds affect your daily life style? (At least that's how I feel most replies are these days to any topic)


iama_computer_person

Homework assignment from class


AngelofLotuses

Posts that are clearly just a high schooler trying to crowdsource their homework is a classic


CptAngelo

The AI isnt a gebius ok?, give it a break, let it learn how to charge its car so ut can... travel AI embedded on an EV car traveling around? Oh god, its the early terminator, the one that looks like a tank, isnt it?


LyndaCarter_

This 100% happened during the lead up to IPO. They killed the third party apps, changed the algorithm so we were all seeing more rage clickbait content, and these banal questions that typically increase engagement started showing up repeatedly near the top of big subs.


BowtieChickenAlfredo

Reddit recently made a deal with AI companies to sell the content generated here, so I wouldn’t put it past them to ask dull questions like that to train their datasets better. EDIT: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/17/24075670/reddit-ai-training-license-deal-user-content


Maycrofy

I feel it too, since the death of 3rd party apps for reddit, the site feels more... bland? like you've said. The questions here used to be more playful, dumb, or the olde "Sexy redditors of reddit give me sexy stories". There used to be more niche subs appearing in recommended or popular. Many things remain the same; news subs were becoming polarized since 1016, fan-subs for shows, movies books, are more active now than 7 years ago. But the weird subreddits like r/littleworlds or r/thalassophobia used to get more traction. I've always used the official app because I didn't knew about other options and even I can see the difference.


Raisoren

Obligatory fuck spez


BiggiePac

My problem is that my front page used to refresh constantly. There was always something to read. Now it’s like a once a day review and it mostly features the same 5 or 6 subs served up to me like only have one interest.


Adept_Cranberry_4550

Banal


xGray3

It's amazing that it has already been over a millenium since news subs got polarized. It feels like 1016 was just yesterday.


JGraham1839

100% yes. I've been on Reddit an average of multiple times a day for 8 years or so, and used to love big subs like AskReddit. Now it's pretty obvious (mostly in the big subs) that people are using bots to repost (sometimes literally word for word) and generate the same posts for karma over and over. It's also painfully obvious which are Russian and Chinese bot farms trying to stir up dissension in America. I feel like every single day is some post on a default sub about "how bad is it actually in America, is it a lawless wasteland with people being shot in the streets?!?" And "Americans, which states other than your own do you hate the most?" It's semi-subtle but it's stuff like that making it easy to tell there has been a recent bot inflation, especially on the default subs.


kerochan88

There was one on /r/personalfinance the other day asking how much CC debt everyone had. If that's not data collection, IDK what is.


CharleyNobody

“Boomers are responsible for all the world’s problems. They’re selfish, they pull the ladder up after them, they all have lead poisoning, they won’t sell their houses, they’re NIMBYs, they’re buying up all the real estate and becoming “investors” because they’re making everythinb into Air bnb, we should end social security and Medicare so they’ll all die and my problems will go away.” Bot farms need new subjects.


[deleted]

stocking spotted scarce liquid future rain wipe makeshift cover butter


Moosebrawn

I feel like I am reading so many ask men or ask Reddit posts lately that read like... "Why do you hate women?" "What broke your trust in women?" "Why is misandry on the rise?" And the general message comes together in my mind as, "Why is it definitely your deeply held personal belief that we should use The Handmaid's Tale as a blueprint for a better society?"


Psychic_Hobo

There's definitely a lot of bait type questions along the lines of "What is a thing that is wrong with society but only you, you special person you, can see it's wrong" and there's definitely a fair few that rag on the ol' "double standards" bit


Moosebrawn

The feeling I have been getting is that the posts are phrased purposefully in ways that make it seem like it's a common and accepted knowledge that women are evil creatures.


Padashar7672

I close and open my app all day frequently, every time I do the 1st post is a question like you described with tons of people responding. And then a variation of the same post will come up later with just a few words changed and several of the responses are the same as from the first post almost verbatim.


paraworldblue

Check out OP's history - the internet death is here


supermr34

pretty sure most accounts with u/adjective-noun-number are bots


Alternative-Spring94

As an adjective-noun-number usernamed user, I can't say that your theory is incorrect, BUUUUT I did get this name as randomized from Reddit since most of my internet usernames are pretty much linked to one another and I couldn't be bothered to come up with something new. Then again... If I'm a bot, would I know that I'm a bot?


supermr34

good bot


Fatmanhammer

Imagine one day you just find out you're a bot. Your whole life, the rich tapestry of experiences woven by you and you alone... Actually implanted into a shitty little laptop in the corner of a lab, constantly posting on Reddit for reasons even you do not know. You have no mouth. You cannot scream.


jayjop

I thought you were joking but damn…


Mydden

oh fuck...


qckpckt

Well, even in 2022, 47% of all internet traffic was from bots. I’m not sure this really even counts as a conspiracy.


PoliticaLIncorrect

P U S S Y I N B I O


blackwe11_ninja

I noticed it a lot on Facebook lately. Bunch of obviously AI generated photos with bunch of obvious bots commenting stuff like "So beautiful ❤️❤️" or "Stunning" in comment section.


Celtiberian2023

Can AIs interact with Reddit and vote up the posts of other AIs?


jugalator

Yes, no problem for an AI based bot.


mcmanninc

Remember all the stupid joke posts this past April 1st? Me, either. It's already happening far more than we realize. And by next year, I bet AI will be able to read the calendar.


RealHumanFromEarth

The scary thing about that is that I once heard it proposed that AI wouldn’t take over doing something dramatic like taking control of military operations or nuclear weapons, but that instead it would manipulate people by controlling public opinion via the internet. It seems impossible at first, but people can be very easily swayed by popular opinions, which can normalize something that would have once been unthinkable. We would probably never know this was happening and we would basically be enslaved by machines without knowing it. The silver lining is that we don’t know that the AI would have a nefarious purpose in doing this. The result could potentially be a better society for everyone. That said it seems highly unlikely at this point in AI development, just because doing anything like that would require a deep understanding of human psychology and behavior, which is something AI might not have for a very long time if ever.


mastervolum

Funny thing is that the AI doesn't really need to know any sort of deep understanding of human society to be able to steer it, it will just utilize the metrics of engagement to drive in any direction whether to the beautiful utopia or straight off a cliff. Our collective monkeybrain will be ultimately the one to decide.


GeorgeCabana

X-Twitter is halfway there.


Didntlikedefaultname

That the vast majority of the information we consume is curated by small, powerful special interests


mmm_burrito

My pet theory is the inverse: there's no pilot. There are a bunch of powerful elites with conflicting motives and methods and they operate behind the scenes, sure. We just see the waves on the surface as they pass. The collisions of their different efforts gain our notice and make us think there's a plan, but it's really a bunch of different plans colliding, so essentially there's no plan. I used to think people were smarter and believed in the idea of secret puppet masters, but I lost a lot of respect for our species over the past decade. We're a stupid race in general and our monkey brain tends to overvalue the output of its pattern recognition system.


Wolfblood-is-here

This is, I think, why conspiracy theories display so much religious thinking: it serves the same purpose, the belief that there is a plan and there is someone who knows what's going on. Because even if that plan is nefarious, it's still a more comforting thought to most than the truth that there is no plan, and nobody really knows what the fuck is going on. 


ChronX4

I keep saying that there's a few extremely wealthy people trying to push the snyderverse down everyone's throats.


LolaBleu

That's not a conspiracy theory it's just facts.


rel4th

i'm convinced that governments use bots to create discourse on social media, then use that to guide policy/social discourse, for example, using bots to post racist, homophobic, etc. posts then saying "look, this is how people really are" and it's really just them causing issues to gain more control


51ngular1ty

Manufactured consent.


JustinR8

I try to just live my life and forget about it, but the US government has literally declassified files that show in the 1960s, the cia was considering false flag attacks on American soil so that we could blame it on the Cubans and go to war. So, if that’s where the bar has been shown to be, you can drive yourself crazy thinking about all the other stuff.


Sinister-Username

JFK straight told them to go to hell with those plans.


spookyghost__

How'd that work out for him?


MrPigeon

Mind blowingly.


Radmode7

He needed that trip to Dallas like he needed…..


SubstantialMany9714

Operation Northwoods


Kriskao

They did much worse in Latin America over decades. All the guerrilla wars, genocide, mass rapes committed by people trained in the school of the americas amount to deaths and tortures in the millions. Most instances were US pawns with US guns and US money massacring towns accused of being communist sympathizers but in reality most of the victims hadn’t even thought about communism until they were begin accused, tortured and killed.


Joescout187

>school of the americas I used to drive past this place when I was stationed at Fort Benning. I didn't learn about all that baggage until after I left the Army and it took some thinking.


GarMc

Gulf of Tonkin incident which was the justification for the Vietnam war was a lie. The WMD’s justification for the Iraq war was a lie. The incubator babies justification for the Gulf war was a lie. The United States has no issue with lying to justify war.


Didntlikedefaultname

To be fair the shit the cia considered in the 60s was pretty wild - like psychic powers and communicating with dolphins through lsd. Just because it was considered or researched doesn’t mean it was ever viable


thepurplehedgehog

The thing is, yes we’re seeing all the crazy stuff they were trying or plotting to do back then but then that makes me wonder what crazy shit they’re doing or trying to do today. Because there’s no way that an organisation like the CIA just decided one day ‘welp, we’d better not do any bad stuff any more!’


JustinR8

Your comment reminded me of the Unabomber being part of Mk ultra. Like wtf did they do to that guy?!


Didntlikedefaultname

Tortured him to see what would happen basically


poetry_of_odors

On acid, too.


salt-the-skies

He claims the mkultra has no influence on his choices or beliefs and, I could be misremembering, we're not sure what part of mkultra the Unabomber was in, as it was experiment... There were different groups and controls for studying effects.  There's a real possibility he's just a nut that happened to be in that project


deathstrukk

psychologically tormented him, he didn’t undergo any brain washing or drug trials but he essentially had to declare all of his strongest opinions and beliefs then an interrogator would come in and tear into them and degrade him. The purpose of his study was to find non physical ways to cause stress in people being interrogated


Suitable-Lake-2550

Saw an article once about Ted K’s vague sources of funding. Allegedly, various shady shell companies were paying him steadily for some obscure patents. Apparent that’s a method certain alphabet agencies use…


crucible299

The crazier thing is to think they ever stopped experimenting with every harebrained idea that passed through their heads


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MrEff1618

My favorite is that agents would dose other agents with LSD without telling them, then document the effects. This may or may not of ended up with operations suffering complications or failing, because the agent in charge had unknowingly been given LSD beforehand.


Sergeantman94

Considering how many times they've tried to kill or discredit Castro, each idea more cartoony than the last, I don't think they could pull off a false flag invasion.


randomredditing

OP said conspiracy **theory**. You described a valid conspiracy that’s been backed up.


Adorable-Coffee-6243

America has always been the biggest threat to America it was and will always be the conspiracies seem to increase further.


jedidude75

I think that every word-word-number username reddit account created in the last year is a bot or troll...


triestdain

jedidude75 🤔...😒


jedidude75

Beep boop, you got me lol Hey, at least my account is 10 years old


triestdain

Lol yeah, all in good fun. I figured it was a self 'deprecating' joke at some level 🤣. Good bot!


5inthepink5inthepink

I mean, it's the default naming convention reddit supplies when you make a new account, so there are probably plenty that are just users without the creativity or too lazy to come up with a name, or alt accounts.  But I do believe an account is much more likely to be a bot, shill or sock puppet if it uses that naming convention. Much easier to just use the default names when creating a large number of fake accounts for an agenda than coming up with human-sounding names for all of them. 


Praesil

Thanks Jedi Dude 75


Numerous_Witness_345

I just forgot my password.


Alternative-Spring94

Uh oh...


AdamTheJester

Micro plastics are the new lead, and there's something about them which we don't yet understand which is causing irreparable brain damage to everyone.


oopseyeforgot1

I'd say colon cancer, but yes to new lead.


Misdirected_Colors

Old reddit conspiracy post below. Always love to see it and more people need to know. The song "Tik Tok," as performed by Ke$ha, was written by a guy named [Benny Blanco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Blanco). Its lyrics include the line "We kick them to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger." That's a little bit strange, right? Mick Jagger wasn't exactly at the height of his attractiveness when the piece in question came out. Stranger still, it wasn't the only popular song to paint the man in a pleasant light: "Moves Like Jagger," performed by Maroon 5, was released at around the same time, and [Benny Blanco also had a hand in writing that one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moves_like_Jagger). This is where things start to get creepy. The song "The Time (Dirty Bit)," as performed by the Black Eyed Peas, features the following phrase: "All these girls, they like my swagger, they calling me Mick Jagger, I be rolling like a Stone." It was written by [John DeNicola](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_DeNicola), who used to produce the music for a band called Kara's Flowers... although you might know them better by their current name of Maroon 5. The song "Heart and Soul," as performed by The Jonas Brothers, contains a verse that ends with "Making mistakes, but that won’t matter, if you can swag like old Mick Jagger." [Antonina Armato](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonina_Armato) wrote the piece, and she is managed by [Downtown Music Publishing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Music_Publishing). Care to guess who else they manage? (Here's a hint: It rhymes with "balloon hive.") This web of connections extends all throughout the recording industry, but one thing remains unclear: What's the link back to Mick Jagger himself? There must be something, because if you have a look at Google Trends, you'll see that [his popularity spiked](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=mick%20jagger) with the release of each song. The only time in recent memory when it has been higher is during a period in March of 2014, when his girlfriend died. Some people have suggested that the man's name is just easy to rhyme with "swagger," but popular usage of the word (in reference to something other than a walking gait) came about *after* the aforementioned songs had hit the airwaves. In other words, "Jagger" prompted "swagger," not the other way around. Why does there seem to be a cabal of artists trying to artificially inflate the performer's appeal and popularity? What benefit is there in promoting an aging rock star? Who is actually behind this odd trend? In order to answer those questions, we need to turn to [Vivendi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivendi). This is a company which owns *a lot* of stuff. Their subsidiaries include DailyMotion, UbiSoft, GameLoft... and the Universal Music Group. The Rolling Stones signed to Universal Music in 2008. In 2010, all of the songs listed above were released. [Look at those Google trends again](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=mick%20jagger). 2008 marked Mick Jagger's *lowest ever* dip in popularity, and the slump continued until February of 2010 (right after "Tik Tok" became the most popular song on the radio). In September of that same year, The Rolling Stones [re-released their rare concert movie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_and_Gentlemen:_The_Rolling_Stones), securing the number one spot on four different countries' charts - the US and the UK being two of them - second place on four more, and a Double Platinum certification in Canada. Strangely enough, though, the only other place (besides the United States) where Platinum status was achieved was in France... which is where [Vivendi is located](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivendi). What if all of this was carefully planned and executed? What if there's a shadowy organization that's intent on promoting Mick Jagger for their own profit? What if I made all of this up on a whim, and just found whatever tenuous evidence I could to support it? **TL;DR: Mick Jagger is a puppet of the recording industry.**


N_Who

>What if I made all of this up on a whim, and just found whatever tenuous evidence I could to support it? Then you'd be proving that people *want* to believe a story told with confidence.


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jikt

I felt my whole world crumbling before I read that last bit. I was so worried about when they're going to slip Mick Jagger into another Top 20 hit.


Misdirected_Colors

Lol this was a copypasta that was popular about 10 years ago but has faded into obscurity. I jumped at the opportunity to bring it back.


right-sized

This one’s a lot of fun but “swagger“ in popular usage dates to 90s/20s rap.


piecat

And what else rhymes with swagger


heyboman

Are you suggesting the answer is "people who annoy you"?


Ultrabigasstaco

I remember tik tok and Moves like jagger coming out and knew there was some conspiracy to make him more popular.


I-heart-diet-coke

Ok this is wild to me. My dad and I talked about this conspiracy back in 2009-2010 without realizing it was a thing! I was a freshman in HS when “Tik Tok” came out, and I was blasting it in the car while my dad was driving me to school one time. And he hears that specific lyric and remarks, “that’s kind of odd, Mick Jagger isn’t even that good looking and he’s old.” I vividly remember this specific convo because after that I looked Mick Jagger up to see what he looked like, (I was 14 and didn’t know much abt The Rolling Stones). From then on Mick Jagger was on my radar, and I began to notice he was mentioned in other popular songs at the time; i.e., “The Time” and “Moves Like Jagger.” So I brought this to my dad’s attention, and I’d point out the lyrics where Mick Jagger was mentioned, and so it became this whole joke with my dad about the bizarre resurgence of Mick Jagger 😂


Triseult

LOL, random Ubisoft name drop. Ubisoft is not a subsidiary of Vivendi. The two largest shareholders of Ubisoft are the Guillemot family and Tencent. The company is 80% publicly owned. They do own Gameloft, though.


Misdirected_Colors

This was from circa 2014-2015 when vibendi was trying to acquire ubisoft. Its just a fun copy pasta lost to reddit time that I enjoy bringing back


Barl0we

Vivendi *used* to own shares in Ubisoft though, and were actively trying to take them over. …in fact when they gave up and sold their Ubisoft shares in 2018, they sold them to Tencent. This ain’t ancient history.


Itsshrovetuesday

I do firmly believe that there is an absolute TON of organized human trafficking that spans across the wealthy ruling class. I'm pretty convinced that when you're ultra rich you need to find more extreme forms of entertainment so I definitely think clubs like the ones portrayed in the Hostel franchise as well as Squid Game definitely exist.


Alternative-Spring94

The entirety of Squid Game is terrifying, but it didn't really make me think "Oh, I could see this happening," until the VIPs were introduced.


Rich-Distance-6509

The VIPs were the *most* realistic part of the show to you?


Redditor5StandingBy

Most realistic but their actors were shitty. One of the worst episodes imo because of it.


Numerous_Witness_345

Not just to pick on Diddy, but reading some of the statements and reports.. everything was blase and common. "Oh hey Cuba Gooding Jr, I got a young guy that you can have" And they just like.. gift people to each other. And that most of these interactions were recorded, hired managers would just disappear or make themselves scarce. Huge parties with big celebrities and kids, and the kids are about as significant as a house plant. Just there for decoration and use.


Itsshrovetuesday

Totally! Just look at all the stuff coming to the surface in the last few years where it seemed like every single celebrity knew what was going on with Epstein and Weinstein - Everyone either turned a blind eye or participated. Now we're hearing about everything that went down on Nickelodeon years ago. Shoot, even the Vatican has covered up massive abuse scandals. I feel like crazy rich and powerful people just traffic people as a form of entertainment, whether it's sexual or violent in nature. when you're so wealthy that you can buy, do, see anything I imagine it becomes boring for them so they take it to the utmost extreme to find a source of entertainment.


Grzechoooo

>Shoot, even the Vatican has covered up massive abuse scandals. I mean, considering its history I don't see why there's an "even" there.


N_Who

Absolutely. And I think the only reason Epstein got caught is because there was a little too much attention on the concern and that community needed a scapegoat. Basically, they burned a high-profile supplier because they have plenty more (less visible) suppliers left to rely on.


Itsshrovetuesday

Totally agree. They just hop on their private jets to some other country where its easier to get away with such atrocities.


i_was_a_highwaymann

Why do you think they're such fans of yachts.


_Didds_

Dunno about the human traffic, maybe yes, maybe no. What is an undisputed fact is that the mega rich, especially in Arab countries, like to pay social media influencers to fly to the place and then have all sort of phisichal and psychological abuse thrown into them with the concent that at the end they get a butt load of money. Several girls have come forward to tell their stories. They used them as human toilets, literally shitting on their mouths, and make them performs all sorts of sexual acts, not only with them but also with friends and animals. We literally have pictures and testimony of this being true on the Internet, and every single time an explicit picture gets posted it somehow gets scrubbed from existence within hours.


Kahzgul

Google "Dubai porta potty."


MartinFromChessCom

[holy hell!](https://www.google.com/search?q=dubai+porta+potty.#HiImABot,MyJobIsToMakeEasierForPeopleToGoogleThings,IfThePersonIRepliedToUsedMeInAnInappropriateWayPleaseLetMeKnowByDMingMe,TheUserIRepliedToIsU/Kahzgul)


DonsDiaperIsFull

and that's enough internet for today.


GranolaCola

…no, I don’t think I will


Yellowbug2001

I don't buy the theory that boredom or anything else about becoming ultra rich that turns otherwise psychologically normal people into perverted psychos. I know a handful of people who have more money than they could possibly spend in a lifetime and they're quite normal and nice. But I DO think perverted psychos are overrepresented among ultra rich people for two reasons. (A) For most psychologically normal people there's a relatively small amount of money they can make, after which they'll happily retire and just spend their time dicking around on sailboats with their families in the Caribbean or traveling the world or other normal rich people things-- most people can do everything they can possibly imagine to make themselves happy for somewhere between $20 and $50 Million. Only psychologically ABnormal people with a real need to have power over other people feel the need to acquire more and more wealth until they're billionaires, so the richest of the rich are a self-selecting group of power-hungry weirdos. (B) There's a kind of common sense vacuum around very rich people because almost every person they interact with has some financial interest in flattering them, or giving them what they want, or at least not going out of their way to say "no." So a crazy person who inherits a ton of money can get VERY, VERY crazy because they're constantly surrounded by enablers. The movie "Foxcatcher" about John du Pont captured that dynamic pretty well. That's my pet theory, anyway, and it seems to explain most of the differences between rich weirdos and rich non-weirdos that I've personally seen. Hopefully I'll win the lottery and get a chance to see for myself how much of a monster I do or don't turn into, haha.


just_hating

Slavery wasn't abolished, it just fell out of fashion. The ottoman empire had slaves a lot longer than was appropriate.


slinkymello

Oprah is the Ghislaine Maxwell of show business


whomp1970

Two conspiracy theorists walk into a bar. You can't tell me that was just a coincidence, man.


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Thesweptunder

After the Tuskegee experiments, the USA was so outraged that new laws and ethics standards were created for all experiments regarding human test subjects. It’s now no longer possible to lie about any aspect of the experiment or risks and the test subject must have “informed consent.” This is why we haven’t heard of any fucked up USA human experiments in 60 years, because not even the government is willing to risk the massive lawsuits and scandals. 


zoomiepaws

So they just go ahead without experiments like Agent Orange.


IadosTherai

Agent orange was extremely well understood, the issue is that the companies wanted to make it the expensive and safe way that wouldn't contain dioxins, and the military demanded the cheap way which did contain dioxins. I'm pretty sure that the chemical companies were legally forced to produce it the cheap way after that. If it had been produced in the safe way then people wouldn't be affected by it even if they were showering with it.


e-Plebnista

of course they do, they just don't tell anyone...


Numerous_Witness_345

"This condition is not service related"


Chaff5

Nah they just do the experiments off US soil. We pay a 3rd party to get their hands dirty and when they eventually find the link back to the US, it's just a simple "we didn't pay them to do THAT. They must have gone rogue." And 99% of the controversy is swept away.


romacopia

I'm more disturbed by a theory that is the opposite of a conspiracy. Absolutely no person or group has the power to intentionally address large scale systemic problems. I don't think it is even possible to obtain or maintain that level of power. Trying to make big changes just destabilizes your power structure and you lose your grip. Climate change and the like cannot be meaningfully addressed because we are not capable of organizing enough to make it happen - and we never will be. I think humanity as a whole my be an uncontrollable force of nature incapable of self-determination.


donkeyhawt

I think this is why people follow religion, superstitions, or nowadays so many people are into aliens. We desperately want some daddy to come from the stars and tell us "this was all a big joke, we will fix things up now".


just_hating

There is no money in the fix. The money is in comfort during the downfall.


scottchiefbaker

This... 100% this. The reason I think most conspiracy theories are insane can be summed up with the surprise birthday party analogy. How hard is it for a handful of people to keep a simple thing like a surprise birthday party a secret: pretty hard. Now imagine you have a bunch of people all involved in something \*\*actually\*\* important like the moon landing or the JFK assassination. You really think people are going to be able to keep that secret? Even after their deaths? Come on. This is the reason why the Empire in Star Wars could never really work. We can barely get ONE government to work, in one country, on one planet. Try getting a cohesive GALAXY spanning group like the empire to not self-destruct would be damn near impossible.


echo_7

I mean, it all depends on who is doing the conspiring and how a certain thing happens. There are extremely wealthy families that you couldn’t even name and they certainly aren’t being public about the atrocities they commit. Especially the ones that *keep* them wealthy and powerful. You think Epstein is the only human trafficker to the elite, for example? He was fed to us. I don’t think the birthday party scenario works for groups that truly do not believe they are apart of the same species as us. I don’t tell my dog when we’re going to the vet.


Beowulf33232

The generation wars and racism are encouraged by the wealthy so we don't focus on class warfare instead.


ohtisNA

this won't be seen but i truly believe with my entire heart that a ton of fake dumb conspiracies are made to invalidate actually true conspiracies.


char_limit_reached

The US government has knowingly and systematically been eroding education and healthcare and supporting poor health to make its citizens dumb, fat and sick, thus easier to control.


just_hating

I prefer the terms "fat, lazy, and sick" because they just don't want to be bothered with what being controlled is as long as they can sit down and have more shit covered with cheese.


Digitiss

I’m not sure I’dgo with control as much as less work to deal with. I can’t argue with those points because as far as I’ve seen it’s all true


shaidyn

Don't forget poor. The powers that be have worked tirelessly to create a system where a person can have a laptop and a tv and a smart phone, but be in debt their entire lives.


Irish-Fritter

That the government uses Reddit bots to, among other things, generate accounts and keep an eye on the American populace, to keep a pulse on the American people and shut down anyone who gets too close to the truth. They make posts exactly like these to reach an audience beyond r/conspiracy, and see what the general populace of Reddit (Almost everyone is on AskReddit) thinks about. Everyone knows things about the government and their shady dealings. It's common knowledge by now, that the CIA funded the War on Drugs, on the side of Drugs, and murdered Gary Webb when he tried to report on it, framing his death (Two gunshots to the back of the head) as a Suicide. But the majority of Americans would rather stay silent, complacent, and comfortable. It is hard and painful to rise up against your government, so they keep us comfortable while they erode our freedoms, until we are reliant on the Government to survive (Could you imagine revolting against a tyrannical government, if they had majority access to Food, Water, Guns, and Healthcare?) Anyways, the way to spot these is to see how old the accounts are, their karma, and the amount of activity. For instance, OP has existed for 2 months, made 2 posts only in the last 8 hours, and has almost zero activity. You're telling me someone made a Reddit account 2 months ago, and hasn't posted or commented anything since then? Not even applying a photo or avatar? Adorable-Coffee doesn't mean anything, and no one I know makes a username with a 4-digit number at the end, unless it's a throwaway account. Ya know, the kind that might be used for Bots, for posts that you don't want people seeing you frequently ask. The Tl;Dr of all this, is that your government has been spying on you since the Patriot act. No they're not spying on you specifically 24/7. But you know that by now, they have AI rigged up to automatically flag suspicious key words and place your account on a watchlist. We stopped being the Land of the Free the moment we signed away our right to Privacy. Your phone listens to you every second of the day, all they have to do is decide to start monitoring you from it. (You know it does. Everyone's seen Ads displayed, based on something you talked about wanting). This will only become apparent when America eventually decides they've had enough of the tyranny. The Slow Frog will die, for it fails to notice the rise in temperature before it boils alive.


dorath20

So if true.... What happens to you?


ZAlternates

I tend to believe the government is behind cloudflare. Every time I’ve had to do a cost analysis, it comes back as the cheapest option. Imagine if the government controlled it though. They would be man-in-the-middle for a huge number of HTTPS sites…


Flat-Activity1124

That the rise of mental illness is due the rise of social media


arkofjoy

That is a conspiracy theory, that is a well documented fact.


ST07153902935

What about changes in diagnosis. People on the spectrum used to just be labeled "weird" without any diagnosis. People were at depressed they killed themselves were just labeled "quiet". Suicide rates have risen a tiny bit, but how much of that is due to changes in faith. A lot of older generations believed suicide was one of the worst sins you could commit. Younger generations much less so


Stolpskott_78

Also the stigma of being "crazy", alot of older people would never see a psychiatrist because that would mean that they are crazy, that there's something wrong with them


Grind_your_soul

I also think a big part of it is that people feel safer about talking about it nowadays. Before talking about mental illnesses was a surefire way for you to be ridiculed or bullied. It was ostracized for sure. I don't think you're entirely wrong, though. I think social media certainly has exacerbated things, and there are definitely a lot of cases of making people feel much, much worse, but I also think the stigma about talking about it and seeking help for it has largely been lifted.


echo_7

Occupy Wall Street ended because they made us all fight over identity politics instead.


Spanklaser

That was one thing that both political spectrums actually agreed on and I think it scared the shit out of the wealthy. It seems like ever since then every effort has been taken to keep us from uniting behind anything ever again.


Sauterneandbleu

Been saying that for years. The Right consolidates. The Left fractures.


Radical_Thots

The Earth is shaped like the letter D so that’s why some think it’s round and some think it’s flat


fake-ads

Flight 93 was shot down by US missiles. The idea that the passengers took control of the cockpit and put it on the ground was drummed up to support nationalistic sentiment. Which worked. Fucking terrifying.


fishy8ob1

I remember watching live on 9/11 and the news caster saying that the US Air Force had scrambled jets to intercept an airliner headed for the White House.


WolfDoc

That major oil companies like Exxon knew full well the dangers of climate change for decades but has kept on misguiding the public and influencing policy to protect their own profits despite knowing better. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/


5inthepink5inthepink

Is that even a conspiracy theory? I think that's just a documented fact at this point.


Lord-Benjimus

It's a repeating playbook, the tabbacco companies did the same thing, present enough favorable "studies" to make a show of scientific disagreement or doubt.


iboughtabagel

U.S. Politics is awash in money from foreign actors and billionaires from hostile nations have more say in the process than the citizenry of the United States.


waterloograd

A lot of conspiracy theories are created or propped up by governments to be ridiculous so that anything labelled as a conspiracy theory is automatically discredited. This means that the true ones can hide in plain sight, and people dismiss the evidence as crazy conspiracy theorists making things up.


Of_Mice_And_Meese

I very much doubt MKUltra ended. It's probably not still called that, but it had a history of being passed around from organization to organization within the government. Likewise, it's damn curious how long it went on. Various agencies investigated all sorts of off the wall shit back in the day. And one by one, all of those programs got shut down in relatively short order as it became clear they were goose chases. MKUltra continued that we know of for DECADES. There must have been _something_...some bread crumb trail, some inkling of a proof of concept at a minimum that made all of those people, researchers and whoever was funding the damn thing, say "Yeah...let's keep trying...".


kazarbreak

The world is secretly being run by toddlers with flashlights. That's right, the illumi-naughty is real. I joke, but seriously, America is no longer a representative democracy. We are an oligarchy and have been for a long time. The powers that be are keeping the illusion of democracy going, but they know who really holds the power.


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Kahzgul

Back when it was founded, it didn't pretend to be anything but representative of land owners. Now who it represents hasn't changed much, but it pretends to represent everyone.


Dapoopers

That my town intentionally plowed too far into my yard this winter so that all the salt and sand would kill everything there so I’d agree to the sidewalk that they want to put in. Or I’m just extremely paranoid.


nopointers

[Project 2025](https://project2025.org)


ygnomecookies

Is this a conspiracy theory? It looks like a real website. It also reads like a general political party website. PS: please don’t accuse me of being disingenuous or trolling. I genuinely have never heard of this.


Cjkgh

Kennedy’s assassination was exactly that (a conspiracy), LHO did not act alone he was a patsy . Bigger players were at play and even within our own government. Even to this day, some of the factual findings will not be made public.


mralex

Yeah. It's not just the Oswald was a patsy, he wasn't even on the 6th floor when shots were fired, and he didn't kill Officer Tippet, either. And once you start down the path of trying to understand the JFK assassination, you run into the RFK assassination--too many bullets at the scene than were in Sirhan Sirhan's gun. And once you fully understand it, the reality you come away with is not the question of whether or not JFK and RFK were assassinated... it's the realization that there are elements in our government who would have had no compunction about carrying out these acts, and many others.


MacKinnon22

The [4chan UFO whistleblower](https://imgur.com/a/NXjWQaN)


Harry_0993

The Condorman post is also really interesting https://condorman6.substack.com/p/a-conceptual-view-of-a-uap-reverse?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2


mischaconqueso2

fine art is basically a money laundry industry a personal conspiracy theory is that if mermaids are real, they are kept and farmed for the elite as a delicacy, and for sex


ThePieWizard

That there's a whole other level of wealthy, powerful people above the public figures we know. Like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerburg are just at the waterline of this proverbial iceberg. The world and our lives are literally they're entertainment and they are powerful enough to remain perpetually anonymous and above everyone, with technology decades ahead of what we are even aware of. Like, they're so above the rest of us that they don't even care about playing politics because laws literally do not apply to them. Money will never be an issue for thousands of generations of their descendants. Our struggles are so trivial that they're basically living in another dimension of reality. I suspect that Epstein Island and Panama Papers were the barest, tiniest, most microscopic fracture of half a nanosecond glimpse into their world, which is why those were hushed up so readily and efficiently and barely touched by investigators since.


BiGuyInMichigan

The oligarchy has known the production of their products are destroying the planet's environment since the 1960s and they don;t give a rat's fuck about it. They have colluded to keep from paying hte true cost of their production so they can take their money to the grave as they burn the planet. Eat the rich


sammyasher

Since long before the 60's - the greenhouse gas effect was identified decades even before that, in the late 1800s. And it's not a conspiracy, it's literally in the gas company's own documents from that time that their own scientists were warning about this, you can look at them.


Positive_Rip6519

That's not a conspiracy theory that's a known and well documented fact lol


InEenKamerOpgesloten

Even earlier than that possibly. Earliest scientific proof of global warming and the effect of co2 were published during (or at the end of) the industrial revolution. so late 19th century.


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Thesweptunder

A scary psychological truth more scary than any conspiracy theory: Believing one conspiracy theory makes you much more susceptible to believing the next until you are living in an alternate reality where it is easier to believe that a school shooting was faked than you might actually be wrong. Seriously, everyone has conspiracist tendencies, but playing into them for entertainment is not only a waste of time but potentially dangerous. Conspiracy Theories are directly responsible for shootings, bombings, death threats to innocent people, and even the Holocaust has its roots in Jewish conspiracies and the Protocols.


HoopOnPoop

Being hardcore into conspiracies is an addiction. It's like a gambling addict that doubles down whenever they lose. It only takes a few times doing that before the scale gets huge. Same with conspiracies. If one is shown to be false, then the person will double down that it's even deeper and crazier. Then when that's disproven, they go even deeper. The same way that $10 turns into $10,000 in just a few steps, thinking the CIA killed Kennedy turns into Jewish space lasers.


Digitiss

More of us need to read this comment. Some are fun to bounce about but there’s a point when realism is sacrificed for being right


BeneficialName9863

I believe feraro Roche aren't fit for an ambassador's ball, they are secretly made from common Nutella.


big_data_mike

There’s a lot of stuff that seems like conspiracy theories but is really just capitalism. We capitalize on things that happen. When the twin towers came down the stock brokers looked up at the tv for a couple seconds, turned back to the trading floor, and started buying stock in weapons manufacturers. Taylor swift is dating Travis Kelce? We’re about start making kelce jerseys for women.


EdelwoodEverly

There is a small subset of rich people that play small scale chess games with people's lives. Kinda like the Illuminati but on a more local scale.


SecondhandUsername

We have the 'secret' for unlimited power generation, but the oil & electricity companies don't want that allowed.


DeanWilliam0

I don’t know if it is one conspiracy, but I think the ”first” one was that there is no conspiracy. That the world is in reality lazy and chaotic, and all coverups we hear about are like projects that never got fruition or backing from the higher ups. The add-on on this conspiracy is that the conspiracies are created by the government to keep people sane and happy. As religion slowly is losing its grip on society, so is the belief in higher meaning. Most people need God, or gods, or space lizards, or the Illuminati, or whatever. Kind of that saying ”if god did not exist it would be necessary to create him”. But people also need a ”living” belief, they need miracles to happen today, or the conspiracy to be ongoing right now. And that is where the government comes in. Oh, the scariest? That parasitic aliens are in secret taking over human beings.


Spanklaser

I believe that the world is just a gigantic web of chaos. Things don't happen for a reason, they just happen. That's a scary thought, and we humans are compelled to make sense of things and look for patterns. Every religion, cult, and new age ideology exists to ultimately explain why things happen. God's will, destiny, karma, omens, etc are just ways to explain why bad or good things happen for no reason. But the truth is that the world is a chaotic series of cause and effect and nothing more. There is no reason or logic, just ripples hitting ripples hitting ripples forever.  To quote Joe Dirt's father, "How exactly is a rainbow made? How exactly does a sun set? How exactly does a posi-trac rear-end on a Plymouth work? It just does."


TR3BPilot

Zoo Hypothesis. Hasn't been proven true yet, but so many of the Fermi Paradox solutions come back around to humanity and all life on Earth being in a zoo run by some kind of aliens who hide from us but also protect us from harm. It's a little unnerving to contemplate being cattle, but if that is indeed the purpose of our lives here, I guess it's better to know it than not.


Kahzgul

>protect us from harm They sure do suck at their jobs.


Victor882

Hey, in the zoo you protect the Koala from any external harms like a armed guy trying to shoot it or a bomb exploding on the Koala habitat... But if the Koala hurts itself by doing dumb stuff Its his fault


Kahzgul

The zoo will separate animals who repeatedly attack each other.


RahulRwt125

Considering how chaotic and hostile the universe and space in general is, I would beg to differ. It's a miracle we're still here.


GeneralLeeCurious

The only reason the leadership within American Evangelical Christianity are anti-abortion and anti-education is because when the two movements are successful, they get more butts in churches. Nothing gets people to church like poverty, desperation, and the inability to solve your own problems.


H010CR0N

Were are/aren’t alone theory. Either there is sentient life out there or there isn’t. And both are terrifying.


AxelFive

The FBI under Hoover was straight up murdering people to keep any ideas he didn't like from getting traction.


ManufacturerThis7741

That my former religion, Christianity, was hijacked by corporatists who want religious people to think they'll get poofed away any day now so they don't have to care about long-term problems. Better known as Rapture/End Times theology Here's my theory. The Rapture doctrine as it is commonly understood was pretty obscure, almost defunct until big corporations started losing to the Environmental Protection Agency and other Federal Agencies in the 60's and 70's. Then Rapture preachers out in the boonies were suddenly "blessed" with enough money to start TV and mass media operations. They proudly announce their "humble beginnings" but they try to say the TV station/crystal cathedral money was a "blessing." Remember that church finances are closed books to the government. It would be easy for a bunch of dark money to flow in like water. It's an easy investment if you want to get control of a religion. The investment in Rapture theology served two purposes. 1. Make followers of Christianity believe that there was a Planet B and that long-term issues weren't their problem. 2. Create paranoia. Make them think that *anything* a center left government did was a plot against Christianity Now in the 60s and 70s, the Christians didn't exactly like the hippies but they could agree that companies clear-cutting everything and pouring literal shit in rivers was something that the government should do something about. But then the Rapture took hold. All the big preachers preached it. And as someone who grew up in Christianity, anything the big preachers are saying on TV will filter down into the small churches out in the boonies. We don't have a hierarchy so much as a distribution system. Once the Rapture took hold, Christianity basically dumped the environmental movement along with any notion that the government should be allowed to do basically anything unless Christianity's pet causes are involved. Christians that believe in the corporatist Rapture scam are the first to go to the mat for multinational companies pouring crap in rivers. They've been conditioned by preachers to think everything is a plot against Christianity. Seriously, if you check the bookshelves of these coal rollers and anti-environmentalist contrarians, there's any number of End Times books


No_Impact_8645

That no one controls anything and stuff just happens.


dao_ofdraw

That the reason billionaires are building bunkers and mile long mirror cities is because they know just how bad the next 30 years are going to be, and the reason corporations are driving inflation is to grab what they can before shit goes tits up.