5 Conspiracy Theories That Have Insanely Dumb Obvious Flaws
Sometimes it might seem like the world is slipping closer and closer to becoming an anti-intellectual hellverse where rational thought is spat upon and conspiracy theories reign. That makes it necessary to step back and remember one thing: The people who come up with this kind of crap aren't very bright. If you look into any popular conspiracy theory even a little bit, this becomes very obvious. Please, for the love of god, just look into it a little bit. You'll see that ...
A Flat Earth Would Mean That Climate Change Would Really Screw Us
When you think about people who believe in a flat Earth, there are a few words that spring to mind: gullible, unreasonable, illogical, anti-science. While most of these are fair shots, we take a little umbrage at the latter, especially considering how often they keep coming out to stan for the validity of climate change.
On the one hand, this is great news for, um, NASA. On the other hand, it's more proof that Donald Trump is absolutely the dumbest political figure in history. Oh, also, if Eartherism was true, climate change would bone us even more spectacularly than it's already set to.
According to earthers, the planet is basically a giant Frisbee careening through space. You've got the North Pole at the center, the various continents stretched and contorted outward like dirt pancakes, and last but not least, a massive ice wall running along the outer edge, which ostensibly serves to keep the oceans from leaking off -- at least, until a zombie dragon destroys them.
But our world has something a lot more dangerous for ice: ExxonMobil. Our climate is shifting, our elected officials are too busy getting handjobs from lobbyists to care, we've only got a decade to turn things around, and an iceberg the size of Delaware recently split off Antarctica. And if the earthers have got this right, our oceans -- and everything floating in them -- are destined to be slurped into space with a comical "blowing a raspberry" noise.
Even if it turns out we're living on a flat Earth and we stop climate change (both equally unlikely possibilities, if we're honest), the ice wall still wouldn't be safe. As we noted in a previous article, the circular shape of our planet helps protect us from solar radiation. If that goes bye-bye, that ice wall (and us) will die in agony.
Man, a flat Earth sounds terrible. Why do people believe in this? Why not simply pretend Hogwarts is real? That sounds way more fun.
There Are So Many Problems With The Idea Of Crisis Actors
Whenever a mass shooting or terrorist attack occurs, it doesn't take long for a certain spectrum of conspiracy theorist (i.e. the worst kind) to start shouting about how was a false flag operation implemented by the government, and that the "victims" and their "bereaved love ones" are in fact actors hired to make everyone feel sad enough to give up their guns / plastic straws / whatever they're crying about this week.
If you pay attention to these ramblings, however, you might be begin to notice a gigantic flaw with this idea. Namely, this sinister, well-oiled machine of tyranny is so strapped for funds that it's forced to reuse the same actors over and over again. It's as if they're a talent agency with only, like, ten people on their payroll and no knowledge of this thing called "photography."
On the rare occasion that the government does need to hire a new member of the squad, meanwhile, they rely on one method and one method only. Hitting up their mercenary contacts? Plucking someone from their brainwashing camps? Craigslist? No, no, and ... yes, surprisingly. Here's a Craigslist ad, for instance, which "proves" that antifascist demonstrators who came out to protest the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017 were in truth paid by the DNC to show up and cause trouble.
Fun fact! Charlotte, North Carolina and Charlottesville, Virginia are completely different places (although that's probably exactly what Big Geography wants you to think).
Here's another ad supposedly seeking "extras background" for the mass shooting that occurred in San Bernardino, California in December 2015. This was also apparently posted on Craigslist -- a fact that is absolutely indisputable, because it says so right there. It's the word with the red squiggly typo underlining that appears in Microsoft Word.
You can find as many examples of this hootenanny as there are awful tragedies to exploit and paranoia-dissipating medications not to take. But it's heartening (sort of) to know that the Deep State has the same shopping habits as us. It's only that where we use Craigslist to buy and sell lawn furniture and flea-bitten mattresses, they're using it to usher in a new era of totalitarian rule.
"Pizzagate" Is So Dumb That, Technically, You're Guilty
Back in 2016, a cache of emails stolen from the inbox of John Podesta (the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign) were disseminated across the internet by Wikileaks. From these emails, the "Pizzagate" conspiracy was born, a breathtaking mosaic of moon logic which alleges that a cabal of D.C. elites was running a child sex trafficking ring from the basement of a well-known local pizzeria.
As you'd expect, this story got a lot of traction among Donald Trump's base -- no doubt because of his firm stances on both sexual assault and the degradation of children.
According to the brain geniuses behind Pizzagate, these elites communicate their desires through a series of code words. This has a basis in the documented behavior of real pedophiles, who (as we covered here) tend to use a lot of euphemisms in their internet posts as a way of avoiding detection by law enforcement. To the untrained eye, these posts don't mean anything. They're just a garbled mess that requires a special decoder ring to understand.
Which brings us to the Podesta "code words," which are ... slightly less esoteric. Or to put it another way, they're words that are used everywhere, all the goddamn time.
"I know what that means and I'm calling the police, you monster."
If you've ever ordered a cheese pizza, enjoyed a few scoops of ice cream, or dropped a map on your face to feel like a dirty slut, bad news: You're now an outed sex criminal, and the authorities have been alerted. Although good news: The feds arrested everyone who's ever eaten at Olive Garden and Domino's, meaning there are no judges, prosecutors, attorneys, defenders, or police officers left to prosecute you. You're free to continue enjoying your, um, Mercator projections.
Tinfoil Hats Would Make It Easier For The Government To Read Your Thoughts
The government is everywhere these days -- in your emails, in your browser history, in your phone, in every building, on every street corner, and soon enough, no doubt, inside your refrigerator subtly implying that real patriots eat their five-a-day. The only place they'll never be is inside your head, thanks to that longstanding anti-surveillance weapon of the disenfranchised: the humble tinfoil hat.
Except, oops, if you start buying into this idea, you're going to be doing yourself more harm than good. And we're not just talking about the trace amounts of aluminum that are being absorbed into your scalp.
In 2005, a group of MIT students decided to test the effectiveness of three tinfoil hat designs against a varying barrage of radio frequencies. The good news is that they all successfully managed to block out most of the radio frequency spectrum ... except the ones allocated for "mobile communications and broadcast satellites" (2.6 Ghz) and "aeronautical radio-navigation and space-to-earth/ space-to-space satellites" (1.2 Ghz). In those two cases, the tinfoil actually amplified the signals they were meant to be defending against. And since these are the ones relating to satellites ... well, we hope Costco allows you to return all that foil. You're going to need that chunk of change for building a radio-proof underground bunker.
Holocaust Denial Is Even Stupider Than You Think
One of the key arguments made by Holocaust deniers like David Irving is that, because historians have (so far) been unable to find a written order from Hitler ordering the start of the Holocaust, it never happened. Which means that the thousands upon thousands of documents we have detailing the mechanisms of the genocide -- which include train manifests, prisoner records, and orders for Zyklon-B, for instance -- must be fakes worked up by the Allies.
What these baby-brains never manage to explain is exactly how the Allies managed to create countless numbers of fake documents and distribute them perfectly through Europe, but never, ever thought to spend a few minutes banging out a letter signed by one Herr A. Hitler. You'd think this would've been the first thing they would've faked if they were really behind this, but no. They were Platoon levels of dumb and Apocalypse Now levels of evil.
Of course, the obvious rebuttal to this theory is the fact that was Hitler notoriously cagey about writing down murder instructions (on account of how he did that once and people got really mad at him). Then there's how he spent a good chunk of his life telling people how much he wanted to kill Jews. In a letter dated September 1919, for instance, he wrote:
A rational antisemitism ... must lead to the systematic legal fight against and the elimination of the prerogatives of the Jew. It's ultimate goal, however, must unalterably be the elimination of the Jews altogether.
Or how about this statement that he gave to journalist Josef Hell in 1922:
Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows -- in Munich, for example -- as many as traffic allows. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews.
If anyone in Nazi Germany had asked Hitler to make his intentions vis-a-vis the Jews perfectly clear, he would've slammed down a copy of Mein Kampf on his weird boner and asked if they'd ever checked out this little thing called his entire career to date. Hitler's whole bile-encrusted bibliography is his confession, and the bizarre contention by Holocaust deniers that we need to give him the benefit of the doubt really makes us suspect whether they're really asking these questions in good fait- OH WAIT THEY'RE RACISTS WHO LOVE HITLER, IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW.
For more from Adam Wears, check out his Twitter or his newsletter about depressing history. He'd also like you to know that his friend Marina Reimann regularly streams video games! Check out her Twitter for more details!
