this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023

3 points (100.0% liked)

chat

8148 readers

148 users here now

Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.

As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.

Thank you and happy chatting!

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

EmmaGoldman@hexbear.net

Quimby@hexbear.net

ZoomeristLeninist@hexbear.net

SexUnderSocialism@hexbear.net

InsidiousTrackers@hexbear.net

What's a relatively harmless conspiracy theory you think might have some truth behind it even though there's probably not enough evidence to support it? (hexbear.net)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net to c/chat@hexbear.net

52 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I just had a thought like "What if some UFO aduction experiences people claim to have are actually people being kidnapped by the CIA" thinking-about-it

The kind of stories I'm thinking about often go like: "I was driving on an empty road in the middle of nowhere. I saw a bright light," and then either "I remember nothing but had lost time" or "I remember being experimented on by aliens and then put back in my car."

My tinfoil hat side is thinking like, these stories started happening around the time the US admitted to experimenting with abuse, torture and psychoactive drugs in Project MK-Ultra. Alien abduction stories were the most prevalent during this time. (CW: Just a heads up. If you want to read the rest of this post or anything else about MK-Ultra, be warned that it's pretty horrible, and involves some of the most disgusting torture I have ever read about. Death to America.)

Of the surviving documents released to the public about MK-Ultra, the CIA admits to: "kidnapping people it deemed "expendable" to undertake various types of torture and human experimentation on them. The prisoners were interrogated while being administered psychoactive drugs, electroshocked and subjected to extremes of temperature, sensory isolation and the like to develop a better understanding of how to destroy and to control human minds."

Part of me wonders how many of these alien abduction stories are just people being kidnapped, drugged with powerful hallucinogens, experimented on and then released with the suggestion conditioned into their mind that it was aliens.

The most famous alien abduction story is that of Barney and Betty Hill, an interracial couple that were both civil rights leaders, definitely people that the CIA would want to fuck with, especially during rising tensions with the Soviet Union, the US government was suspicious of minorities and anyone interested in their rights.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] wahwahwah@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

That 99.9% of the time social media "virality" is just admin from YouTube and TikTok manually choosing which of their favorite influencers are forced upon users. I'm not even talking execs here, just low-ranking code monkeys and paper pushers on a power trip.

That most Meta workers abuse their power and read users' DMs. Pretty sure this has been confirmed, though not by Zuck and the gang—just random ex-employees. I knew a guy who worked for Facebook who my gut-instinct says was cyber-stalking me. He let a piece of really personal info about me slip during a convo. It wasn't a dark secret, just something that I'd barely told anyone. I assumed that maybe my friend had told him, but she said she'd hardly spoken to him.

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That 99.9% of the time social media "virality" is just admin from YouTube and TikTok manually choosing which of their favorite influencers are forced upon users

I think you cracked the code on Justin Bieber's origin story.

[–] wahwahwah@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago

Imo, late-2000s YouTube was organic compared to what it’s become.

[–] GaveUp@hexbear.net 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

That most Meta workers abuse their power and read users' DMs

Btw this is workers in like every industry with access to user data. Tesla workers sharing car video recordings amongst each other for laughs https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/6/23672760/tesla-employees-share-vehicle-recordings-privacy

One of my friends while working for our university also looked up the transcripts of her friends and even took requests for lookups on anybody from her friends

[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is so wild to me. I used to be a sadmin (a sysadmin with more depression) and the culture of the trade where I worked was extremely rigid. We had the power to read everyone's emails, spy on financials etc whatever we wanted but if you didn't diligently practice the art of unseeing when digging around to fix something, or ever mentioned something you should not know you were instantly a pariah and fired shortly afterwards.

Even the goofiest people that liked to laze around and play office pranks would become rigidly formal and serious if it seemed like someone's privacy might be about to get violated. Similar to doctors/lawyers clamming up.

Idk if that was just the culture of the past, when the position was more of an estoteric thing you were inducted into? or if the company I worked for was uniquely good about it. Everyone I met at conferences was like that too though.

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I strongly believe that a lot of the internet is dead and that it's just chugging along with a digital Potemkin village of activity and relevance, with no further input from living people needed or even wanted.

Much like how "oops, the stonks-down did a fucky wucky today so livelihoods must end" tea leaf reading is just taken for granted as meaning something, way too many people just trust "googling it" or whatever a Wikipedia entry says and go with whatever is then put in front of them.

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago

Since returning to reddit a few months ago after a hiatus of a few years I’ve definitely started to wonder. So much of that site is so circle-jerky, they just talk about the same shit over and over again. Is it because they’re just redditors, they’re bots, or is it a little of both?

[–] utopologist@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The nasal swab COVID-19 tests that are still somewhat affordable give false negatives waaaaaay more than they say

[–] RedDawn@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago

I had taken one a couple weekends ago because I was feverish in a way that was familiar to me from the last time I had COVID, and it came back negative so I was OK probably just the flu. Well, my whole family caught it and it was COVID after all.

[–] sooper_dooper_roofer@hexbear.net 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I've outsmarted scientists at their own game 20 times by now, they are no match for my inductive thinking and I don't care about boasting about this

article from 2021 about how COVID+ rate in deer is 80x more than humans: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/10/1054224204/how-sars-cov-2-in-american-deer-could-alter-the-course-of-the-global-pandemic

the writers flagellate themselves over "how could deer be 80x more infected than humans?"
Common sense should tell you that deer are just bags of flesh like we are, so there's no reason for this discrepancy
then somewhere in the article it unwittingly mentions that they were testing LYMPH NODES from deer that were shot by hunters
while the human data was from NASAL SWABS

so the obvious conclusion here is that COVID sticks around in the organs much much longer than it does in the nose/throat. I suspected this in 2020 based on my symptoms and solidified it in 2021 based on this article, and it was proven in 2022

This means that the positivity rate in a geographic population is actually 80x larger than nasal swab data suggests

And yes, of course COVID-19 is an AMERICAN BIOWEAPON

[–] birdcat@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

US intelligence knew (if not made possible) what was going to happen on 9/11
Isreal intelligence knew (if not made possible) what was going to happen on 10/7

[–] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And both of those things were the result of US intervention to "stop the spread of communism" yea

[–] birdcat@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

ok going full tinfoil now... but in the second case I think it's more likely that the escalation was wanted cuz Israel is aware of the downfall of the US; which will eventually lead to them not being able to deliver the needed support at a later time.

[–] WittyProfileName2@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm of the belief that the contemporary existence of foot fetishes was the result of some shady scheme by some group (fuck knows who).

Yeah, yeah I know that there's examples erotica involving feet dating back as far back as ancient Greece, but hear me out:

In 1998, a study was carried out analysing porn magazines released between 1964 and 1994. They found that women's feet became a much larger focus when the HIV/AIDS epidemic was in the public consciousness and drew a comparison to a spike of foot fetishism in the European continent during the syphilis epidemic of the 19th century, concluding that foot fetishism is connected to fears of catching STIs.

I disagree, by focusing specifically on porn and not the larger cultural milieu, they had missed the mainstreaming of foot fetishism in the movies and TV that predates the epidemic.

MASH, held the record for the most watched episode of TV in its final episode (so big in fact, that there was a surge in toilets flushing shortly after the episode ended that did lasting damage to New York's sewer system). Now MASH is a comedy series that frequently falls back on joking about how foot obsessed its main cast is, to the point that one episode even has a subplot of Hawkeye being assigned to inspect everyone's feet and reveling in his fetish.

This is but one example, media of the time was full of the stuff. And it wasn't just you Americans who were being indoctrinated into worshipping at the altar of feet. You can find foot fetishism emerging in culture all around The West™ at the time.

Two questions, then, remain:

Who is responsible for this media blitz?

And,

Why did they do it?

My theory is that it was a collaboration between the CIA and MI5 to try to determine just how deep their propaganda can effect people by implanting a fetish into the larger public zeitgeist.

[–] wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago

ok this one's wild, one of my favorites in this thread so far

[–] ashinadash@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Incredible post. Why feet, though?

[–] TheDialectic@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago

There is some speculation that the feet and hands are right next to the genitals in the brain centers. So wires can cross real easily. If you watch women's tiktoks you see they are hig into hands. It isn't much a stretch

[–] mechwarrior2@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Baseball is a Masonic ceremony

https://southerncrossreview.org/53/diamond2.htm

https://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2009/03/masonbb.html?m=1

https://www.universalfreemasonry.org/en/article/baseball-esoteric-pastime

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumambulation#Freemasonry

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11937/11937-h/11937-h.htm#ch21

[–] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I never thought about it that way but that actually seems plausible to me.

No, I'm not in on it, but I think the idea of some secret society running things is somewhat possible. I know this type of conspiracy theory is ultimately a reaction to global capitalism. But it's not an impossibility that these elite, capitalists have some society they join and keep secret. I think about it being similar to how at one point the monarchies that spread throughout Europe were actually all related so, despite wars and differences, they are still family. A secret society of capitalists doesn't negate the truths of capitalism, so anti-capitalist critiques are still valid, but maybe they do hang out at some spot together, talk shop, party, get wasted, and fuck each other. In a way it's harmless because the secret society itself is not the issue, their brutal capitalist form of life is the real harm, and it's very possible that they have some group to support shared interests even if it's filled with people who otherwise hate each other. It's likely not the case and I don't truly believe it but I think it's possible.

Also, there are totally massive sea monsters from legends in the ocean we haven't found yet. That's not a conspiracy theory, just straight facts.

[–] huf@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

i mean, dont they gather in davos to openly do this sort of thing? and the thousands of exclusive resorts all around the world, and and and

[–] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago

Yes, this is very true and I realize it realistically serves the same purpose, but I meant they literally could have a secret club they belong to and don't speak about. The reason why I doubt it exists is because those idiots would probably blab about it immediately. Security culture is unnecessary when you are in power.

[–] oregoncom@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

look up giant oarfish.

[–] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago

This is what I'm talking about.

I remember feeling very vindicated when they found that monster squid off the coast of Japan. The truth is out there.

[–] BelieveRevolt@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm convinced the myth of getting ”enough” protein is perpetuated by the meat industry as well as the food industry in general. You still hear the ”I must eat muh meat to get muh protein” line constantly and the shelves of your local grocery store are probably packed with different ”protein” snacks, even though it's not that hard to get enough protein from plant-based sources and you probably don't need to supplement protein unless you work out like Dwayne Johnson.

[–] aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I mean if you're trying to gain weight and muscle simultaneously in a healthy manner (so without resulting to "dirty bulking" and still doing cardio) you're going to need to eat a lot of food, including a ton of protein. Not as much as some crazed bodybuilder throwing meat and eggs in a food processor or the 1g per pound of bodyweight myth, but around 1.8g of protein per Kg of total lean mass that you currently have on the high end, and then adjust once you've gained weight. Some people will eat more protein just to get a calorie surplus in, because they're tired of eating so much carbs and fat. If you've been there, you'll know the feeling.

The thing is, the vast majority of people are not taking part in some conscious effort to gain muscle and/or weight, so they don't need anywhere near that amount of protein.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] Walk_On@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The reason movie theaters switched from reel projection to digital projection was to undermine the projectors' union since digital projection can just be automated.

Popular media whether it's music or film or whatever is decided by studios and labels as opposed to organic popularity. (Obviously not all cases are true, but I feel there's a lot of cases where it is true.)

[–] ToxicDivinity@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago

music definitely. radio stations have always been paid to put songs on the air.

[–] SpiderFarmer@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago

You know how cheap electronics (like a lot of Halloween decorations) specify not to use rechargeable batteries? I think that's just a ploy by Big Battery to sell more batteries.

[–] Moss@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No music becomes popular organically on tiktok. I believe that every song that becomes popular thought tiktok is either tailor-made to be easy to put in to tiktoks (like having some very widespread, easy to use message or a dramatic transition), or record label pay tiktok to push videos that include their songs. My reasons for believing this is that nearly every song that becomes popular on tiktok is garbage and no one can genuinely like that shit

[–] shath@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago

objectively correct, met someone who's job it is to select stuff to give to the higher ups to promote on featured

[–] Ho_Chi_Chungus@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

the CIA backs and boosts absolute nonsense conspiracy theories like flat earth, tin foil hats, and Obama being a lizard to discredit the notion of conspiracy theory entirely

[–] novibe@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There IS evidence of that lol. All the domestic counter-intelligence and psyop point to exactly that. And they literally have memos saying they planned on turning the term “conspiracy theory” to mean “crazy nonsense”. Like actual documents saying: we’re doing this!

[–] mayo_cider@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

CIA literally created the UFO conspiracy and drove people to mental breakdowns making them chase lights in the desert for decades to give cover for weapons testing

[–] novibe@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I mean I wouldn’t say that…. They certainly helped push the most crazy and less credible people and stories. Also discrediting the more credible ones. But I have seen shit that cant be easily explained, and I’ve read and heard many more stories as well.

I think it’s part of their tactic. Just like the “evil pedo satanists” conspiracy, where actual regular evil pedos actually do run the world. Not for their pedophilia, or because of it, it’s still capitalism in the end. But like, push a crazy conspiracy to hide a real one y’know?

[–] mayo_cider@hexbear.net 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I meant that they created the concept of UFO conspiracy, the people researching UFOs were already there but CIA took advantage of them to discredit any sighting as ramblings of crazy conspiracy theorists

Going as far as keeping active contact and feeding "leaked information" with prominent UFO researchers, sending literal men in black to their doors, and orchestrating UFO contacts

Tbh most of this is shit I've picked up over the years from blog posts and youtube videos, but I'm like 75% certain this had actual sources, I'm just too high to verify anything

[–] novibe@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Ah we 100% agree then hahaahah

And yes, even the stuff picked up from getting high and falling into rabbit holes. Tbh, after sometime it gets kinda easy to spot bullshit and psyops.

I’m sure the truth about the phenomenon is not at all what the mainstream and even the “main” conspiracies portray it to be.

What I always go back to is the foo fighters and similar phenomena, crop circles and the nuke orbs. Those are the hardest to explain away imo, and I feel they mean something more than other shit.

But my personal experience also makes me think back to the ancient texts, the Vedas, ancient Egyptian and Sumerian texts etc. And idk, maybe the phenomenon is “angels and demons”. Or how I see it, weird non-physical or material stuff, in “higher” dimensions or consciousnesses. And not “aliens” with starships from other worlds.

[–] Yamimakai@hexbear.net 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Could you post a link to something on the nuke orbs you mentioned? I was not able to find anything that sounded similar from a quick search

[–] novibe@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

You can search for “Robert Salas UFO” to start the rabbit hole, but basically there are a lot of military personnel that worked near nuclear facilities or even transported nukes that say orbs appeared and disassembled or deactivated them. Sometimes even doing this to missiles mid-flight during testing.

There was video of this, I remember seeing it years ago. I tried looking for it, but just found dead links to deleted YouTube videos…

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] Doxatek@mander.xyz 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What did you see 0-0

[–] novibe@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

I mean, I can tell you but you have to promise not to look at me like I’m crazy lol

Back in late 2020 I was living on the last floor of an old building with my girlfriend. We were getting ready to go to bed, which means my last cigarette of the day. So I went outside to a little area we had, like a miniscule terrace.

I was smoking and looking over to the dark horizon, to a bridge near our home. The clouds that day were REALLY weird. They completely blanketed the sky and were really low and dense. But the night was not that dark, almost with a brownish light.

Anyways, after a bit, I saw over the distance after the bridge a thing. It was far, but at first it looked like a bunch of black balloons floating. And the “balloons” got nearer and nearer.

I’m terrible at measuring distances, but when it was maybe 100-150m away (I won’t convert to American measures soz), it started to shift in a weeeird way. The small roundish forms that were circling each other (like balloons) started to gather into a single shape. When this happened I ran and screamed for my girlfriend.

I quickly went back to observe the “thing” and I saw the singular black blob continue to move closer. I could now see it wasn’t a shiny black sphere as I thought, it really looked more like a hole in the clouds. Like an endless black hole. It wobbled and shifted a bit, never a perfect sphere.

Soon after my girlfriend arrived (both of us silent, mouths opened just freaking out), the blob “spit” out a smaller sphere. The smaller sphere started to perfectly orbit the bigger blob. And both continued to move closer.

Eventually the two blobs were right above us, maybe 50m above. And THIS is where it starts to get really weird.

The bigger blob shifted shapes again. And it looked like a human. Head, arms and legs. Then the smaller blob became a smaller human shaped thing. To highlight, my girlfriend is much shorter than me. In any case, after they shifted into human shaped holes, they started to dance. They held hands and danced around in a circle. Honestly seemingly very happy.

The only thing on my mind at this moment was “this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen”. I really think I was smiling.

After maybe a minute, the shapes stopped dancing. The bigger one seemed to look directly at us. And then it waved. I waved back. I felt this was maybe the most momentous moment of my life. But I looked back, at my girlfriend, and she was crying in shock. That brought me down real quick and I was worried for her. I tried to calm her down. Then I looked back at the shapes.

They looked defeated, arms and shoulders down. They slowly became spheres again, and the smaller one went “in” the bigger one. The now one sphere seemed to go up and up, slowly. But it really only looked like a small hole getting smaller. I kept looking at it for maybe 20 minutes as it disappeared completely.

I asked my girlfriend why she was so afraid at that moment, and she said she felt they were going to take me away. I think I kinda felt that as well… but they didn’t want to make her sad I guess.

Idk man, I really searched and researched for months after that. I still have absolutely no fucking clue what it was. I don’t think “aliens” in any way other than “non-human conscious intelligences”.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

I absolutely believe this. It's a low cost move that pays huge dividends in convincing "smart" people that conspiracies never happen.

[–] mechwarrior2@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aviation#

I think the "Pioneer era" of aviation history (1903-1914) was probably preceded by more flight than is widely acknowledged, perhaps because the patrons of these unrecognized early aviators had the incentive and capability to obscure any developments in aviation they had made, both for reasons related to personal economic gain (think 1800s capitalist class, protecting r&d investment in a tech not ready for market), and/or to state security (think the relations of that same class to emergent state, their proto-intelligence/security apparatuses) - basically the Reconstruction Era deep state MIC had steampunk Black Helicopters, and they were using them to do UFO-coded psyops

Consider the "Mystery airship" phenomena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_airship

I especially love this particular encounter in illustrating the way this all prefigures the relationship between the UFO phenomena and the CIA (and adding on, to drive home the relevance here more broadly: "cults" -> trafficking/blackmail/recruitment -> black ops, strategy of tension, anti-communism)

One witness from Arkansas – allegedly a former state senator Harris – was supposedly told by an airship pilot (during the tensions leading up to the Spanish–American War) that the craft was bound for Cuba, to use its "Hotchkiss gun" to "kill Spaniards".[27]

👀

Consider Rufus Porter's failure to bring his "aeroport" airship to market in 1853 https://newenglandaviationhistory.com/rufus-porters-aeroport-airship-1853/

Consider posthumous "outsider artist" Charles Dellschau's "Sonora Aero Club" active 1850-1858, purportedly as part of a wider secret society called "NYMZA" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dellschau#Posthumous_recognition

the Confederate helicopter is right there he-admit-it
https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/plans-little-known-confederate-helicopter

for further reading, this semi-satirical(?) piece about the "secret history" of "anti-gravity" tech has a lot of relevant details

https://zapatopi.net/blog/?post=202006037850.the_secret_of_apergy_gravitys_second_phase

and here's a fun 3 part series on the "Mystery airships" in vintage magazine Fate, with lots of details related to the above stories but which ultimately ties it all to aliens nyet

https://archive.org/details/Fate_Magazine_278_v26n05_May_1973_/page/n83/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/Fate_Magazine_279_v26n06_June_1973_/page/n95/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/Fate_Magazine_280_v26n07_July_1973/page/n59/mode/2up

[–] Cromalin@hexbear.net 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

i'm convinced kurt cobain was transfem. for more on this, read the excellent piece kurt cobain will have his revenge on the straights

[–] manuallybreathing@hexbear.net 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I made an offhanded comment about Kurt being trans in a transmasc subreddit once and it did mot go down well lol

[–] Brak@hexbear.net 1 points 10 months ago

lmao that is hilarious

load more comments