What's the craziest conspiracy theory you think could actually be partly true

Chops

Soccer Dad
This is a fun topic I like to bullshit about sometimes, though I recognize the risk with some of y'all (you know who you are). But I need a pallet cleanser during all this 8.1.5 chatter. So hit me with it, folks. What's the craziest, most implausible conspiracy theory that you think might actually have some truth to it.

I'll go first.

Operation highjump was an expedition to Antarctica shortly after WW2 that was quickly abandoned under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Now, some folks claim we ran into aliens hidden in the hollow earth, yadda yadda. Others think that that's where Hitler went after he faked suicide.

Now, I don't believe any of the above.

But I do think it's plausible that we ran into a super secret Nazi outpost, got into some skirmishes and decided to boogie on back asap and not tell anyone about it.

Your turn.
 
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Anything anyone has in Antarctica they can keep. I'd abandon ASAP too.

(or am I part of the conspiracy? Hmmmm…)
lol exactly

The official story is that we weren't really prepared for how harsh the conditions were and that's why we lost so many men and so much equipment so quickly. And you know what? Absolutely.

But also the Nazis were super stoked on Antarctica so it's also super likely we bumped into a super secret hideout
 
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1. I think the "Chemtrails" in the sky is interesting. I have heard the government is spraying deadly chemicals into the sky and they look like clouds. I don't really believe this personally but it was kinda interesting.
2. I also am very interested in the disappearance of planes like the Malaysia flight 370 that happened in 2014. I think the plane most likely crashed far out at sea or it was a terrorist attack. It is odd that some planes cant be found even with the technology we have today
 
Stock market crashes are pallet cleansers so the big potatoes can cut your wages and then slowly grow it back up again.
 
1. I think the "Chemtrails" in the sky is interesting. I have heard the government is spraying deadly chemicals into the sky and they look like clouds. I don't really believe this personally but it was kinda interesting.
2. I also am very interested in the disappearance of planes like the Malaysia flight 370 that happened in 2014. I think the plane most likely crashed far out at sea or it was a terrorist attack. It is odd that some planes cant be found even with the technology we have today

I hadn't read much on flight 370 but man, just the Wikipedia page has some good ones. Pilot suicide, alien abductions, random black holes. Good stuff.

Stock market crashes are pallet cleansers so the big potatoes can cut your wages and then slowly grow it back up again.

Ooooooo you mean like, they crash it on purpose as opposed to just taking advantage of inherent fluctuations?
 
Madeleine McCann died a very long time ago, and her parents know it. There was some freak accident and this whole 'missing / stolen' thing is a giant hoax for money / fame / attention / a cover up.
Not much to back it up that I've actually looked into, but one I actually believe tbh, not sure why.
 
I'm afraid I don't really care much for "conspiracy theories", so the closest thing I can think of would be "New Coke".

---

Back in the 80's, Coca-Cola was losing market-share to (the slightly sweeter) Pepsi-Cola in the infamous "Cola Wars" (I know that sounds like a joke, but Americans are very serious about their flavored water)... so they decided to take drastic measures: they reformulated their product to be super-sweet and renamed themselves "New Coke".

It was a disaster. The populace freaked out... news editorials, protests, death threats. Coca-Cola had been an American icon for a goddamn century, and this was blasphemous... it was corporate suicide.

Sales completely tanked. When they realized the severity of their mistake, they had no choice but to revert to their previous formula. They said, "We hear you. We're sorry. Have your Classic Coke back!".

Americans rejoiced like they'd cured cancer (seriously). It was a triumph of "the will of the people" over corporate incompetence. Sales surged... and instead of collapsing, Coca-Cola assumed their permanent dominance over Pepsi-Cola as the "victor" of the Cola Wars™.

---

Here's the thing, though...

1) Coca-Cola was legendary for the quality of their marketing. Their advertising campaigns were so good that at one point they were the most valuable company in the world... and all they sell is flavored water!

2) "Classic Coke" wasn't actually identical to the old formula... for example: it no longer included any sugar, having been completely replaced by High-Fructose Corn Syrup.

3) I am forced to conclude (but obviously can't prove) that this impossibly-moronic "failure" was actually a carefully-calculated "success"... and that the only moron here is "me" for wasting 15min of my day typing-up a theory that nobody else could possibly give a damn about. :oops:
 
I'm afraid I don't really care much for "conspiracy theories", so the closest thing I can think of would be "New Coke".

---

Back in the 80's, Coca-Cola was losing market-share to (the slightly sweeter) Pepsi-Cola in the infamous "Cola Wars" (I know that sounds like a joke, but Americans are very serious about their flavored water)... so they decided to take drastic measures: they reformulated their product to be super-sweet and renamed themselves "New Coke".

It was a disaster. The populace freaked out... news editorials, protests, death threats. Coca-Cola had been an American icon for a goddamn century, and this was blasphemous... it was corporate suicide.

Sales completely tanked. When they realized the severity of their mistake, they had no choice but to revert to their previous formula. They said, "We hear you. We're sorry. Have your Classic Coke back!".

Americans rejoiced like they'd cured cancer (seriously). It was a triumph of "the will of the people" over corporate incompetence. Sales surged... and instead of collapsing, Coca-Cola assumed their permanent dominance over Pepsi-Cola as the "victor" of the Cola Wars™.

---

Here's the thing, though...

1) Coca-Cola was legendary for the quality of their marketing. Their advertising campaigns were so good that at one point they were the most valuable company in the world... and all they sell is flavored water!

2) "Classic Coke" wasn't actually identical to the old formula... for example: it no longer included any sugar, having been completely replaced by High-Fructose Corn Syrup.

3) I am forced to conclude (but obviously can't prove) that this impossibly-moronic "failure" was actually a carefully-calculated "success"... and that the only moron here is "me" for wasting 15min of my day typing-up a theory that nobody else could possibly give a damn about. :oops:

No no I'm fascinated by conspiracy theories. I mean, I don't believe them in the slightest, they're just fun.

Half of the point of this thread was hoping folks would point me towards some new ones and this is indeed new, so I really appreciate it
 
Props @Chops for the palette cleanser. I don't know how much the following corporate nerd story falls into conspiracy since a lot of it is documented, but then, conspiracy theories always have a lot of documentation, don't they?

Not wanting to repeat the VHS vs. Betamax fiasco from the 80s, the media industry lined up behind DVDs as the replacement media of choice in the 90s, and sold gazillions of them. People spent untold amounts of money replacing their VHS tapes and expanding their collections. Sony helped adoption significantly by giving DVD capabilities to the Playstation 2. When high definition television started to become a thing, two high-definition disc standards emerged: Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

Sony created Blu-Ray, and Toshiba made HD-DVD. Both companies knew whoever created and controlled the standard, made the money. So both companies went looking for support from the media powerhouses. Studios split to about 40% Blu-Ray (including Fox Studios), 20% HD-DVD (including Universal Studios and much of the porn industry), and about 40% for both (including Warner).

As another holiday season came and went in the mid 2000s with no clear winner, Warner decided to push for HD-DVD because it didn't like Sony's royalty structure, and told Toshiba that if Toshiba could get another major backer, Warner would officially back HD-DVD and dump Blu-Ray. Toshiba landed Fox Studios, but at the last minue, Sony paid Fox $120M to stay with Blu-Ray. So Toshiba pursued Paramount instead, to the tune of $150M.

But Warner stayed on the fence. Going HD-DVD would solidify a stalemate (and stall consumer spending), and going with Blu-Ray would all but seal the deal for the format Warner didn't want. Consumers kept waiting, not wanting to buy heavily into the "wrong" format.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Microsoft announced an XBox 360 add-on HD-DVD unit. Suddenly, one of the big two console makers (remember that Nintendo hadn't made its comeback yet) looked like it was going to blow up the HD-DVD market. Now the "HD Wars" were in full swing. Except they weren't.

With improving broadband infrastructure, streaming media continued to drop in cost and improve in quality. Microsoft learned a lot of lessons from all of the mistakes and growing pains it went through for network connectivity on the original XBox, and Sony was just starting to dip their foot into the network waters with the Playstation 2, so Microsoft was already a full generation ahead of Sony in terms of console network connectivity and community management. Microsoft knew that if they could stall the "HD wars", they would buy enough time for streaming media to overtake disc-based media as the avenue of choice for movies, music, and games. Microsoft wanted to retain control of the distribution medium for its content, and streaming/downloads were the answer. Microsoft found a willing partner in Apple.

In the mid-to-late 2000s, Apple stopped including disc drives with their computers. No DVDs, no Blu-Ray, no HD-DVD, no nothing. Remember that while relatively few Macs got sold compared to PCs, higher end Macs often got used for media content creation. Apple claimed the future was streaming and downloads (and was happy to feature the iTunes store as a venue for such). Remember that Steve Jobs was a majority stockholder in Disney after Disney bought out Pixar. Amazon and Google kept to themselves during this development, happy to let Microsoft and Apple stall the HD wars. While Microsoft HD-DVD player sales were abysmal, the plan worked -- consumers never really entered the HD wars, and neither format really took off.

Eventually, Blu-Ray became the "winner", but by that time everyone from Netflix to Pandora and Spotify to Google and Amazon and even Nintendo and Blizzard leveraged the internet for streaming and game downloading. The era of disc-based diminished into a minor business.

The next time you watch a movie online, remember that Microsoft used the popularity of the XBox 360 to scare a nation into holding on to their money until the internet got good enough for people to pay for downloads and streams, making us skip Toshiba's and Sony's plans for distributing high-def content on more plastic discs.

Edit: credit to Robert X. Cringely for a fair bit of the information here.
 
I don't really follow conspiracy theories anymore. I never was a believer but I found them interesting and funny. They have become to political and dangerous for me to stomach.

I do believe the conspiracy of capitalism was just an upgraded feudalism which purposely crashes every decade and majorly every century so the ruling class can shake off the few climbing the ladder and buy up all the land because they're the only ones not in debt.
 
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