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)

      • FactuallyUnscrupulou [he/him]
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        382 years ago

        Progressive Senator from Minnesota during the 90’s, one of the few to vote against the Iraq war. Small plane mysteriously crashed a week before election day. The pilot was a white collar criminal with lots of issues.

        • TankieTanuki [he/him]
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          252 years ago

          At a meeting full of war veterans in Willmar, Minn., days before his death, Wellstone told attendees that Cheney told him, “If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota.”

  • FlakesBongler [they/them]
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    202 years ago

    Food companies and restaurants have started putting out products they’ve released before, but keep labeling them New to draw in people who want to try new things

  • stigsbandit34z [they/them]
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    2 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.

    • ratboy [they/them]
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      212 years ago

      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

    • LGOrcStreetSamurai [he/him]
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      2 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.

      I 420.69% believe this is 100% true. It’s such a great feedback loop for someone wanting to dismantle it. It doesn’t work so no one uses it, no uses it because it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work because it was underfunded and ill-equipped, and it was underfunded and ill-equipped because they didn’t want it to work. It doesn’t work so no one uses it, its perceived value is lessened so it then doesn’t work.

      • raven [he/him]
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        2 years ago

        And then you can make great use of absolute numbers over more contextualized relative numbers/ Here’s a made up example:

        frothingfash 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.

        • LGOrcStreetSamurai [he/him]
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          32 years ago

          I’m always immediately suspicious when someone starts throwing around absolute numbers like that.

          Agreed! Anyone who uses tries to use math to justify why a bad thing is a good thing goes to super hell. The one where the Doom Slayer just goes buck wild. That’s where they go.

            • LGOrcStreetSamurai [he/him]
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              2 years ago

              It’s also super frustrating that these STEM dweebs have have lucrative skillsets that the “Mark€t™️©️®️ “ “values”. Because of this they can’t justify to themselves why they should go into the public sector for the betterment of the people. STEM dorks across the board would be so much cooler if they were used for public welfare and social good.

              I totally understand why a regular non-CHUD publicly educated STEMheads would go private sector. They have bills and debt and all that jazz, and sadly the public sector jobs can’t give out those sorts of attractive salaries and benefits.

              All of this further perpetuates the cycle original post was talking about. Nerds get their education in the public then leave to private sector which hallows out the public sector. It’s just a vicious and vile cycle.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
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      42 years ago

      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.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
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      442 years 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.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
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      62 years ago

      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.

  • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
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    182 years 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)

    I BELIEVE IT I BELIEVE IT I BELIEVE IT

  • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
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    92 years ago

    The claims that more and more early humans are different species or subspecies is a move to bolster a new wave of race science for when america really starts collapsing. It takes advantage of younger researchers wanting to make a name for themselves, especially ones of less enfranchised groups who will do what they need to to secure jobs and funding. Some of these claims are really weak, but will get signal boosted, the same way the Iowa writing workshop was bolstered to further american isolation and post-modern art was funded to move away from materialism, so the nazis of the future can claim to be genuinely different races with some flimsy scientific evidence

  • Zoift [he/him]
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    442 years 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.

  • HornyOnMain [she/her]
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    192 years ago

    That Trudeau is Castro’s son, I haven’t done any looking into it (mao-aggro-shining) but like it doesn’t affect anything in the real world whether or not it’s true and it would be funny if it was, so I choose to believe it