I’ll go first: r/kitty. One of the hundred grillion cat subs back on Reddit, the culture in this one was you posted a cat picture, and the only word allowed in the title or in any comments or replies was “Kitty.”

Someone is using that subreddit for covert communications, I just know it. Either on the level of “if u/PM_me_your_nostrils posts an orange cat, we attack at dawn!” or there’s some steganography going on with the pictures, but that subreddit was too stupid to be as active as it was.

  • throbbing_banjo@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    Tinfoil hats on? Alrighty then:

    All these Verizon outages are intentional and part of the plan to invalidate the 2024 election.

    We’ll see it happen again on and around election day, maybe xitter will go down too.

    Whole voting districts in Georgia won’t report in, citing system crashes, security breaches, whatever they feel like making up. Republican Secretaries of State will declare the election compromised before vote counting even starts.

    Obviously there’s also a hurricane and massive flooding, hence the tinfoil hat, but let’s not forget where and when we are in history, and that The Business Plot was a real thing.

  • shaserlark@sh.itjust.works
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    4 hours ago

    The Bin Laden killing was a hoax. That guy died year ago because he was on dialysis machines that wouldn’t really function well somewhere deep in the Pakistani mountains. Or maybe he was actually in that house they raided at some point. But the message came out of nowhere like around the time of the reelection campaign. And they never showed a body. But then they even came up with some BS excuse that a sea burial would be Islamic tradition. Also if they really found him why wouldn’t they just arrest him and give him a process? I’m not buying it.

    • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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      3 hours ago

      There are photos and a DNA test that were not shared publicly. It’ll be a good FOIA request in 50 years.

    • IMNOTCRAZYINSTITUTION@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      i agree. it’s very strange they immediately disposed of his body and never showed proof. and then a few years later there was that scandal where multiple people were claiming to be the seal that shot him. seems fishy to me

  • IMNOTCRAZYINSTITUTION@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    the stargate movie/show is “plausible deniability” soft disclosure of the real thing. they “hang a lantern” on this fact with the wormhole xtreme gag in the show.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Along the same lines, the X-Files was saturated with silly stuff and some real shit just to muddy the waters. X-Files producer had FBI and military advisors. But that’s not the real conspiracy. The producer actually had a secret whistleblower advisor who was ex NSA who fed him real world storylines about dodgy shit the US govt was doing. Any time that they tried to censor the show, the producers were like “It’s ok, the liaisons said to run it.”

  • Anderenortsfalsch@discuss.tchncs.de
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    9 hours ago

    Years ago I had fun with “what if the US never actually went to the moon”. I did not believe it, it was just a nice plot idea, we even made a pen & paper oneshot about it. Nowadays I have no whatsoever fun in thought experiments like this, because the real threat of someone believing it to be true. I want to enjoy “birds aren’t real” or “giraffes do not exist” or … the worst is flat earth. It started out as a joke and now idiots try to proof the earth is flat, proof by accident it isn’t and then question rather their methods than their belief system. We just can’t have nice things.

  • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    That covid hijacks people’s brains with a parasite that makes them act like it doesn’t exist or isn’t a big deal if it does.

    I don’t actually think it’s true, it’s just that if it were, nothing would be different.

  • Lianodel@ttrpg.network
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    12 hours ago

    Paper straws were pushed by big corporate polluters to build a negative association with environmentalism.

    Plastic straws are single-use plastics, but seem unexceptional by those standards. It’s almost a meme that they’re being singled out like they’re the single greatest source of plastic waste, or uniquely damaging to ocean life.

    On top of that, there are way better ways of reducing straw usage. I’ve used bioplastics that seemed way better. You could redesign the lids. You can do the plastic bag thing and charge people a nickel for a straw or whatever. Hell, you could just not give straws with every drink, and plenty of people will just drink from their cups and glasses. Instead, we get paper straws, something that is so obviously a bad idea it sounds like a joke, or a metaphor for a useless invention. Often served with cups and lids made entirely out of plastic.

    So you get a bunch of people who have their drinks kind of ruined by a frustrating straw. It’s a small thing, but it’s just a little nudge away from environmentalism. You build an association with disappointment and inconvenience. Maybe it doesn’t cause a big sway, but it makes people maybe a little more anti-environmentalist than they already were, or just less passionate about environmentalism.

    • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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      9 hours ago

      When most ocean plastic comes from nets, it’s hard to disagree.

      Honestly the obsession with single use plastic seems like a distraction. Every piece of plastic in landfill is oil that isn’t burnt.

  • LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Kary Mullis didn’t invent PCR, his then-gf Jenny did. Matilda effect

    Other theory: a staff member at Neopets is messing with in game economy to sell digital items irl on ebay

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    9 hours ago

    I got another one (that’s pretty much a fact) in order to get facial recognision, fingerprint sensors, etc working you have to login with your ms/apple/google acc, on windows 7 you didn’t have to… now why would you need an online connection to setup a piece of physikal hardware with local sofyware??? It’s pretty simple: apple, google and microsoft know your face, your fingerprint, your voice, your location, etc

  • bi_tux@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    the feds and big corpos are spying on you and the only reason you’re still alive is because

    a) you’re a small fish

    xor

    b) you help them in some way by being a usefull idiot

    xor

    c) you’re part of the conspiracy

  • Illuminostro@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    The removal of The Fairness Doctrine was a deliberate psyop of The Monied Elite to dumb down the general populace of the US to accept Capitalist propaganda and rule. Well, it’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s fact. Then we were bombarded by blatant capitalist propaganda for 50 years. But, but, the worst aim was to condition the general populace to casual cruelty as entertainment.

    Witness how Congress has degenerated into The Jerry Springer Show and Judge Judy. And half of the populace think it’s funny, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Republican politicians daily lie their asses off, and there are no consequences. An entitled, malignant narcissistic psychopath is worshipped as a demigod. Congregations who watch Fox every night are literally telling their preachers/priests/pastors that Jesus is a woke pussy. That’s not opinion, it’s a fact.

    I recall reading that Goering and Goebbels both stated that a lie that is repeated enough times becomes truth in the zeitgeist. This country is in big trouble, and I think the Heritage and Federalist stacked SCOTUS is going to appoint Trump King due to an avalanche of upcoming election lawsuits.

    This country was established by rich men who didn’t want to pay taxes. But, some good things came from it. That you could speak to power without the fear of retribution. That a religious entity could not punish you arbitrarily on a whim. That the rich could not pass on their wealth and power to scions without penalty. That this country would not be ruled by a blatant aristocracy and monarchy.

    I will not live in a Trump Theocratic Oligarchy. I’m an old man, with no wife and no kids. Do what you have to do, and leave if you can. The writing is on the wall. I don’t know how much more you need to see and know to wise up, but it’s here, right in your face.

  • BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world
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    12 hours ago

    The Jan 6th temper tantrum was instigated as a response to the BLM and other Covid-era protests. The owner class was getting nervous about the working class protesting about things that matter, so they riled up some of their disposable morons to storm the Capital as a way to discredit direct action. And we’re already seeing the effects; whether it’s a labor strike or a student sit-in, we’re told by centrists to “protest peacefully” and not inconvenience anyone, aka don’t protest.

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    17 hours ago

    So many people believe that Covid was a way to scare us all indoors, so they could change batteries in all the birds.

    That’s preposterous.

    Birds use rechargeables, that’s why they’re always sitting on the power lines. Like, duh, wake up sheeple.

    • bi_tux@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      no, you don’t understand, the feds invented the perpetum mobile, birds only sit on power lines to confuse people like you!

  • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    Alex Jones was a CIA plant, to make conspiracy theorists look crazy… And it worked really really well.

    The government was nervous because there were some conspiracy theories that were a little too close to reality. Shit like MK ULTRA and the Harvard mind control experiment sound fake, but we have the declassified docs. We know they happened. And there were lots of conspiracy theories that were likely hitting just a little too close for comfort. But outright disputing the conspiracy theories would just add credibility to them, in a “methinks the lady doth protest too much” sort of way.

    So instead, they set out to discredit the people making the claims. They wanted to poison the well. So they found a dude named Alex Jones who had potential. He’s easily manipulated, so they can basically feed him wild conspiracies and he’ll eat them up. And all they had to do was boost his message. Jones never even needed to knew he was a plant, (and in fact, it would work better if he remained clueless.)

    They gave conspiracy theorists a face. Before Alex Jones, conspiracy theories were something the average person jokingly threw around while drunk at the bar. But suddenly, conspiracy theorists were up front and center. And here’s the important part: the theories didn’t have a good spokesman. Suddenly, the average person’s view of conspiracy theories shifted. They weren’t funny anymore; They had your crazy uncle ranting about dead kids being fake.

    By giving conspiracy theories a face, then having that face spew the most insane bullshit alongside the true (or nearly true) theories, the government was able to discredit the true theories. They were able to poison the well, because the main person ranting about the conspiracy also thinks Sandy Hook was a hoax.