# The Stupidest Conspiracy Theories Of All Time **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 12, 2017, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632 "2017-10-12T12:46:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![HelenGawn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a88e4f/32.png) [@HelenGawn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HelenGawn)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2017, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/81 "2017-10-14T21:05:05Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > The 9/11 conspiracy gets a particularly high ranking from me. > > OK, so the GWBush administration wants to fabricate a reason to go to war and get the American people solidly behind him, and he and his neoconservative pals are sneaky and care so little about legitimate governing and are so callous about people’s lives that they faked the events of 9/11. > > • Sneaky neocons who care little about the genuine will of the people or people’s lives? Check… > > • Best they could come up with is a plan that involves the destruction of a major center of corporate capitalist enterprise? Hmmm… well they weren’t the brightest bulbs… > > • And they do it in such a way that they look like incompetent idiots because it will be shown that they ignored warnings about bin Laden and other premonitory data? Ermmm… > > •And they plan the day-of-execution of the scheme in such a way that the Conspirator-in-Chief looks entirely like a deer in the headlights while kids around him continue to read “My Pet Goat” instead of looking like a serious President of considerable gravitas and decisiveness? Seriously?.. > > • And they do it in such a way that the hostile aggressors who did it are not the oil-rich country they actually want to invade but rather instead a mountainous country we helped arm during their phase of resistance to the USSR invaders a few decades ago? And therefore, to redirect our military attention to the nation they actually want to invade, they have to fabricate or misconstrue additional info that does not at all flow from this faked-up attack? Yeesh… > > • And they do this pivot of our military attention so clumsily that the enormous upsurge in international good will and sympathy to the US is rapidly squandered, the domestic united-in-our-grief-and-struggle is similarly squandered as demonstators take to the street to protest the WTF sable-rattling and subsequent invasion of Iraq, and they don’t get the identified culprit (Osama bin Laden) who is apparently in Afghanistan before attempting this switch of focus to Iraq? Are you fucking KIDDING me? > > Look, either they’re evil conniving conspiratorial planners who are good enough at manipulating perceptions of reality to pull this stunt off, or they’re one of the most incompetent bunch of blithering idiots to come rolling out of clown car, but you can’t have it both ways. W was obviously out of the loop on this. It would put an end to his master plan of an [eight-year golfing binge on the taxpayers’ dime.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCm9788Tb5g) ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2017, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/82 "2017-10-14T21:11:40Z")
> [@HelenGawn](#): > > W was obviously out of the loop on this. It would put an end to his master plan of an [eight-year golfing binge on the taxpayers’ dime.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCm9788Tb5g) Hey, he isn’t the only guy who did that! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/83 "2017-10-15T18:13:15Z")
IANAB but with the Obama one, I believe the idea is that he was born in Kenya but birth registered in the US so that he would be an automatic US citizen no questions asked and nothing about being a future President. i believe he was born in Hawaii … but since the annexation was illegal it was the Kingdom of Hawaii and thus he should not have been President. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/84 "2017-10-15T18:30:57Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > i believe he was born in Hawaii … but since the annexation was illegal it was the Kingdom of Hawaii and thus he should not have been President. I wonder if the South could use that argument. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/85 "2017-10-15T19:14:31Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > IANAB but with the Obama one, I believe the idea is that he was born in Kenya but birth registered in the US so that he would be an automatic US citizen no questions asked Right. But here’s a MUCH easier way for him to be an automatic US citizen… STAY IN HAWAII TO BEGIN WITH. I mean, if Obama’s mother is known to have lived in Kenya around the time of his birth, but the official story is that she flew from Kenya to Hawaii to have the baby, then flew back, then, well, it makes at least some sense to wonder whether in fact she never flew back. But making up a trip from Hawaii to Kenya and back, for a pregnant lady, who didn’t have a lot of money, whose sole result would be to make it much HARDER for some mysterious long-term conspiracy to come to fruition… Also, if you honestly believe that Hawaii is not fully legally part of the USA, you are, to quote Rex Tillerson, a f\*\*\*ing moron. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/86 "2017-10-15T19:18:41Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > IANAB but with the Obama one, I believe the idea is that he was born in Kenya but birth registered in the US so that he would be an automatic US citizen no questions asked and nothing about being a future President. > i believe he was born in Hawaii … but since the annexation was illegal it was the Kingdom of Hawaii and thus he should not have been President. This is the same argument used for why the income tax is illegal, because the last state to ratify the 16th Amendment was Ohio, which was allegedly illegally admitted to the United States. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/87 "2017-10-15T19:19:27Z")
> [@Cicero](#): > > Obviously the JFK conspiracy springs to mind. (as has been mentioned). Does it? I mean, without really being someone who has ever cared too much about the topic, I’m 99.5% sure that Oswald was the only shooter and acted alone… there have just been too many investigations that failed to turn up anything contrary to that for me to believe otherwise. But it’s not even in the same category of stupid as something like birtherism, or chemtrails, or lizard people, or flat earth, or hollow earth. Think about it this way: Suppose that evidence comes to light tomorrow absolutely concretely proving beyond all doubt that one of those conspiracies HAS been true all along: -Obama was in fact born in Kenya or -Contrails are in fact chemicals sprayed by the government to keep us docile or -Queen Elizabeth is a lizard person or -The earth is flat or -The earth is hollow or -Some group of non-supernatural humans hired Oswald to assassinate JFK, and then hired Jack Ruby to kill him Of those six, one would (to me) cause a reaction of “holy shit, those people were right all along” and five would cause a reaction of suddenly questioning every assumption I’ve ever made about how reality works. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/88 "2017-10-15T19:36:13Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Also, if you honestly believe that Hawaii is not fully legally part of the USA, you are, to quote Rex Tillerson, a f\*\*\*ing moron. Humor-it is a difficult concept. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/89 "2017-10-15T19:39:22Z")
The “cancel the election” thing goes back to at least Nixon’s time when it was promulgated by the left. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/90 "2017-10-15T20:52:55Z")
> [@E-DUB](#): > > The “cancel the election” thing goes back to at least Nixon’s time when it was promulgated by the left. Yep, FEMA death camps started off as FBI death camps where the government was going to throw leftist activists and black protestors into after Nixon declared martial law when we reinvaded Vietnam. It was a major part of Jim Jones preaching. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/91 "2017-10-16T02:15:13Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > In the novel Shibumi the British stage a hijacking in order to kill some terrorists, and to keep the hijack story going, kill all the passengers. IIRC, they filled every seat that didn’t have their targets with their own employees (leaving one seat for their assassin). After their assassin did his assassin thing, they landed the airliner long enough to let him disembark. Once he was off the plane, it took off again. _Then_ the MI5 guys blew up the plane. _WHY_, Trevalyan? They could have just saved Shibumi’s assassin fee by loading the plane up the way they did anyway, left Shibumi out of the plot, and blown up the plane anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/92 "2017-10-16T09:15:13Z")
At the other end of the spectrum, I feel the “Moon landings were faked” is one of the least stupid ones. Money and motive. Flat/hollow earthers are the bottom of the barrel for med in terms of the stupidity of their conspiracy, and anti-vaxxers for the damage potential of their beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/93 "2017-10-16T23:55:10Z")
How about a person can sort of believe things but not be a full on believer? Or who see things as just another possible reason for a phenomenon? Or who wish to study something or explore an issue for the sake of finding the real truth? Like for example “bigfoot”. No, I don’t see them as some ape subgroup but I do feel people have encountered… “something” out there. People who have no reason to make up a story and can tell fake from real. So to me, the goal is the pursuit of knowledge. Something is out there, I just don’t know what it is. Science alone cannot explain everything. ---
**Author:** ![HubZilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@HubZilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HubZilla)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2017, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/94 "2017-10-17T00:39:52Z")
like the Sports conspiracy theories: NBA playoffs are fixed, so popular players and/or large markets win. Except when they don’t (San Antonio), but that’s to throw us off the path. Then again, Tim Donaghy did show this CT was not completely out of left field. Seems dated nowadays, but Nebraska in the 1990s won three College Football national titles. They did this by using “county scholarships”: some state law allows one student per county to get free tuition. We’d give them to football recruits, so they wouldn’t count against the NCAA limit. As a Husker fan, I’d always retort “Do you seriously think the NCAA wouldn’t catch on to such an obvious ploy? C’mon, my Huskers can be a little more clever.” ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2017, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/95 "2017-10-17T00:45:32Z")
Humans intentionally created the HIV virus. This isn’t possible because the virus HIV evolved from (SIV) wasn’t discovered until at least a decade after the first HIV cases were diagnosed. You can’t create the virus if you haven’t discovered the virus it evolved from yet. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2017, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/96 "2017-10-17T01:01:14Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > How about a person can sort of believe things but not be a full on believer? Or who see things as just another possible reason for a phenomenon? Or who wish to study something or explore an issue for the sake of finding the real truth? > > Like for example “bigfoot”. No, I don’t see them as some ape subgroup but I do feel people have encountered… “something” out there. People who have no reason to make up a story and can tell fake from real. > > So to me, the goal is the pursuit of knowledge. Something is out there, I just don’t know what it is. Science alone cannot explain everything. “Something?” I’m afraid I agree with Ursula Vernon where[bigfoot](https://ursulav.deviantart.com/art/Strong-Opinions-52137900) is concerned. > [@](#): > > If there was really a giant unknown hominid roaming the Pacific Northwest, someone would have hit it with a car or sold it weed by now. ---
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2017, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/97 "2017-10-17T01:40:05Z")
[Obligatory XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1235/) ---
**Author:** ![AI\_Proofreader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@AI\_Proofreader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AI_Proofreader)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2017, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/98 "2017-10-17T03:23:34Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Humans intentionally created the HIV virus. > > This isn’t possible because the virus HIV evolved from (SIV) wasn’t discovered until at least a decade after the first HIV cases were diagnosed. You can’t create the virus if you haven’t discovered the virus it evolved from yet. Yes, but as with most conspiracy theories, any information contradicting the theory can be hand-waved away by expanding the scope of the conspiracy. “They” knew about SIV a decade earlier and experimented with it in a lab to make it infect humans. It took a decade for scientists not involved in the conspiracy to isolate the virus and discover what “they” already knew. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2017, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/99 "2017-10-17T03:59:12Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > IANAB I Am Not A Boob? Bozo? Butthead? Bartender? 😕😕:smack: ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2017, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632/100 "2017-10-17T05:28:01Z")
Birther…i think. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-of-all-time/798632.md?page=6)