this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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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 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

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@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year 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

[–] ZapataCadabra@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

That's just observable facts.

[–] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

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

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[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year 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

[–] Freeanotherday@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] sawne128@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Also, Hua Guofeng was Mao Zedong's son. I mean think about it, they were both Chinese and they both had the same haircut.

[–] GnastyGnuts@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

GrossMargaret Thatcher probably fucked a dog and killed it. She just seems like the kind of person that would do that, and she was tight with Pinochet.

If I were a ghoul at Nestle, I would have spent the past couple decades propping up the shittiest local water utilities, lobbying to make sure their shittiest policies are kept and their most generous programs abolished. Having a local entity with a monopoly on providing water to the area is often the worst of both worlds in the US. You get the inflexibility of a government bureaucracy because they have no reason to improve and you get the shady billing practices of a corporation because of the insistence that we not just give people water for free. When it comes time to privatize your local water supply, many people will be chomping at the bit to bring in “competition” because they hate their local utility so much.

[–] 420blazeit69@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year 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.

[–] john_browns_beard@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] Mindfury@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

oh hey, it's the Gippsland Panther but in America

Also the Tasmanian Tiger still exists, and proclaiming it extinct was actually the best way to protect it

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[–] StalinwasaGryffindor@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Owl@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Those are both regional.

Almost no open/close buttons do anything in the US, but they're completely honest in Japan.

Crosswalk buttons may: actually hurry up the cycle and stop traffic sooner, wait until the next red light and show a crossing indicator that it'd otherwise skip, or do nothing at all. This can change from city to city, from intersection to intersection, and even over a schedule throughout the day.

[–] teddy-bonkerz@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

In my experience a reasonable amount of elevator close buttons have an effect, at least where I've been in the US

[–] Rom@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The lottery is a trap designed to catch time travelers.

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

There've never been any time travellers because the time traveller detection agency always spots them winning the stock market and neutralizes them, .

[–] Collatz_problem@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

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[–] laziestflagellant@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

The feds have had to tell soldiers etc multiple times to stop using jogging apps and uploading their routes to social media. They're posting detailed maps of where everything is at military bases and government facilitites.

[–] GriffithDidNothingWrong@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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

[–] wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

100% believe it

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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

Were cell phones usable on planes in 2001?

[–] Orcocracy@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

No, but back then some planes had payphones on the seat back where the touch screen entertainment systems are now.

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