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submitted 11 months ago by FemboyStalin@hexbear.net to c/chat@hexbear.net

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)

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[-] stigsbandit34z@hexbear.net 109 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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.

[-] Maoo@hexbear.net 89 points 11 months ago

That's not even a conspiracy it's the explicit neoliberal plan

[-] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 60 points 11 months ago

The first one is just political strategy, it's known as starve the beast

[-] ZapataCadabra@hexbear.net 49 points 11 months ago

That's just observable facts.

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[-] BelieveRevolt@hexbear.net 87 points 11 months ago

"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.

[-] laziestflagellant@hexbear.net 47 points 11 months ago

Sure, I'll add that to my worldview

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[-] GriffithDidNothingWrong@hexbear.net 87 points 11 months ago

I think the story about the passengers fighting back on United flight 93 is fake and it was shot down by the military.

[-] BadTakesHaver@hexbear.net 49 points 11 months ago

feel like most people on this site believe this one

[-] Tankiedesantski@hexbear.net 44 points 11 months ago

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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[-] Catradora_Stalinism@hexbear.net 41 points 11 months ago

ohhhh, I never heard this one

honestly sounds true

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[-] WittyProfileName2@hexbear.net 82 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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!

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[-] Collatz_problem@hexbear.net 80 points 11 months ago

Dating apps deliberately match you with incompatible people so you keep returning and paying for premium.

[-] windowlicker@hexbear.net 59 points 11 months ago

there’s no way this isn’t true. i have personally experienced this on those apps.

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[-] Freeanotherday@hexbear.net 77 points 11 months ago

I go back and forth. But this week I 100% believe Justin from Canada is Fidel's kid.

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[-] john_browns_beard@hexbear.net 73 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] grey_wolf_whenever@hexbear.net 40 points 11 months ago

is this a conspiracy??? Im from up there and everyone seems to just accept it there

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[-] 420blazeit69@hexbear.net 73 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] operacion_ogro@hexbear.net 40 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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

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[-] kristina@hexbear.net 72 points 11 months ago

i dont necessarily believe it but i think the conspiracy theory that justin trudeau is castro's kid is funny

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[-] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 70 points 11 months ago

Frosted Flakes are not great, they're just paying Tony the Tiger to say that.

[-] Fibby@lemm.ee 41 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

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[-] Commiejones@hexbear.net 67 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] immuredanchorite@hexbear.net 49 points 11 months ago

I don't want to stoke your conspiracy theory, but I remember getting violently ill in November of 2019, and everyone I worked with was sick at the same time. I was coughing up a lung, to the point where my throat was completely raw, and I could barely breathe walking to work, or even doing anything. there were multiple young people I worked with who were admitted with viral pneumonia, but specifically not the flu. I kept going back to an urgent care, and they gave me like 3 tests for the flu that all came back negative, but just shrugged their shoulders and gave me some meds. On my last visit, asking for another course of steroids/taper, the doctor said that I should probably be admitted, but I pushed back because I needed to work. Every door in that clinic had some dumb warning about vaping... Hardly anyone I worked with vaped. I don't want to dox myself, but I worked at a hospital that was not too far from a famous US lab that was closed down a few months prior... cough ... everybody tells me it is impossible that it could have been covid... it took me almost 3 months to start feeling like I had energy/my breath back... I still think it was covid.

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[-] Rom@hexbear.net 66 points 11 months ago

The lottery is a trap designed to catch time travelers.

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[-] Hatandwatch@hexbear.net 65 points 11 months ago

Veganism is the correct path forward.

kelly Low Steaks

[-] CeeMoney@hexbear.net 61 points 11 months ago

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.

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[-] laziestflagellant@hexbear.net 60 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] FemboyStalin@hexbear.net 48 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] laziestflagellant@hexbear.net 41 points 11 months ago

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.

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[-] Zuzak@hexbear.net 57 points 11 months ago

The US intelligence community uses the same mechanisms to control US elections that it's used all around the globe. JFK's assassination was a coup orchestrated by Allen Dulles and people loyal to him in response to getting fired, and every president is informed of this upon taking office, as a threat.

Oh wait, you said "low-stakes" and "conspiracy theory" and not "important facts."

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[-] LGOrcStreetSamurai@hexbear.net 56 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

illuminati

Companies intentionally make it hard to find the balance on a gift card so you forget to apply the remain balance. Saving them billions for free. Even it's just like $3 or whatever, that's three dollars worth of dollars. It's your $3, use it.

illuminati

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[-] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 55 points 11 months ago

"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 fedposting

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[-] Zoift@hexbear.net 49 points 11 months ago

The healing power of crystals is real, but very few people have had the gumption to have enough inside them to get the full effect.

[-] Parzivus@hexbear.net 58 points 11 months ago

The healing factor is actually just what you get from finding a cool rock

[-] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 44 points 11 months ago

I would like to point out that a lot of these crystals are poisonous pls don't eat them.

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[-] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 49 points 11 months ago

Those two guys who drove to every Margaritaville were honoring Jimmy Buffet's final wish before his death. And they did him proud 🫡

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[-] aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net 46 points 11 months ago

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)

Definitely. Capitalists want to monoplise all parts of human existence, including relationships.

[-] HumanBehaviorByBjork@hexbear.net 45 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

okay here's one i'm actually serious about that's kind of controversial: Koko the gorilla did not know sign language. in fact she did not know any language. she was very intelligent and emotionally deep, but she did not do what humans do when we communicate with each other through spoken or signed words. at most she repeated some actions that got her some reward, but she did not associate the actions with any meaning beyond the reward. her trainer did not know ASL and did not bother properly codifying the reduced version she supposedly taught Koko. instead she convinced herself of her conclusion, and having done so, worked to imbue any pseudo-signing behaviors by Koko with linguistic meanings whether they made sense or not.

I believe pretty much the same thing about everyone on youtube and tiktok who made those button boards that their dog or cat presses to "talk." i think these cases and claims are worth investigating scientifically, but so far no one has definitively demonstrated what would be a very surprising conclusion i especially find it suspect when they say things like "so far Grover has learned over 80 words!" and what they mean is their golden retriever has pressed over 80 buttons that said a word that the owner could come up with some explanation for.

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[-] leftofthat@hexbear.net 45 points 11 months ago

Lie detectors exist and work with high accuracy. The smear against them in media and academia is to stop the public from trying to use them on our leaders.

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[-] StalinwasaGryffindor@hexbear.net 42 points 11 months ago

Crosswalk buttons and hold open/close door buttons in elevators are just there to give an illusion of control

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[-] aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net 42 points 11 months ago

Food prices at the local supermarkets are fixed. Each week a different brand of a certain good (like milk or rice) gets to go on the "special price", while the rest sell for the regular price. And they keep rotating which brand gets the special. All fixed.

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[-] ComradeCmdrPiggy@hexbear.net 41 points 11 months ago

Social media is a capitalist op to eviscerate what little sense of decency, respect, and social awareness remaining in the atomized USian consciousness

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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
143 points (99.3% liked)

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