6 Conspiracy Theories So Damn Stupid They're Works Of Art

6 "Walmart Stores Are Being Converted Into FEMA Prison Camps!"

Back in April, six Walmart stores across Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and California abruptly closed due to "plumbing problems" -- presumably, a customer dropped a deuce so big that it clogged the toilets in four different states. Not everyone bought this explanation, with some speculating that Walmart might have closed the stores to prevent workers from unionizing. Naturally, that theory wasn't sexy enough for the Internet, so they came up with something slightly better: the end of democracy in America. And the obvious clues were always right there in Walmart's logo:

Around this time, the government announced a military exercise code-named Jade Helm 15 (the same one that has our pal the Texas governor so concerned) which will take place in the exact same states where Walmart closed the stores. Except for Oklahoma and Florida. Oh, and with the addition of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, where no stores have been closed. But other than that, it's the exact same states, which is confirmation that the government is planning on invading and imposing martial law over the region. This raises some questions, such as: 1) Why would the government invade a region it already controls? 2) Why would the arrival of the new world order be heralded via a press release? 3) Why are you asking so many questions? Holy shit, this guy is in on it! Shoot him!

As for how, exactly, Walmart factors into it: Once the government starts taking over, the brave individuals who don't bow to this Obamination will be taken to the stores and held there for extended periods of time, surrounded by sweat, smell, and the darkest depths of human misery. So it'll be business as usual, then. Meanwhile, the military will be able to travel from state to state through a network of underground tunnels that totally exist under the Walmarts.

Also, China! China's government is involved in this, somehow. We know because a woman saw a Chinese person working at a Walmart. Well fuck, they should have started there. Now we're scared.

5 "Michelle Obama Has A Penis!"

As you're no doubt aware, conservative conspiracy theorists have spent most of the last decade arguing that it's impossible for a black person to have come from anywhere other than Africa. Eventually, they must have realized that whole thing was starting to make it look a tiny bit like they might be racists, so they've moved on to another theory: It's impossible for Michelle Obama to be a woman.

One of the chief pieces of evidence for this dubious claim is that, according to experts who learned about anatomy from "How to Draw Anime Characters" guides, Mrs. Obama has the physical characteristics of a man. They haven't been able to prove this conclusively yet, because Mrs. Obama doesn't send full-body measurements to any random pill-dodger, but that's nothing some grainy video footage and a copy of MS Paint can't fix.

Another strand of this madness is the revelation that no pictures have ever been released of a pregnant Michelle, clearly suggesting either a grand conspiracy involving adoption, or that she was pregnant during an era where insane people weren't trying to examine her junk via a long-distance lens. We are not kidding:

But perhaps we shouldn't even be telling you about this theory, because it's also alleged that Joan Rivers was assassinated for "outing" the president's wife when she said, "You know Michelle is a tranny." After all, what's more likely? That an 81-year-old comedian known for making offensive jokes died from surgery complications, or that she was genuinely signaling the true identity of Mrs. Obama to the world? We all know the answer to this.

4 "'American Pie' Predicts The Satanic-Communist Takeover Of The USA!"

You've already read the headline, so let's just leap straight into this. It all comes down to the scene in which Jim is sticking it to the pie, which symboli-- oh wait, are we talking about the song? That ... that even makes even less sense, now that we think about it.

According to one insightful blogger, the folksy Don McLean classic "American Pie" isn't just about that time a bunch of musicians died in a plane crash. No, it's about how the USA is due to be invaded by hordes of satanic communists, a demographic that totally exists outside of a hyperbolic joke that we would otherwise make here.

It's all clearly spelled out in the lyrics of the song itself. If you replace the phrase "Miss American Pie" with "America," you get repeated mentions of "bye bye America," which sounds like the politest apocalypse ever. However, couple that with the repeated mentions of Lenin/Marx and fire, and the whole plot becomes clear: After a nuclear attack ("eight miles high and falling fast") causes an ecological disaster to devastate the country ("the levee was dry"), the forces of Communist Satan invade the USA, transforming it into a socialist utopia unlike the one that we're already living in right now (at least according to Free Republic).

We'd like to continue mocking this, but honestly, it's pretty damn convincing. Just wake us from our eternal slumber once the Devil has finished lecturing about the means of production and handing out copies of his little red book, yeah?

3 "Hillary's Campaign Logo Is A Reference To 9/11!"

If there's anything that conspiracy theorists hate more than Obama, it's ... nothing, actually. In second place, however, is Hillary Clinton, everybody's favorite server-dodging politician who, when she isn't assassinating her political opponents, is masterminding an election campaign symbolized by fucking 9/11.

Clinton's campaign logo is in fact "a desperate attempt to create political buzz for her campaign at the expense of the victims of 9/11," according to a website desperately attempting to get rage-clicks from the sort of crazy people who buy into this shit. Don't get us wrong -- that logo is unfortunate for many reasons, but saying that it was purposely designed to remind everyone of that time terrorists killed thousands of people is a bit of a stretch. Then again, we don't have the top mind of the blogger responsible for journalistic exposes like "Ahhh!! Little Baby Goats Run Around In Pajamas And It's Going Viral On YouTube" and "Don't You Hate It When Your Clothes Shrink In The Wash?" so feel free to take our logic (as well as our paychecks from the establishment) any way you wish.

And that's not all. According to the super-crazies, this logo is a tacit admission that the government did 9/11, which if true is an especially ballsy foundation on which to build a run for the presidency.

It's also entirely possible, and we don't want to sound crazy here, that the letter "H" is a reference to Hillary, whilst the arrow symbolizes moving forward. Can we ... can we get Alex Jones talking about this? We won't be silenced, and once we've got the grainy footage and poorly-manipulated photos, we're coming to crash through your mind walls like a Kool-Aid Man made of truth.

2 "CERN Brought Down An Airplane, Lost-Style!"

One of the biggest problems with starting a new conspiracy theory these days is that all of the great formats have been done. False flag government plan? 9/11. Hidden assassin? JFK. Extremely dumb people somehow surviving decades and reproducing? Anti-vaxxers. So when Germanwings 4U9525 crashed earlier this year, the conspiracy theorists scrambled to find an angle that they hadn't used before ... and only succeeded after stealing it from Lost.

It's claimed that the flight was brought down as a result of a massive electromagnetic disturbance in the region caused by the CERN Large Hadron Collider suffering a short circuit in its big magnet department (we don't know how particle colliders work). This apparently interfered with the plane's instruments and caused it to crash into a mountainside. This is quite a sad note to end a paragraph on, so here's a GIF of a cat walking backwards.

However, the conspiracy starts to fall apart when you consider the fact that ... well, when you consider any facts at all. For starters, the short circuit at the Large Hadron Collider happened three days before the crash, yet some sites still claim it was the same day. If you can't trust a shitty conspiracy theory website full of dick enlargement ads, who can you trust?

Still, even if the LHC had short-circuited on the day of the crash, the plane was over two hundred miles away at the time. If it had emitted enough electromagnetic energy to disable a plane at that distance, it would have also cooked every electronic device within that radius and turned Western Europe into a joyless snoozescape with all the amenities of the Stone Age (i.e. Brussels).

We've yet to hear of anyone claiming that the LHC "moved" to be closer or that a goddamn smoke monster attacked the crew, but we have absolute faith that they'll try.

1 "April Is The Government's Blood Sacrifice Season!"

On account of April's Fools Day, you probably think of April as being the funniest and least annoying month. Well, don't believe that bullshit for another goddamn second: It turns out that the latter half of the month is the calendar equivalent of the temple scene from Temple Of Doom. That's the view of a particularly passionate group of conspiracy theorists, who believe that the unusual number of tragedies that have historically happened in April (e.g. the Boston and Oklahoma Bombings, the Waco Siege) all occurred as part of an occult ritual dedicated to the demon god Baal, a vicious deity of ... um, rain and fertility?

Oh, and we don't mean "occurred" as in "happened by accident" either; we mean "the government made them happen." It's essentially Cabin In The Woods meets 9/11 trutherism, except everyone believes that the monsters are real and that nothing bad ever happens during the rest of the year as a result of their batshit ramblings.

So how did we do this year? Not too bad, except for that major earthquake in Nepal. But it's not like people are chalking that up to this conspiracy, are they? Yes. It turns out that the shadowy powers who govern this world can manipulate the planet in order to trigger an earthquake, yet they lack the wherewithal to delete a fucking Reddit post. Come on, people. Get your head out of your a--

OK, we're listening.

For more from Adam, check out the first, second, and third part of this series on dumb conspiracies, as well as this treatise on why conspiracy theories are ruining everything. He'd also like to thank /r/conspiratard, /r/topmindsofreddit, and /r/actualconspiracies for being awesome.

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