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What are your personal crackpot conspiracy theories about the world right now?
I was talking with a friend about recent events that seemed eerily suspicious to me, and was wondering if all of you might have any similar experiences.
(Preemptively tagging this as politics. If anything in this thread is deemed malicious or inflammatory, let me know and I'll delete the thread)
I was speaking to a friend last night who said he thinks that we're going to have a Reichstag at some point this summer in the U.S. - something to distract from the $7.00 gas at the pump and the epic failure of the Iran War - there is going to be some kind of false flag attack on a government facility made to appear as if it was organized by Antifa or something like that to rally the flagging support of the MAGAts and justify cancelling the election. I hope he's wrong.
Ironically I think it's possible that this would backfire more than they think, already a large number of people I know have more than the usual amount of doubts about the assassination attempts if not explicit disbelief, and certainly no one believes when we attack Cuba that it'll be for a "good" reason
But yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if they try.
My tin foil addendum is that they don't have to commit a false flag, because there are nefarious actors out there, but rather they can selectively fail to prevent. They let it happen on purpose.
Sure, but if people already don't believe the things that are happening are happening for the reasons that they're probably happening for.. who wouldn't believe that it was just a false flag anyway?
35% will believe whatever the administration tells them to believe, 35% will believe the opposite, and 30% will believe whatever they heard in the last five minutes. đ¤ˇââď¸
I have more faith in humanity than that. This is more about a persistent degradation of the trust of the public in the government. When even reasonable folks start to suspect that assassination attempts are setups, that trust is damn near shattered.
I'd like to think I'm in neither of those groups, personally, and I don't think I'm special.
I hope not, but the staggering incompetence of those in charge probably means they'll screw it up/leak it to a reporter in a group chat, and most people will see it for what it is?
That's where I'm placing my hope, not in that they won't try shinannigans, but in hopes that they're so incompetent and their ranks filled only with corrupt conmen all the way down that it'll be a hilarious debacle more obvious than the Four Seasons Landscaping mess up
With the courts being completely ineffective, I'm starting to believe he can just cancel November midterms with no pretense and there's nothing that will happen
How would that actually work? The states manage their elections individually. If he says that there's no elections and the states say there there are, and hokd them, then we have new representatives. And i can imagine little more corrosive to his slim majority than him trying to stop voting.
The way Tr*mp has been saying he doesn't care about affordability, doesn't care about how long it takes to open the strait, doesn't care about the midterms... It makes me wonder what he has planned. Because if he really doesn't care, he must be counting on something.
That, or it's complete bullshit, like literally everything that comes out of his mouth.
I'm convinced that those one-time codes that Apple generates when you log in on a new device are not random. There has to be a file somewhere on Apple's servers that has a list of acceptable, aesthetically pleasing codes. 545860? Absolutely that one's in there. But 115167? Not a chance
Btw excellent use of the
hats.tinfoiltagThere are password generators that do this. They'll optionally avoid any visually confusing passwords, eg - more than one instances of I, l, |, or 1 because they look too similar. I totally believe Apple would have rules around their random generation. Still random enough to be secure, but prettier
Ha! I'm glad someone else has noticed this.
Any of those SMS-sent numbers, too. Like the TOTP apps, those have mostly looked random to me. Nothing particularly aesthetically pleasing (sounds so weird to say). But the SMS ones? 572 782. 509 099. 608 578. These are real codes I've received for various services.
Though now that I'm looking through the history of SMS-sent codes (should prob delete these bc why I even keep them)...OK a lot of these are just ugly and random-looking.
Literally just got a 484848.
The odds are one in a million!
That's Numberwang!
I once got 313258 and when I looked it up, you know what I found? The odds were one in a million đą
Wait... I don't understand why the numbers you listed are asthetically pleasing
I think it comes down to how it sounds when you say it out loud. Some words just have a nice... woody sound to them. "Pork", or "Johnson", you see, very woody sound to them. Not like, "tinkle" or... or "Leslie", or "genital", these are unpleasant, or tinny sounding.
101 337 is a terribly tinny sounding number, most displeasing to the ears. Whereas 482 820, now that has a nice woody sound to it and makes you want to say it all day!! Mmmmm, woody...
Everything is kiki or bouba! Everything!
I'm confused by this subthread as a whole. What makes any number aesthetically pleasing? Like even in the original comment I see no difference between 545860 and 115167
Huh, that's actually pretty interesting question. I can swear that 54-58-60 is more "pleasing" than 11-51-67. But I have no idea why!
Maybe because it's more easy/more smooth to pronounce, or maybe because of repeated similar tuples like 54 and 58?
I am surprised that you parse the codes in three couples rather than two triples
This thread reminds me of the Monty Python sketch about "woody" words.
Man, I think my brain may be broken because I don't get that feeling at all. To me, numbers are all basically the same and don't have a pleasing or aesthetic quality at all!
I guess certain patterns like 123456 would be easier to remember, but I'm just kinda neutral about every number in general. 7s are pretty especially hard to multiply and divide by for some reason though.
How do these feel:
39-17-55
Vs
44-86-48
I think we just prefer even numbers
I think 1 just throws things off. Its too skinny. Unless its paired with another 1 somewhere else.
In English I definitely prefer second variant.
Something about "thirty nine - seventeen" rubs me in a wrong way. I think it
definitelycan be related to pronounciation.To me there are 4 problems with the comparison (in English):
All these things put together make me like the odd number more, the double-5 at the end is just the cherry on top!
(Taylor's Version)
That's still more points for the first series, so the first series is better
Fantastic break down and many great points!
So far where 2-2 but both cases for the odd series are far superior, so time to step up even-number-series-advocates!
This looks like a weekly game in the making, energy, etc... We'll see :)
I'd say they are pleasing in different ways...
In English, with a Swedish accent:
For other languages and accents there are different things to take into consideration, obviously :)
I don't know about aesthetically, but I did notice that each triple shares the same last digit. For me, when I read them aloud to keep in auditory working memory, that builds on a natural tendency to better remember things that rhyme. Not sure about others.
Was the Severance make-work job tasks a riff on this? Wow
115167 should definitely be in the acceptable list. It has three consecutive digits surrounded by only 1s. You could do much worse.
Now I want to see a website or app where people vote on the aesthetic appeal of numbers. Maybe different categories for different numbers of digits. I wonder what this most statistically pleasing numbers would be.
Iâve gotten the last 6 digits of my phone number several times, which really just seems impossible.
675 309?
I hope it's 308 004.
800813
đ
My SSN starts one digit off from my area code at the time, and the next 4 digits were the same as the last 4 of my phone number around high school. Always weird--very easy to remember.
What's your mother's maiden name by the way?
;)
I mean this just comes down to not knowing how these codes are generated.
I've been generating my own memorable but completely random passwords with a self made password generator for years now, and you can give it parameters to follow so it's not just monkey on a keyboard random, but more abstract ideas with symbols random.
Anyways, using numbers only it's entirely possible to use parameters to fine tune the output.
I've wondered if they filtered out suspects like "111666" or "4206969" and such
the number of times i've used <unnamed authenticator app with a push code> and i got 69? too many. capital-T They know they're pushing a code to a grown human with a juvenile brain.
I almost feel the same with Microsoft's MFA codes but they go probably from 11-99 so that's not a lot of options anyway.
Somewhat related, the passwords generated by Apple's secure password generator aren't entirely random; they're intentionally gibberish word-sounding things.
Wouldn't be surprised if some one-time code generators also aim for something like that, where there's still enough entropy to be secure but also optimizing for another goal like memorability.
the toilet paper industry has a stranglehold on building contractors to keep bidets out of North America. think about it, man!
The contractors are in on it too, man! Think about it. Those after market bidets are what, the number one cause of flooding? Then you have mold remediation, teardown, build up... I don't know if it is true, but it feels true.
Just get an attachment. Hardware stores got them for relatively cheap! Show the toilet paper industry that they don't control you!
My uncle was a paper and pulp engineer for the first half of his career. He would always get very angry about the price of toilet paper. Of course, this man is incredibly thrifty - he would iron used wrapping paper to smooth it out and reuse it.
I hope he didn't do something similar with the used toilet paper
:'D Oh my gosh, I'm dying laughing. As far as I know, no. But when his family would use bar soap, he would save the little slivers at the very end of the bar, collect them, and then make a new bar out of the slivers.
Growing up, the new bar would always get ruined with the sad scrap of the last one being mashed into it by my parents. Then every shower if you tried to use it, you'd have to stop it from separating off again. It's honestly my strongest memory of using bar soap. I'd rather grab them all together like your uncle and have one frankenstein bar that I melt (???) together than the constant nice+nasty ones that I used to have to use.
Melania Trump (Knavs) is Donald Trump's KGB handler. Sure, she'd Slovenian and not Russian, but I think she definitely got recruited at some point in her youth and turned. Her career as a model and socialite in NYC gave her access to very influential people, and her ending up in Trumps orbit was the icing on the cake. The KGB got the dirt on him through her, and now he's their puppet, and she's pulling the strings.
After the 2016 election I saw some posts online where trump supporters were praising her. I think it was from facebook posts from some older republican women. And they were like âitâs so nice to have someone with class and grace as First Lady againâ.
And of course, anyone who wasnât a racist and a cult member would see through what that was about. The immediately previous first lady was an articulate lawyer who spoke with kindness and intelligence to all the citizens of the country. And she tried to get people to be kinder to each other and make sure children were taken care of with nutritious food.
Their wonderful replacement was a scowling 3rd wife of a known con man who cheated on all his previous wives. This âelegantâ person was a former nude model (not that I care, but elderly republicans usually do), and she barely spoke at all or showed any interest in any of the duties normally performed by a First Lady.
Different kind of "class" they're talking about for sure
Not the kind of class consciousness I signed up for.
Wouldn't she spend more time around him, want to be around him if that were the case?
Seems pretty mission accomplished at this stage tbh
I want to believe.
I think that most high profile evangelical leaders are actually atheists and social darwinists. Iâm thinking about all the people that crowd around Trump and put their hands on him while he pretends to pray. These are the same types who run mega churches and act extremely concerned about sexual morality but ignore the part about giving away all wealth to the poor.
Of course itâs obvious that these people are immoral and phony, but my specific conspiracy theory is that they are atheists who see themselves as predators and their followers are sheep to be consumed.
I also think that most other church leaders are secretly atheists. This includes most of the cardinals in the Vatican and most of the people who have ever been pope.
It would be of greater comfort to me if many of them are secretly atheists only aiming to earn a buck or billion, cynically dressing up as shepherds to devour the sheep. It's much scarier to imagine that they do believe in the divine, the final judgement, to consume the flesh and blood of the flock, while they give themselves the seal of approval that yes God is made in my image and approves of what I am doing.
My addendum crackpot is that some of them are indeed and truthfully visited by immaterial beings, maybe shining with apparent beauty inspiring awe, that do tell them they are doing great as their servants and will be rewarded and give them instructions on how to further influence the world. Gist: I believe at least some of them are contacted and work for demons.
I grew up in a fairly small church that was centered around an individual preacher who was deeply flawed. From birth until age 14 that church was my entire life, and it was a miserable existence. By age 6, I could not tell you if God did or did not exist (I leaned towards âthis is horse shitâ even at that young age), but I was dead certain the devil did.
In fact, it took me until my 30s to realize that there was no devil; just humans being the shittiest and most selfish version of themselves. You donât need an outside influence to be this demonic, you just need personal permission.
The first person that a con man cons is himself into believing heâs justified in his shitty immoral behavior.
I used to listen to "Real Dictators", a podcast that chronicles the lives and times of dictators around the world and through history. Interesting stuff. One of the most interesting realizations I had was just how many dictators seem to have genuinely believed that they were the only hope for their countries, even if they didn't start out like that, and even once things had gone off the rails.
Thereâs a certain blindness to oneâs own shortcomings that sends absolutely vital to the personality makeup of dictators, cult leaders, serial killers, corporate executives, and politicians. Iâm convinced theyâre all the same type of person, with the same obsession (power) that they pursue via different routes (purity, perfection, pain, profit, personal enrichment.) Of course Iâm no psychologist or in any way trained in this sort of thing, so I may be way off target.
While I don't disagree, I also do not think that this is limited to certain typeset of humanity. Again, I too am not psychologist, but I've come to understand that human brain is incapable of not justifying it's own actions to a degree. By default, human brain activates it's parts that "acts" and only then pre-frontal cortex intervenes with this decision. Hence, where the logic and long term planning comes into play. It serves as a secondary mechanism that limits and overrides original behaviour.
But alongside the way, there is this weird coping mechanism where guilt (or immoral decision) turns into justification to protect oneself from pain. You will see this pattern in BPD or NPD patients. They are quick to act, justify their own wrong-doings and will certainly believe what they do is the right thing. (If someone knows a research about the subject, feel free to refer it to me. I am interested in reading more) You'll see them change their stance on things, will deny existence of their past actions if confronted and, even get nastier if provided with solid proof of it. It's always justified and even if you get one to admit wrongdoing, they will just say they had a justified reason for it.
We could easily say, yeah sure nobody wants to get caught so they're putting on a play but even still, the lengths of what people can do feels like an impossible task to accomplish if they weren't believing on it. And, it is no secret that our brains do manipulate ourselves in distress either. We can even reshape our memories by recalling them over and over again. I would go more about how this is an important and vital mechanic in human brain but I feel like I should cut it short here.
So, at the end of the day, human mind is truly a complex mechanism that we haven't really solved fully. I am hopeful that we'll understand more of our consciousness as the research is only now gaining more speed. But, I'd be lying if I said, I'm not jaded by all these people doing extremely wrong things for the right reasons.
Most of these guys end up thinking they got the people this far, they MUST be needed to continue leading the people because others can't do it as well as they can. Like you said, even if they didn't start out like that. Some of the revolutionaries raving against the establishment end up becoming the establishment.
Well your theory certainly tracks when I think about Kenneth Copeland. I think he may be well on his way to becoming one himself.
Also fun fact: I only had to use the term "demon preacher" to find that clip on youtube. It was the first result.
I somehow thought that was the clip before clicking on it, despite not having remembered the name of the person depicted
I do thing that there's a certain level of cooperation involved before a thorough corruption is possible, too. As in, they don't have absolute power over human beings, cooperative ones, plus a lot of incentives for cooperation
Uh, that's basically the Roman Catholic Church throughout its inception through at least the Middle Ages and past. Blatant power-hungry Popes and their clergy, basically a whole country-type entity that muscled its people's beliefs against their rulers to make their powers effective.
Well, I guess my humble crackpot to this crackpot is that there are more good ones than bad, certainly the impoverished and suffering ones who care for their communities at personal cost.
I'm not part of the Catholic church but I've met a lot of clergy and pastors who do care, work very long hours, are exposed to first responders levels of personal trauma dumping from everyone, and aren't financially well rewarded.
Your crackpot theory is also interesting. Iâll have to think about it. Certainly there are some Christian leaders who believe in what they say, but I would assume they are just mentally ill and not having actual communication with angels or demons. But who knows, maybe supernatural stuff is true, I donât claim to know all thatâs possible.
An addendum to my crackpot theory is that these atheist leaders hang out with the Epstein class billionaires and have wild rituals like in Eyes Wide Shut but way more horrifying and criminal.
May we be protected from pondering too deeply about the true horrors, and letting our imagination do ourselves moral harm. That's one I gotta watch out for, for myself. Something something staring into the abyss etc, probably not good for us.
The wealth-amassing megachurch / televangelist types? I completely buy that. Same for the top echelons of institutional church power across the board â not just Catholicism but all major religions. Especially the ones with the most money. Looking at LDS and Scientology, there.
I really believe (maybe this is my own crackpot theory) that a nontrivial percentage of the population is sociopathic and these people naturally gravitate towards, and excel in, positions of power, influence, and exploitation for personal gain. I think the halls of government and religion and big business are packed full of these people because they are the only ones capable of doing the unthinkable things necessary to thrive there. And there are a LOT of them, and they look after one another. The rest of us self-select as the prey class because weâre bound by convictions that theyâve simply never had. I suspect the world has always been that way and probably always will: The liars and manipulators call the shots because they can, and everyone else tells themselves stories about why thatâs okay.
I think that explains corrupt politicians who have no real values or ideals but certainly like to play the part, in exactly the same way it explains non-believing church leaders.
I do think there are plenty of earnest, devout clergy. But most of them wonât have what it takes to play the game, rise through the ranks, etc. Theyâll always just be smalltime pastors of local churches. And Iâm certain a significant number of them once truly believed, and now no longer do for whatever reason, but remain in those occupations because they donât know how to do anything else career-wise or theyâre afraid to reveal their hypocrisy⌠so they just stay there going through the motions for years. These are the ones who end up on the news for abusing their congregants, because they rotted inside but lacked the sociopathy to evade consequences, and theyâve been operating solo instead of enmeshing themselves in strata of back-scratching fellow manipulators. Theyâre the ones with the tearful mugshots who probably really do feel remorse and will end up making public apologies and repeat the cycle again a few years later. Thatâs rookie shit, the real monsters at the top donât end up in situations like that. Theyâre untouchable.
I think our general understanding of sociopathy needs to change. We all know sociopaths are among us. But we pussy-foot around that fact and convince ourselves that there are probably only a few of them, that identifying them is impossible, and that the justice system will take care of them when they do bad things. It wonât. They are the justice system.
Hmm, on reflection I guess you could substitute âreptiliansâ or âJewsâ or âpedophile satanistsâ for âsociopathsâ and this isnât terribly different from any other classic anti-elite conspiracy theory. I mean, at least mineâs not racist or about aliens. I just think 10-20% of humans are born without the psychological barriers that regulate the rest of us, and they've been using that as a superpower to make the world their playground at our expense.
Oh, not even close to crackpot. Kevin Dutton has a book from 2012 called The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success which names the professions with the most and least psychopaths (close enough to sociopath for our purposes here). His answers from combing through the evidence?
MOST (in order, I think):
LEAST (also in order, I think):
Some surprises in there! But not many. Power and needed to work with others' feelings seem to be the driving factors.
Surgeon = most, Doctor = least? Strange if true, as you need to be a doctor before you can be a surgeon...
No this definitely tracks.
The stereotypical personality types of a surgeon vs a non-surgical medical doctor are quite different, and map to this list well.
I'm assuming they meant surgeon vs general physician, but I don't know the methodology. PhDs are doctors, too, but they certainly didn't mean that.
I agree with pretty much all of that. Thereâs a huge number of sociopaths among us and it can be shocking for those who have an intrinsic value system to accidentally discover this in friends and family.
Iâve thought a lot more about this in recent years as I witnessed millions of people vote for Trump multiple times. But Iâm not exactly sure of the separation between sociopaths and deeply stupid people. Or the difference between sociopaths and authoritarian followers.
Separate but related: The fundamental premise of worship is difficult for me to grasp. Fawning over and kissing up to any kind of being is very weird actually. People that are rapturously attending a church service or trump rally is just so foreign to me. I canât imagine a God who would want that behavior from me. Iâd prefer a god who valued honesty and compassion and sharing and reliability than valuing sycophancy and performance.
At this point, I'm not sure this is even crackpot. I mean, even the partial set of Epstein files that have been released pretty much prove it (maybe not the specific percentage, but the overall gist).
Edit: My friend and I talked about this a few months ago. One thought we had is that "primitive" societies sentenced these people to death (or banishment, same thing). Like, if you took more than your fair share in, say, an early Polynesian culture, I suspect you weren't going to last long. But today, we've actually designed a system that favors these personalities.
I don't know about most or many. But I know one retired Evangelical pastor who headed several small churches and was a part of many more larger churches. He was a serial cheater who had so many affairs on his first wife that he was run out of town and forced out of church leadership numerous times.
When his wife learned about the affairs he would literally claim that the devil made him do it. He literally seemed to believe that the devil was causing all of the cheating, possessing him, not that he was in charge of his own actions.
This man seems to be a genuinely devout Christian and seems to really believe in his religion. He believes he is going to heaven because he has asked God for forgiveness. He is obsessed with other people's behavior and church going. He is convinced most everyone in his family are going to an actual hell.
In other words, he's not an atheist. I guess he's a hypocrite (who can live with a lot of cognitive dissonance?). Maybe most are?
Wow, I genuinely think holding those conflicting realities in my head would break me. Perhaps that dude will have a mega-breakdown at some point, it sounds horrific to inflict that on yourself. Perhaps there's something broken in him that lets it not be such a problem for him, but dude, wow!
non-crackpot tinfoil hat content
I've been talking to a friend about their problems at work, so maybe that's why, but this whole sub-thread reminds of a scene in the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times where he becomes an accidental leader.
I think that happens a lot too: many people just want to follow, do if someone is perceived as leading they become a leader and some people are quicker than others to both understand what's happening and capitalise on it.
There's this guy named Harry. We've never met, but he's got some personality quirk where one day he decided he was gonna pick someone. That someone was me. See, Harry works in a DOT traffic center somewhere, watching cameras and with controls to override traffic lights. Well, one day Harry decided that every now and then, if I ever look like I'm running late, he's gonna fuck with me and turn all the lights red as I'm approaching them. He only does it when I'm running late, never when I leave on time. He's a real dick.
Harry's looking out for you, he's timing the lights for your schedule and everything, how is it on him if you're running behind?
I used to have that problem in Los Angeles, until I was told that the speed limit is pegged to the exact amount of time it takes to get from one traffic light to the next. If you go 5 under the speed limit when you come away from the red, and then match the exact speed limit as soon as you're at the next green light, you'll get greens all the way down. It worked in Los Angeles as recently as 2008 but I wouldn't swear to it anywhere else or even there nearly 20 years later. If you're going to be late anyway, might be worth a try next time.
Sure thing, "Narry."
It's short for "Narrator" since my favorite thing is to narrate TTRPGs for my friends.
How do you know his name? Are you sure it's not Greg (the guy in the cubicle next to Harry)?
I'm just finding really weird that just a couple weeks before a potentially high-impact referendum in Switzerland concerning migration, this particular terrorist attack happened very close to ZĂźrich
I do not know what to think, but it looks exactly like a thing that could unfairly influence an important referendum and would ideally wish for the entire chain to be investigated meticulously before the referendum actually happens.
Not to mention how incredibly uncommon this is here. Certainly possible that it's a coincidence, but definitely makes one think.
I know it wouldn't matter to anyone whose mind would be changed by that, but the guy who did it wasn't an immigrant (though he was of Turkish descent).
The Right wing party (SVP) I think even said a few months ago that they should take away all the dual citizenship.
And he was a dual citizenship of turkey and Switzerland even his whole family still lives in turkey. So even that would fit with their mission to take away the dual citizenship from "bad foreigners" or whatever they see those people as.
And I think just generally the ads that are currently up are very insane and cherry picking statistics. - - > from SVP
I got quite a shock because I have only seen such ads in like idk america or Hungary is a recent example. But seeing such ads from SVP is kinda insane:
There are 3 statistics next to each other:
And even when I was talking to people it seemed most people were surprised seeing this kind of ads here in Switzerland. Because yes the right wing party is problematic but I didn't know they were as bad as this!!!
Their stance is also increasingly pro-russia to an idiotic degree; I won't even be shocked if word gets out that russia is involved in any meaningful way in any of this. Wouldn't be the first or last time, anyway...
The Blue Origin explosion is an awfully convenient opportunity for SpaceX.
SpaceXâs biggest competitor just got put out of action for at least 15 months, while there is high demand for shipping cargo to space (several NASA missions were pending the Blue Origin test), and just before the worldâs biggest IPOâŚ
I have similar thoughts regarding this. My first thought was corporate sabotage. Iâm also curious if the launch outcome was on polymarket, and if there were any abnormally large wagers that would have benefited from the catastrophic outcome.
Though at the end of the day rocket science might just be difficult.
It's the ULA sniper all over again!
I was joking at the time, but my instant reaction to the news was "I bet it was China".
The NFL is 'rigged.' Not in the sense that all players and coaches are fixing games, but through referees and selective rule enforcement.
The recent Avatar leak was internally intentional and the patsy is unrelated or fictional.
I have no solid argument for either. They're inconsequential enough (to me) that I haven't bothered to build a good case or dissuade myself.
I'd stretch 2 further and say most if not all media leaks are intentional as another form of marketing.
Though I'm sure it does happen, there are definitely people who want the clout to think âI did that.â
Having people talk about something that you did does wonders to one's ego.
I don't necessarily buy into #1.
That said, the 2 point conversation failure overturned in the Rams/Seahawks game was all kind of wtf? Like, I get it's the "right" call...but that was some selective enforcement there considering it wasn't challenged by either of the teams. When you just randomly call down and say "let's re-look at this specific play", while letting other plays that could be turned over stand all the time, it's hard not to think "why this specific play?"
Then add on the fact that it was someone working for the broadcast that phoned in to do the replay and it's all kinds of messy. Especially when going back to "why this specific play?" and the broadcast wanting that specific play which would tie the game late to be looked at again...
So I don't necessarily buy into it, but I certainly ain't buying out of it.
I do very much buy into league rigging when it comes to the NBA though. And there's a lotttttt more credence to it considering the whole Tim Donaghy betting scandal and Scott Foster still being an official. It's why I think they don't do anything about flopping either, because it makes it easier to call/no-call plays.
I stopped watching the NFL completely after the Saints x Rams No Call in the Playoffs. I donât believe in any other conspiracies but Iâll entertain the âNFL is Riggedâ conspiracy.
Telenovela level scripted drama.
It really is funny how the defender awkwardly looks around for the flag instead of celebrating until he gets to his teammates celebrating.
IIRC he even admitted after the game to purposely trying to get a flag on the play to stop the TD? Really is an insane no-call
I try to give a lot of leeway in esque of "don't attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"...but greed would be the appropriate word over malice in this situation, and greed exploits that leeway a lot.
It probably is. Sports betting and prediction markets also make it trickle down to the individual level.
My big conspiracy theory is that Star Wars is a childrenâs toy franchise first and foremost, and thatâs the reason that the latest movie starred baby Yoda rather than a dreary, social and political commentary about the evils of the empire. Basically the idea is that Disney really wants to sell toys and merchandise and theme park tickets, and that they donât really give that much of a shit about high caliber, Oscar worthy films.
Itâs a long held suspicion of mine that Disney is actually in the business of profiting off of children and nostalgia. But Reddit tells me Iâm crazy.
I can't speak to Disney era star wars (although it is definitely true), but this is explicitly true of Lucas era star wars. Lucas requested a smaller salary during negotiations for Star Wars in exchange for 40% of merchandising revenue. Before Star Wars, merch for a movie was pretty small.
I'm pretty sure that Disney is upfront with being a technology company first and foremost that happens to make bank on merch and lifestyle experiences, and has been from the beginning, but every once in a while a CEO gets a bug in their ear about putting out a bunch of stuff for the new at home medium, and they lean into that for a minute.
Iâm curious what technologies it is that they specialize in besides animations and animatronics? So far every innovation Iâve ever seen them come up with has been directly aimed at one of their movies or one of their theme parks. Iâm not saying youâre wrong, Iâm saying Iâm just not sure I would describe them as a technology company first.
I'd argue that they're a technology company more than a media enterprise in the same way that Epic Games are the maintainers of the Unreal Engine more than they are the people who make Fortnite. Disney's technology engine drives the kinds of movies they make more than an inherent need to make movies and if had to size down their content wings and entertain people with AI models of their characters, they'd do so, because they tried to and it didn't work out for them.
Maybe they've flipped to that model and I haven't noticed; in the 90's my folks used to know a lot of behind the scenes Disney folks when we lived in California, both at Disneyland and at the actual studios in Burbank. Back then Disney were doing a ton of innovation but all of it was for the movies and rides, which in many ways they tried to make good as actual movies for the prestige of having award-winning titles, but they also tried to make movies that were easily adaptable for merch and tie-ins.
Maybe today that makes them a tech company. On their About page, they describe their missions as:
Technology is mentioned, but one of the last things they mention but not in a way that makes it seem like it's more or less important than the other stuff. So maybe they do think of themselves as a tech company that happens to have a strong set of brands to protect.
I didn't watch Star Wars until I was almost 30 (movies as a kid were mostly limited to the one shelf of rentable movies at Albertsons that never changed), and it's so clearly aimed at children from the get-go. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I still watch DBZ to this day...but I know it's a kids show.
The original trilogy came out before my time, and, well... my whole preschool was obsessed with it in the 90's. And the prequel trilogy definitely tried to aim at kids with Jar-Jar, so you're not entirely wrong.
That said, I wouldn't call it aimed at kids, but aimed at all ages. Sounds similar, but there's a distinction because they're not trying to pander to a specific age group, making it much more enjoyable for everyone in the process. Plenty of action with none of the usual "softening" in kids' media, and no dumbing things down or adding stupid jokes to annoy adults. Genuinely mature themes and nuances not as some hidden bonus for adult viewers, but as part of the core story.
...Actually, now that I think about it films made for all ages feel surprisingly rare, especially in recent years with how hyper-focused studios are on market demographics...
Really? I feel like Pixar blew the door open for all-ages movies; little nods to parents, lazy or not, have felt ubiquitous since. Getting a whole nuclear family to schelp their asses in seats is 4.5x ticket sales, if you need a demographic...
See, I'm talking about more than just "little nods" for adults. At the end of the day, Pixar and most other family films are made for children first and foremost, with hidden humor and subtext for parents who have to go to the theaters with their kids. A lot of adults probably wouldn't go see those films on their own. Media aimed at all ages though is something that can genuinely appeal to individuals of all ages.
Since this started from Star Wars, let's use that as an example. George Lucas is on record that it was made for kids... But it was at bare minimum made for older kids, because the original film is a bit more gruesome than most kids' films. I mean, there's the many, many deaths for one, which isn't too weird for kids' movies but we see the skeletons of Luke's aunt and uncle after they're murdered. Then there's all the torture that happens off screen to Leia.
More than that, it doesn't try to dumb things down to be more appealing to kids. There are actual, serious politics as the focal point, death and torture scenes, two of the main characters are criminalsâwith Han in particular being a smuggler in debt to Jabba the Hut for dumping a shipment to avoid getting arrested, not due to any moral qualms with being a smugglerâand heavily nuanced adult relationships.
and also accidental incest before Lucas decided to make Luke and Leia twinsThe end result? It genuinely appeals to all ages. It has cute and marketable aliens and robots for kids, an actually serious story and characters for adults, and action sequences that appeal to everyone. My mom talked about going to see it in college with her friends and walking out super energized, one guy jumping and pumping a fist in the air. Not many family movies would get that sort of reaction from young adultsâor heck, get them to go out of their way to see it without having to accompany a kid.
George Lucas seemed to have a knack for finding that sort of "sweet spot" because the only other franchise I'd consider just as appealing to all ages is Indiana Jones, and even that has a caveat for featuring at least one pretty gruesome death that might be too much for little kids. But there's a reason those two franchises have left such a strong mark on pop culture: you can enjoy them at any age.
Star Wars was always on TV every Thanksgiving as a kid. I always fell asleep trying to watch it. Usually, I would doze off somewhere on Tatooine and I wouldnât wake up again until the swamps of Dagobah. I tried real hard to get into it, but it just bored the crap out of me. I wasnât able to pay attention to it until later. Yet somehow Indiana Jones held my attention. So did the various Batman movies. And Jurassic Park.
Edit: actually Iâd doze off on Tatooine, wake up for the Battle of Yavin, conk out again, wake up for the ice monster on Hoth, pass out again and wake up for training on Dagobah, snooze again and wake up for Han Solo getting frozen in carbonite, and then Iâd usually get up and wander away to play. I rarely ever stayed for Return of the Jedi, but if I did wander back in it was almost always for the fight scenes on Endor or sometimes the new Death StarâŚ
How is that a conspiracy theory? This goes all the way back to George Lucas opting to get merchandise rights over a salary with the first first movie.
Somehow, Andor was also produced, though.
Every time I bring it up I get told that itâs really not a kidâs franchise. You can even see someone in the replies making the case that itâs General Audience, and perhaps âbig kidâ⌠The real conspiracy is that Star Wars is actually harder Science Fiction than Star Trek.
Now hold on there⌠what?!
This theory doesnât originate with me, but I donât really remember where I originally heard it. It goes down to the technology and the aliens that were in both the original trilogy and the original series. This breaks down the more you bring in the extended universe of either one of them, because a lot of this has been corrected for later. But if you compare the original of the two, Star Trek actually used a lot more fantasy components for its technology, its stories, and its aliens than Star Wars did.
This specifically goes towards things like communicators that work pretty much everywhere (unless the plot demands that they donât), teleporters that get you down to the planet rather than having to take a craft to get to the surface of a planet (this is something that is addressed somewhat in the original series and a few of the precursor ones like ENT, DIS, SNW), Star Wars having a wider variety of aliens than Star Trek had (most Star Trek aliens had to fit within the budget so they were humans in a costume most of the time) including many more body types and forms (The Hutts, the Jawa, Yoda: basically any puppet.)
Star Wars also had what at the time was considered by some (who? I donât know) to be a more realistic take on faster than light travel, where you had to have either ships with big enough engines or use a special piece of equipment for smaller ships to get yourself further down the line, and I believe it was stated somewhere in the original trilogy that FTL travel at those speeds was not that fast necessarily.
Star Trek also tended to encounter a lot more magical entities than Star Wars does. If you look at the number of times that Star Trek encountered a reality-bending god-like entity versus Star Wars where the only real âmagicâ users wereas the Jedi and their powers werenât that startling: some lightning, some pushing people around with your mind, magical swords. Star Trek was also much more likely to lean on fantasy tropes than science fiction tropes in the early days, whereas Star Wars was literally just a typical hero's journey story with a veneer of science fantasy thrown onto it. Star Trek had a lot more room to explore big ideas, so they could explore much more fantastical storylines. One manâs science is another manâs magic, etc..
When you take those kind of nebulous extraneous elements and you compare them one to one you find that Star Trek actually tends to lean on the fantasy elements of science fiction more than you would expect, and that Star Wars seems to make magic a less powerful force, despite the fact that the story centers around magical knights doing battle over the core moral imperative of the universe.
Thatâs the conspiracy theory anyway. Whether that holds up in the aggregate is unclear.
Edited some for clarity.
Thatâs wild! Thank you, I like it, lol.
@Narry please do elaborate
As you wish: https://tildes.net/~talk/1uev/what_are_your_personal_crackpot_conspiracy_theories_about_the_world_right_now#comment-hzmi
That everytime I put on a headset to play fucking Fortnite with my friends, it somehow drip feeds nicotine through my headphones, activating my hands and making me think about whether I need to buy that stupid stupid dance.
I used to game for the love of it.
I used to be somebody.
...it's not at all current but i also don't think it's particularly crackpot to infer that on september 11th 2001, either united flight 93 was shot down or the USAF were grossly incompetent, and whichever is true won't become public knowledge until well after everyone who was alive at the time are dead and gone from public influence...
If itâs true, the timeline is probably never, just like the JFK stuff.
Almost everything bad happening in the world today, no matter how apparently-unrelated it is on the surface, can ultimately be traced back to Global Warming.
Additionally, I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one.
Modern-day America is a sick experiment in how badly the elites and powerful can treat common folk without having them revolt.
Surprisingly, itâs a lot. People feel like they have something to lose even if their life is terrible. Combine that with an ever-increasing surveillance state that prevents people from organizing and forming militias because itâs âterrorismâ, and you have an incredibly effective framework for spreading misery and exploitation.
it also seems an exercise in âhow little bread will hoi polloi tolerate if we go full-in on the circus?â
And the circus isn't even enjoyable entertainment, it's just a firehose of outrage.
I don't know if it counts as a "conspiracy theory" when there's widespread public evidence to support it, but I'll connect the dots as I see them...
Public fear over contagious disease provides cognitive exploits for malicious implantation of right-wing ideology. There are replicable psychology studies indicating that disgust and preference for social order are reliable predictors of conservative ideological bias. It's easy to promote "dirty foreigner" narratives that amplify disease anxieties and reduce scrutiny of authoritarian encroachment on former freedoms of movement, speech, association, etc.
I saw this as a clear strategy of the U.S. right wing as far back as 2014, when a few cases of Ebola reaching the Americas had a measurable impact on the election of loonier conservatives to Congress that year. It's only gotten worse since.
My crackpot: many people today have a higher need for physical intimacy because they were neglected or touch starved as children. That many today look for too much from one single person in a partner because they haven't sorted out their own personal problems stemming from being a latched key kid or having grown up "conveyor belt" style (pre-K-12-uni school > work > ???). That society isn't offering the old social networks and community as before, and so, now floundering as an adult, they're looking for perfect nurturing and mature acceptance from their stable pixie dream girl, or their stable professional careered dream boy.
This is just true, no tinfoil or crackpot needed.
Not saying everything was better before, but some things are worse now.
That folks are less suitable partners than before is perhaps accepted, maybe, but the crackpot lies in my guess that it's poor upbringing, especially among families that look fine on the surface. Not just kids with obvious childhood adversity like poverty or war or abuse, but solidly "middle class" homes with "loving" parents and post secondary education. The standard American dream dual income happy homes.
Seems already very unpopular to suggest to people that (1) many of them are not quality partner candidates who need to work on themselves first, and more of a challenge to say (2) they had poor upbringing in which not enough nurturing and development when into them. They had shelter and food and clothes, what more could any Gen X Millenial Gen Z possibly want?
A lot of people have been asked to raise themselves with extremely little unconditional love, care and attention, and they're already quite burned out of having to provide for themselves. So asking them to self improve before they'll be properly loved hits a particular sore spot where once again, it's conditional and require work on their part. That's not a role any partner can fill.
Well Copernicus wasn't accepted at first either!
I'm just saying that what you are saying is true, regardless if it is accepted or not.
The lack of community is degrading us as persons.
This is factual!
(Obviously I'm not serious, serious, I have no proof, I just agree strongly with the sentiment)
Welcome to the brotherhood, here's your tinfoil hat ~
I needed to put on some extra tinfoil for this one. Make sure you add an extra layer to your hats before reading.
The lizard people are building up the chaos in the world so that they can take their mask off at a critical juncture and assume control in their regular forms, as the resources needed to maintain their flesh masks prevents them from growing their population. The investment in AI is due to our technology finally reaching a point to where it can b e used to develop a system powerful enough to pilot their damaged starship they have stashed on the moon. With the AI pilot they can plot a course back home and enter in to suspended animation.
Once they are prepared to leave they'll harvest any remaining natural resources they want to bring back with them leaving us with a husk of our earth and everyone very angry at each other, assuming they don't decide to get rid of us on their way out.
For a less out there theory:
The world elites are actually wanting a major world conflict to allow them to cull the world's population as they will be more insulated from it. People are absolutely not prepared for a widespread conflict with how globalized the economy has become. Assuming that Taiwan question finally demands a solution and the major powers decided to a gentleman's agreement to not use nuclear weapons, the resulting chaos from a major world power conflict would leave hundreds of millions to potential 1-2 billion people dead. This death toll depends a lot on the scope of the conflict, and which countries participate.
I think that in the aftermath of this conflict the elites would be able to seize additional power and much of the population would be grateful for some form of stability and regular access to food/water/peace in their lives after the resulting chaos of a major conflict that they would accept their freedoms being greatly curtailed.
I don't think people should go full doomsday prepper level, but taking the time to start preparing things in this crazy world would help immensely. Having multiple weeks/months of supplies works as a certain form of insurance for lose of job in the crazy market, and would also allow resources to be allocated to other members of the community during times of natural disaster/conflict.
I firmly believe in the concept of manufactured consent in that the outcomes of superficially democratic processes are primarily designed by the still-present ruling class using the weaknesses inherent to profit-driven mass media.
But that's perphaps better viewed as a natural consequence of existing power structures than as a carefully orchestrated conspiracy.
Perhaps we are way more capable of space exporation than we ware allowed to known.