This troper had a previous girlfriend who was a conspiracy theorist. She didn't believe we went to the moon and believed there was a conspiracy behind JFK. We didn't talk about politics much...

But JFK was ''so'' an inside job. As for Oswald? Bullets do not work that way!

If you're talking about the angles of the entry/exit wounds and the final resting place of the bullets, all of that is explained by the fact that the front and back seats of the car weren't the same height and the the way the passengers were leaning. Read the actual medical and autopsy reports, it all points to a single shooter. Likewise, it's very easy for an experienced gunman to get off that many shots in a short amount of time. It's possible that someone on the inside was involved in ''planning'' the murder, but Oswald was the only shooter.

This troper's sophomore year History teacher thinks that Wal-Mart is actually a Communist organization bent on taking over the USA from the inside.

This troper wants to know this history teacher so he can shake their hand, personally... then plot to take down Wal-Mark through unionization and striking.

Hah, It's funny because Walmart gets all its money from the people that chose to shop there, making its policies the inevitable end result of a free market.

Give some of us a little warning, first. Jobs are a hot commodity these days.

I seem to be a WeirdnessMagnet for people with very odd ideas:

A woman who informed me that TheBible identifies Barack Obama as TheAntichrist.

People need to stop giving him so much credit. There's no way he's competent enough to be The Anti-Christ. As super-villains go, he's much more Dr. Bong than he is Lex Luthor.

You serious? Then, unless you're referring to me, that woman STOLE my idea. Tongue in cheek, but still MY theory, and she can't have it. Unless she's me. What's her name?

How many times do I have to keep telling you? Obama is not the Antichrist, he's the Crawling Chaos Nyarlatothep! Come on folks, it's obvious! I still voted for him over McCain.

...Nah, he's the AntiAntiChrist.

You sure he's not the AntiAntiAntiChrist?

Why does that not seem very implausible to me? -_-

I bet it has something to do with the Anti-Christ being of Muslim descent, which just shows that the woman didn't read the Bible, since Islam wouldn't be invented for another several hundred years.

Conversely, a classmate who used his presentation on martial law to inform us that George W. Bush was the Antichrist, and that the microchips we'd all be required to have implanted(anyone who rebelled would be sent to a FEMA concentration camp in Alaska) were the prophesied "Mark of the Beast".

Wait, so are Obama and Bush both the Master or just some other Timelord?

Look people, you are forgetting one vital thing, most if not all politicians are too bloody stupid/incompetent/corrupted by power to be the antichrist (And I mean both political parties.), if there WERE an antichrist, it would be more likely to pop up has a murderous raccoon then a politician.

Actually, in the bible it says the antichrist will be a politician or at least in a similar position of power. This, along with other things in the bible, supports my theory the the pope is the Antichrist.

Geez everyone I personally know the Antichrist. He's my bandmate and he's starting to get mad that people keep calling out dates for apocalypses without his word and giving credit to lesser people who aren't the descendants of Satan himself. He even fits the whole "position of power" criteria because of his vast web of connections, including being good friends with most of Slipknot. Plus, who has more power than the media?

Someone who thought that the Soviet Union would be returning because Putin's name ends with the same syllable as "Stalin" and "Lenin".

And yet people laugh at me when I assert that Sarah Pal''in'' is pure evil.is.

Even if that particular nutbag theory is correctnot all that does is give us definitive proof that EvilIsSexy.

This Troper is a regular on JREF's Conspiracy Theories Sub-Forum. He hasn't actually been accused of ''being'' one of the Masonic Jewish Space Lizards yet, but he's been told it's only a matter of time.

I'd hate to see you accused of being one, but you have to admit that "Masonic Jewish Space Lizards" would be a great name for a rock band.

This troper knows at least one guy who believes USA was behind 9/11.

To be fair, it's not a rare theory, and not really a bat-shit insane one, sure, it makes a lot of mistaken assumptions, but hardly Reptilian Humanoids level.

Not until you get to the giant space laser camp, at least.

The irony is that in the most bare bones level, that the intelligence agencies deliberately failed to report the matter before it was too late isn't incredibly unbelievable, although whether it's true or not is a different matter altogether, but for some reason this simple, straightforward theory almost never gets out, being instead replaced by stuff like explosives having set to the buildings ''when they were built!'' This troper's personal conspiracy theory is that the governments silently support the wild, crazy conspiracy theories in order to drown out and discredit the ones that are reasonable, and sometimes even true.

Sure. You just keep on thinking that, stupid pathetic sheeple. The truth is out there. Jaws did WTC.

I know someone on internet forums who believes that the Bush administration planted explosives in the WTC buildings because "science" shows the buildings would not have collapsed otherwise. Bush did this to gain the power he got from 9/11 and invade Iraq. He never managed to answer how Bush managed to get the hijackers to hit the buildings with planes for him, though.

Really? The Bushs and the Bin Ladens have connections going back years. That is public knowledge. It only takes a slight degree of paranoia to conceive the idea that Osama might have been working on the Bush's orders. Funny how the focus shifted away from him to Saddam and the invasion of Iraq so quickly. Kind of like they wanted to loose him huh? (note none of this is my personal beliefs, just showing how easy it is to create spurious logic for anything)

That theory works better when you ignore Osama being the black sheep of the family.

Also works better when you ignore the assassination threats Saddam issued to George HW Bush. You would have a better argument that Iraq was about disproportionate retribution.

Knowing now what I do about how the intelligence agencies used to work, I'm much more apt to blame HanlonsRazor for their failure over 9/11 than any seriously malicious intent.

9/11 is no longer a conspiracy theory. It's just a conspiracy now. Just take a look at this site.

This troper has seen a lot of videos on YouTube claiming that people have the proof by showing interviews with people who saw the crash into the WTC happening and them saying that it was "like a bad special effect" or "it felt like a movie." He never understood why the videomakers never think about the fact that the interviewees witnessed it in person.

I have an insane theory. ALL HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES ARE AGAINST ME. They just beat me up.

in a similar vein this (different) troper believes the kitchen cupboard hates him. It shows this by hiding EVERYTHING from him

My best friend believes his female best friend tries to destroy his love life by giving him bad advice and comments regarding the girls he like so she can date him...despite having rejected him some time ago. This troper likes to believe that she (along with his ex-girlfriend) are plotting against him too.

Since the original thread is locked from the prying eyes, allow me to pastebin a snippet.

Every once in a while, I, Lots42, am accused of being in on some years-long on-line conspiracy in order to 'get' someone I have never heard of before. This, or being part of a years-long trolling attempt in order to 'get' an entire forum. Bizarre.

This troper ran an Armies game in which one of his players went on to decide that the number 62 causes cancer among other things. What is exceptionally freaky about all this is that all I done was have a hobo have the number 62 in his jacket pocket, and the player done research on 62, which involved Freud, Indonesia, cancer survival rates, and other crazy shit you wouldn't believe.

The infamous dbootsthediva. Along with the standard accusations of chemtrails (for those who don't know, a rather common belief that airplane contrails are actually chemical sprays), she also believes that rainbows from spraying water are due to metals secretly put in the water, believes that HAARP (a scientific endeavor to research the ionosphere) energy waves are being sent through phone and electrical lines and TV antennae and causes magnetic smog, government spies are living in secret passageways in her house and her attic, and had some conspiracy theory regarding the moon that is since gone from her account. She also had a friend post this on her YouTube channel: '''My dear friend! Thank you for your courage and your energy. As well as just for being you. Speaking of YELLOW (in regards to the pulses of yellow light)i just heard on the radio last night that the new Pantone "color of the year" is Yellow. Last years (or coming to an end) was the color "Blue Iris." Draeco/IlluminNazi Mind Kontrol is everywhere.''' This wasn't a joke, either. She seriously believed this.

The above troper also has been called a reptillian alien, a sentient AI, and a brainwashed member of the sheeple all by the same person.

I, for one, welcome you as our new overlord.

Mind Control isn't everywhere. That's just what they want you want to believe.

This troper firmly believes that the Japanese government is keeping giant robot technology from the rest of the world, while simultaneously weakening America's minds with insane anime and manga series so we will be unable to resist when they finally take over the world.

I for one welcome our new Giant Robot overlords.

Some Hungarian far-right people are real conspiracy theorists. They think that the Jews (who control the government and the parties) are deliberately breeding the gypsies (by the means of incredibly high social transfers), and when the gypsies start a civil war and exterminate the Hungarians, they can move here from Israel. Well, the "incredibly high social transfers" part is true... the other parts are simply ridiculous.

Everyone in the MUGEN scene knows about EvilSlayerX5, a completely insane MUGEN creator whose story is best summed up as getting into fights with everyone, snapping as a result of being way too sensitive to feedback, and eventually believing that people hate his characters as a result of some elaborate rejected Orwell plot instead of because they sucked. The type of stuff he'd spew in his days even had actual theorists laughing at him. He's gone AWOL after a bizarre spout of insanity. He then tried to come back using a different persona entirely, but was exposed by MUGEN player Benimarucollider. He closed his other account and has not been seen since.

This troper's favorite is the David Ickes Reptilian Overlords Theory. You get aliens, secret political cabals, secret ruling families, pseudo-historical references, and mind-control. It's all the classic conspiracy theory nuttiness in one spot, it's the Wal-Mart of crazy.

As for conspiracy theories in general, this troper thinks people like them because it's easier to think that bad things are the result of a small group of men in some smoke-filled room somewhere than it is to think that ordinary people just like us can be stupid or venal or greedy. Because if ordinary people can behave like that, what does that say about me? Most people don't like to be that introspective, or that honest with themselves.

For the above troper read Terry Pratchett's version of this "It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things."

This Troper, sadly, has been gradually mutating into an academic ConspiracyTheorist in the past months, going as far as starting and maintaining the SoYouWantTo/WriteAConspiracyTheory page to satisfy his obsession. He is also currently actively engaged in writing his own "original" ConspiracyKitchenSink. There, I finally came out about it.

People involved in the Belgian Manga Murder Youtube investigation at my school thought, for sure, I was the First Kira and a girl I liked was the Second Kira, that I had caused the deaths in Belgium with one of those notebooks they saw me with all the time, and that I had given another one to my old friend so he could become the Third Kira. I thoroughly explained why this theory of theirs was wrong. And I am officially pissed now that people compared me to Light again.

The chance of you being the First Kira is under 0.3%. You actually ''like'' your possible accomplice. The chance of you being the Second or Third Kira, however, is 0.4%. Maybe you should increase your sugar intake.

This troper is a strong proponent of the theory that all conspiracy theorists are agents planted in society by the shadow government (another conspiracy, but let's not get into that one) to create false conspiracies that hide the real truth.

And that makes you... ''OHMYGOD!!''

This troper has a friend who can find fairly compelling evidence (as in enough to set off a real conspiracy theorist) for even the most ludicrous theories you care to name. So far he has 'proved' that the dinosaurs were killed by time travellers in the employ of oil magnates to ensure the continued supply of petroleum and that an alien duck is actually planning to take over the world and using the media to get us used to the idea (think about it, both Disney and WB have ducks with suspiciously similar personalities and speech impediments as major characters. Coincidence? Now that Disney is taking over Marvel be ready for more cameos by Howard the Duck than Wolverine, mark my words.)

This Troper once did work for people who were convinced aliens set themselves up as gods of ancient Egypt, utilizing genetic experiments to create human-alien hybrids to serve as Pharaohs to explain why Egyptian nobility were depicted with green skin in art and had strange heads. Never mind potentially them possibly using copper or something else that turns green with several thousand years, and artificial cranial deformation being a known practice.

You worked for SG-1}} The SGC?

This troper has been accused of being a reptilian alien before. Seeing as how he was sick and phlegmmy, he responded by roaring apparently rather convincingly. HilarityEnsued.

This troper's ''grandmother'' is an avid conspiracy theorist, sending her videos on everything from The Ark of the Covenant to swine flu, on a weekly basis, via email.

This troper's ex-mother isn't a traditional conspiracy theorist, but suffers from some kind of personality disorder that makes her think everyone is against her. She believes everyone she knows is getting together behind her back and working against her, so she goes around to each person she knows and bad-mouths everyone else, turning them against her in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This troper sometimes takes video games too seriously. Upon beating Halo 2 and hearing what actually happened to the Forerunners, this troper connected the firings with the destruction of the dinosaurs.

I'm not really a major conspiracy theorist (although I do find many of the theories entertainingly creative), but I do think the whole JFK assassination is a bit fishy.

This troper was a bit of one in the past. Damn CIA Nazis with their MK-Ultras...

DO NOT ask about JFK or LHO to this troper. Ever. Seriously. I MEAN IT, DON'T GET ME STARTED!!!!!!!!!!!!

What about JFK and LHO?

There WAS a single magic bullet, forged by Illuminati mystics to prevent people from finding out the truth. The bullet was shot by former black ops sniper Fred Rogers, and the whole thing was Joe DiMaggio getting revenge for what happened to Marilyn Monroe. WHY THE FUCK DID YOU GET ME STARTED?!

This troper is also a CloudCuckooLander, so of course he believes that Bees will eventually conquer the world- they're not disappearing, they're regrouping. Global warming is caused by penguins with a big laser. Cows own mind control devices and farmers are their brainslaves. For a more normal version, a small part of this troper's brain is completely convinced that everything that I've ever been told or learned is a lie because I've never gone very far outside, so everything I learn is from other people, and it's entirely possible that they're all lying to me. France? Doesn't exist. The boat just went in a circle and came back.

Why would cows have their brainslaves slaughter them for food?

Capital punishment.

When my sister graduated high school, the superintendent gave an address with the theme "Check your facts." While not bad in and of itself, the 40 minute speech consisted entirely of discussing two long-debunked conspiracy theories.

First, he expounded at length that the US government immediately knew that the explosion aboard USS Maine was a boiler explosion, but allowed the public to think that the Spanish attacked it in order to rally the nation after the Civil War. The problem? To this day, NOBODY knows why Maine blew up, and the most recent analysis of the wreckage supports both an internal and and external explosion.

His second subject was the "Roosevelt lied about Pearl Harbor" story that hold that FDR suppressed intelligence information that Japan was about to attack so that he could justify entering WWII on Britain's side. This was based on a number of historical errors.

Proponents of theory claim that the US had broken Japanese codes, and read every single message that Japan sent. Therefore, they decoded transmissions from the carrier fleet enroute.

Problem one: Strict radio silence was observed from the moment the fleet left port, to the point of having critical parts removed from all the radios and kept under lock and key until the morning of the strike.

Problem two: Even had a transmission been picked up, it could not have been decrypted. At the time of Pearl Harbor, only Japan's diplomatic codes had been broken, not the Naval ones.

Problem three: The sheer volume of signal traffic made obtaining any one signal unlikely.

The aircraft carriers of the Pacific Fleet were not in port. This is taken as evidence that these very valuable units were ordered away in order to ensure that only useless battleships were lost.

Problem: Aircraft carriers were not even regarded as capital ships in 1941. They were considered the MOST expendable unit.

Roosevelt had no reason to expect that a Japanese attack would result in a war with Germany, which is what theorists claim he wanted. Had Hitler not secretly agreed to declare war against the US in the event of an American-Japanese war, FDR would have been in no better a position to aid Britain in Europe.

Finally, there was no benefit to allowing the attack to succeed. Had fighters from Oahu attacked and destroyed the incoming strike, and the battleships sortied out and annihilated the depleted carriers, the public would be just as outraged at the ATTEMPTED sneak attack as they were against the successful one.

But: Isn't it a well known fact the attack on Pearl Harbor ''could'' have been predicted were it not for PoorCommunicationKills? Even the movie acknowledges this, if I recall correctly.

Crazy homeless guys tend to find this Australian troper hot, so she's heard some interesting things when they strike up conversations. The most memorable one was definitely when a guy told this troper we should all be really suspicious of New Zealanders (because they can BLEND IN) and that al-Qaeda was using Kiwis to take over Australia. This troper's response was, "Nah. Not Australia. Just Bondi."

This Trooper's friend believes that the school is a secret mental hospital. It isn't too insane, since it would explain the surprising amount of self-injurers, suicidals, maniacs, that kid who just stares at you creepily, the majority of the teachers being outright insane (I swear my entry-level science teacher would've killed a few of the kids if she had access to sharp objects.) Unfortunately for that theory to work, everyone's parents would have to be in on it, and there would have to be more than 3 sane teachers.

This troper subscribes to the Free-Energy Suppression Conspiracy.

Which one? The "Zero-Point Energy has been harnessed" theory is possible but ''incredibly'' unlikely, the "feeder reactors work" theory is hardly being denied and should really be called the Cheap-Energy Suppression Conspiracy (though there is the theory that they ''don't'' spit out weapons-grade nuclear material), and the "monetarily next-best-thing-to-free energy would be suppressed (if unsuccessfully) to maintain the infrastructure if it was ever discovered" theory is the most likely, but widely considered too silly to believe.

Yeah, that last one. Watched a documentary a while back about alternative fuel sources. A hydrogen fuel cell R&D team was supposed to give a demonstration at a racing event, but they got shot down at the last minute. Sure, it may be coincidence, but the big oil companies who rely on races like that for a good chunk of income can't have been too happen when someone came out and said, "hey, look, we've made your oil-based fuels obsolete!"

Never mind that said companies would stand to make a shit-ton of money and good PR (but I repeat myself) by being first to market with such a device, and would have the best possible distro network for it.

My mother is one of those people who thinks 99.9 percent of conspiracy theories have no basis in reality; however, she does believe that President Kennedy didn't immediately die after being shot. She believes he was either in a coma or severely brain-damaged for several years and that his family and the White House kept this secret to make sure no one would try to protest the Vice President taking over as President. She's said that, back then, there wasn't a law that would immediately give him that right, and obviously, a comatose/severely brain damaged President wouldn't do anyone any good.

I met a guy who claimed that the moon landings were fake because the flag that was planted by Armstrong and co. can't be seen from Earth with a telescope.

I've always been quite a bit of a conspiracy theorist, and some of the things I know of are extremely odd, yet I still believe them to a degree.

There's a certain highschool German teacher I know that has been accused of being in a secret program to colonize mars. He schedules tests in a pattern. Whenever there's a test, he's gone. There are apparently clues in every question to where he is being held captive each time.

Said German teacher is also Cthulhu.

I've heard rumors that he's been dropped from the Mars program. Is this true?

I just added some weird woman on Facebook, she is a batshit crazy ConspiracyTheorist hippy, doesnt post much statuses other than the spammy chain mail sort, and posts a lot of insane videos on her page about how the government is trying to kill us all with chemicals from planes and stuff, and how she wont have vaccinations as they are also trying to kill her (she actually let herself get ill from being bitten by a dog because of this, instead of go to the hospital like most normal people would)

I actually just want to re-edit this to add the latest things shes posted on her page. It is a youtube video, which the description states "A group of military veterans in California are suing the CIA over allegedly implanting remote control devices in their brains. They allege the spy agency was on a quest to turn humans into robot-like assassins via electrodes planted in their brains."

Looks like the loonies have given this troper a few ideas for ''his own'' global domination plans. What better way to mess with humanity than to make a few of the wilder ConspiracyTheory examples ''right''? Like a cat with a mouse...

As for the dog thing, may I just say "Go Darwin Go!"

This troper has hints of it, ranging from believing the government created AIDS to wipe out Gay and Black people, aliens not only exist, but are an integral part in the development of human history, Obama is a puppet, Palin too, E. Coli is purposely being introduced into our crops to cull the rise of vegetarianism and encourage obesity, and Affirmative Action was created to instill more racism and sexism into our society. Her Mom and Dad are more extreme.

You might have something with the affirmative action thing, if the results are anything to go by. The AIDS thing, though. Worst. Aim. ''EVAR'', in case you hadn't noticed.

Perhaps all that racism in America was prepared in advance for when the EvilAlbino alien overlords from the Nemesis Star take control, and they intend to make everyone equal under themselves. Just messing with your heads - er, hang on, if something like that existed and was trying to make every human in America equal under their laws, wouldn't they be HeroicAlbino types?

Subversion for this currently-in-HongKong Troper. When I mentioned to my Chinese roommate all the people who think the moon landing was fake, his response was incredulity. "Why would any Americans believe America did ''not'' put men on the moon" was his question. My response was "Because America is big, with plenty of room for douchebags." Then I had to explain what a "douchebag" is...

This troper used to work with not just one, but ''three'' New World Order/Creationist/Big-Pharma-is-trying-to-kill-us-all nutjobs. While not on the subject of their panic of choice, they were amazingly approachable; I could have a 45-minute long talk about the video game industry with one, and was harboring a bit of a crush on another for various reasons ({{Meganekko}} who had at one point studied a large portion of Tolkein Elvish ''just because''. Pardon me whilst I drool...). But when they got riled up, it was an endeavor not to say anything for some of the rest of us. Which succeeded. Usually.

This troper used to have a coworker that was a functioning schizophrenic. Most of the time he was sedated and calm, but when he'd decide to stop medicating, he would convince himself of delusions so bizarre they were almost laughable. The one time I sat next to him at lunch, he had convinced himself that -- I shit you not -- Taco Bell had planted mind-control chips in his gordita, and that they were transmitting his thoughts straight to Taco Bell headquarters as we speak. When I asked why on earth they'd be doing that, his answer was "Because I know that they're doing it. It's the only way to keep me quiet." Let the circular reasoning wash over you.

This troper met a woman once who tried to give him a pep talk. Too bad she also believed in things like HAARP and other such. He just thought (and sensed) she was just a regular ol' "paranoid schizophrenic off her pills" - the way she was talking about psychiatrists made her seem as if she was mad as a hatter, but it didn't seem she belonged to a certain organisation though, you know, the one this troper intentionally fails to name here since he doesn't want a FrivolousLawsuit on his hands. Or maybe that's what the Atlantis-derived prison exile-descent TransplantedHumans with PsychicPowers massing their ships for a jump into the Sol System and preparing for an invasion of Earth want him to think...now, about that deal, Persephone...

This troper could talk to you in great length about many, many things the government does not want you to know, as well as a lot of other controversial topics. However, because people tend to be unreasonable, I prefer not to bring them up and just stick to "normal people" topics, {tv, books, anime, video games, etc}.

This troper once wrote a story with a minor character who was a conspiracy theorist. As the character believed the conspiracy was obsessed with hiding things, called the "Oscuranatti." In truth, while there were many conspiracies within the setting, that particular group did not exist.

You know, the recent Earthquake in Japan? That also caused a tusunami? Wilfre did it. He caused the Earthquake! If we don't do something everyone will die! You gotta believe me!

I once heard a theory that Charles Manson and the Manson family are all vampires. Just out of the blue in a Post Office someone started rambling about it.

This troper was quite the conspiracy theorist in her younger years. A better understanding of the origins of my paranoia has since toned down or eliminated my adherence to most of the really wild conspiracies. However, I still firmly believe and will always believe that Pope John Paul I was assassinated in 1978, 33 days into his papacy. My grandfather was a high-ranking government official in Rome at the time, who told my dad the details of what was going on behind the scenes that led to the assassination, and my dad told me.

This Troper's parents. So very much.