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What scares those who scream "conspiracy theorist"

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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 25,916 ✭✭✭✭Timberrrrrrrr


    Well take this point here


    • "Theories inherently are based on some supporting evidence, but that evidence frequently can neither be proven true nor false."


    Some supporting evident being the important part, when was the last time a conspiracy theorist posted any sort of "supporting evidence"?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,098 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    That was a temporarily changed charter. Basically mods, one in particular, was sick of dealing with all the arguments here, so the bottom line became: conspiracy theorists don't need to support their claims.

    Of course it's your personal opinion that it was a good change because it suited your 9/11 beliefs, and it didn't matter who disagreed with it (or even bothered to read the charter thread) because it was a mod decision. The forum was still a dumpster fire after, but it was just easier for people to make baseless claims.

    You want special treatment for conspiracy theories because you could slide in the "hey they are just conspiracy theories" with one hand, while shoehorning in your shaky 9/11 conspiracy stuff with the other, win, win.

    CTs are all fun and games until people are not getting vaccinated due to them, banging down doors to congress due to them, etc.

    No matter how silly they get, I don't believe people who attack history, current affairs, medical science, etc in order to replace them with highly questionable conspiracies should be given a safe space and special treatment.



  • Posts: 25,874 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    it also bares pointing out that no one is stopping conspiracy theorists from posting their conspiracy theories. There's claims posted here that would get justified bans from lots of places.

    People asking questions does not prevent this.

    People asking questions only prevents the illusion that the conspiracy theories are unquestionably true.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 469 ✭✭jakiah


    Why does boards facilitate conspiracy theorists at all? On other platforms like reddit the people posting Covid misinformation are 1) savaged by other users via the comment section (and downvotes), and 2) banned by the mods.

    Yet on boards you cant open a Covid thread without some numpty who is active on the conspiracy theory forum happily posting away with his stupid nonsense. If you have a go at them, boards sanctions YOU and threatens to remove you from their platform. Its an absolute joke.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,098 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    I've noticed my friends/colleagues during this pandemic seem to have a lot less patience/tolerance for the anti-vax types and deniers and pseudo-science. Indeed, I think that overall mood towards disinformation is being reflected on sites like Reddit, where there's been a backlash

    That said, the site has a conspiracy forum which is an absolute cesspit, Holocaust denial, anti-vaxx, everything.



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  • Posts: 3,842 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Wasn’t that the aim of this forum - a safe space.

    its true the vax conspiracy guys did in fact harm the population. Conspiracies about 9/11 though seem like they lose faith in militarism. It’s a pity they weren’t strong enough to stop the Iraq war, for instance. I don’t get the angst about that.

    each theory should be judged on its merits, or demerits.



  • Posts: 25,874 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Not really. A best conspiracies like 9/11 only distract from actual issues.

    At the same time it fosters unhealthy distrust in actual experts journalists and institutions. For example if you believe in some versions of 9/11 conspiracies you could also believe that large swathes of the engineering sector are in on the plot. And if all of them could be in on the plot maybe the entire climate science sector is also involved in a plot to fake climate change.

    Believing it for one conspiracy makes it easier to believe for another.


    Then on top of that we have bullshit merchants like Alex Jones who build a disprotionately influential media empire based in part on 9/11 shite.


    No one is talking about banning conspiracy theories like that here.

    We're just saying that people should also be free to question and challenge them.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,098 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    Not sure that was the aim, appears to be a forum for a collection of stuff considered to be conspiracy theories, but indeed that shouldn't embue it with some magical powers that it can't be challenged like anything else.

    I know there are forums for people who believe in ghosts and werewolves and whatever, and certain leeway is given, but those people aren't exactly attacking Congress or tell others to ingest animal dewormers

    Imagine if the history forum had a sub-forum for the Holocaust with special rules for deniers to make it easier for them..



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 469 ✭✭jakiah


    Ive no issue with these **** having their little fantasties in their own forums, they should absolutely not be allowed on normal Covid threads where people want to discuss the pandemic with normal people, not people who think the moon is made of cheese or whatever.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,739 ✭✭✭storker




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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,782 ✭✭✭Markus Antonius


    Agh I missed all this action in the conspiracy forum! (I wish I could monitor the conspiracy forum on a full time basis)

    Seems like there is an uprising afoot against the clear trolling that goes on here.

    I dream of a day that we can have civil, open-minded discussion about conspiracy theories, where the different facets are appropriately challenged and debated rather than the spamming, derailing, circle jerking (as another poster put it) by those that seem to have an awful lot of time on their hands.



  • Posts: 25,874 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Lol quite the fantasy you're harboring there.

    Unfortunately just because you don't like certain type of opinions and questions about your beliefs, it doesn't mean it's trolling.

    If you want "civil and open discussion" you should start with yourself. Particularly you shouldn't refuse to explain your own beliefs when asked.



  • Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators Posts: 10,945 Mod ✭✭✭✭Jim2007


    You are confusing making a nuisance of yourself and annoying people with scaring them.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,782 ✭✭✭Markus Antonius


    I too would like to know where to provide such feedback outside of this forum seeing as a certain mod has brought their agenda in and mandated the trolling to death of the forum.

    Creepy that this is allowed happen to say the least.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,807 ✭✭✭ShatterAlan



    You mention the word dishonesty. Is it not dishonest to link people who are suspicious or skeptical of official narratives to those who are just plain weird?

    It's a poipular tactic to insult persons as Flat-Earthers, Tin-foil hat wearers, Believers in Lizard people, alien abductions and all manner of other smears simply if they express doubt about something in the natural world. You're not innocent of this slick trick yourself.

    The epithet "conspiracy theory" was coined by the CIA in the 1960's. It served to paint the little boy who said "The King is naked!" as insane. And it's served them pretty well.

    Aligning someone who doubts a narrative with a kook who thinks that COVID was delivered via 5G towers is a brilliant way to cover your tracks or at least to keep people from asking legitimate questions. And before anyone jumps down my throat about COVID, I have no opinion on the subject. I am not a virologist, doctor, nurse, medic, immunoligist or epidemioligist. So my profession would not qualify me to speak candidly or even with veracity about pandemics or any manner of biological maladies.

    And, again, before someone (and I won't say who) screeches in with the question/accusation "are you saying that COVID is a hoax and that it was man-made in a lab to cull the planet?" I would say..."please go away back to your crayons."

    The exact same way that you call anyone who criticises Israel's crimes an "anti-Semite" or anyone who questions torture at Guantanamo as a "terrorist sympathiser"

    This isn't dishonesty. There are those who don't believe what they are told. And the explanations, excuses and witholding of information only serves to fuel that suspicion. It seems only the stupid or the close-minded want to not step back and ask a question rather than dismiss it as the realm of a nutcase.

    I challenge the official narrative proponents and champions of the governmental/popular to tell when the truth is told and when it's a pack of lies.

    Ghaddafi's "viagra" story

    Jessica Lynch

    The Gulf of Tonkin

    Saddam's incubator babies

    Saddam's WMD's

    Assad gassing Syrians.

    Venezuelans eating flamingoes to stay alive.

    uyghurs in death camps in China https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/education/xinjiang

    Crimean Russians being forced to vote yes to an annexation against their collective will, with a gun in their mouths.


    And these are just modern day lies. The US nuked Japan in 1945. Not to bring the war to a speedy end and to save lives but to send a message to the world that they were willing to kill indiscriminately to get their way. Not a lot of people know this but nearly a 1000 US POW's were in a prison near Nagasaki. The Japanese had given the details. No mind. They were expendable and incinerated in the bombing.

    So America wants to protect lives and its own and bring wars to a quick end. They were given that chance time and again re: the whole Bin Laden / Taliban thing. "Supply proof that Bin Laden attacked your country and killed all those people and we will hand him over to stand trial". Except the offer was rebuffed.


    These are just the iceberg tip of lies that are told on a regular, maybe daily, basis by powerful governments. Why should anyone believe them? Why is it such a stretch of the imagination that innocent people would be sacrificed if it served their purpose?

    I have no doubt that the British Government would have a bullet shot into my face on the side of the road and then fabricate a story stating that I was either a terrorist OR that I was offed by the RA in a case of mistaken identity just to score propaganda points and label their adversary in this "heinous" killing. No doubt in my mind at all.

    And I certainly have no doubt that those sitting aound a mahogany table in DC or Langley or wherever wouldn't give a fcuk about my death or anyone else's if it could be used for political or financial or geopolitical purposes.

    Some people don't want to believe that. It makes them feel uncomfortable. They don;t like the thought of not being precious and protected. They like the thought of a foreign bogetman killing innocent people in order to get his way. The thought that their own "protectors" and the foreign bogeyman sing from the same hymn sheet is, mentally and psychologically, a bridge too far.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,807 ✭✭✭ShatterAlan



    You mention fear and those being afraid. Is/were Assange, or Snowden or Mandela or Ghandi or Stan Goff or Cyndi Sheehan or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks or Daniel O'Connell or <insert name here>. afraid of the wolf?

    These people spoke truth to power. Something I doubt you would have the fortitude to do. Some of them lost their freedom. Some their dignity. Some their lives. None of these people were EVER scared. And if they were they hid it well.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,807 ✭✭✭ShatterAlan



    What difference does it make if the innocent numbered in the 10's 100's or thousands.? Does a bodycount really need to be a factor?

    Iraq was attacked and destroyed by America and Britain. The estimates of civilian dead run close to 2 million. The Americans blithely say "we don't do body counts" .... that says it all.

    So "we don't count the amount of people we have killed but if someone comes up with a figure that we don't like then we are going to cry "BULLSHIT"'



  • Posts: 25,874 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Again, this is a rambling rant full of the same mischaracterisations and misrepresentations you are accusing others of.

    For example, here you are labeling anyone who doesn't immediatly accept your conspiracy beliefs as "narrative proponents and champions of the governmental/popular".

    This is hypocritical.

    And no dude, ranting about obviously false conspiracy theories on a forum is not "speaking truth to power." Don't be silly.


    You guys keep whinging about being compared to other conspiracy theorists who believe different things from you because their prefered conspiracy theories are "invalid".

    For example, Markus thanked your post. He believes that the entire space program is fake.

    What do you think about this theory Alan? Do you think it's valid? Or do you think that it is in the same category as flat earth, lizard people and aliens?

    I think you will not actually express your opinion on this as you aren't actually all that interested in discussing conspiracies outside the ones you've already swallowed, and you don't want to give an honest response. It's not permitted for you guys to disagree with each other even when your theories are completely incompatible.

    It doesn't matter to you what's true. All that matters is that there's some secret knowledge you have and that the rest of us are too dumb and sheepish to get.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 25,916 ✭✭✭✭Timberrrrrrrr


    Do you have a link for the following please


    "nearly a 1000 US POW's were in a prison near Nagasaki. The Japanese had given the details. No mind. They were expendable and incinerated in the bombing."



  • Posts: 25,874 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    About 200 prisoners, mostly British and Dutch, were being held at the Fukuoka POW Camp No. 14 Branch just 1.7 kilometers from ground zero.

    195 POWs (152 Dutch, 24 Australian and 19 British) were imprisoned at the end of the war. 113 POWs died while imprisonment, 8 of whom were killed by Atomic Bomb.

    10 minutes on google does not supply any mention of 1000 US POWs dying in Nagasaki.

    The closest I can see is that 12 US POWs died in Hiroshima, which astute readers might find is a different city and a number much smaller than "nearly a thousand."

    I'm sure that we're about to hear how the US government is now covering up these 1000 murdered POWs and that all the evidence that Alan totally really had and was about to provide just mysteriously vanished.

    It can't possibly be that he was just wrong.



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  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,146 Mod ✭✭✭✭robinph


    So what was the reason for the WTC attack?

    We have reasons for the war in Iraq, based on false reports maybe, but there is a reason.



  • Subscribers Posts: 43,466 ✭✭✭✭sydthebeat


    The ironic thing about shatteralans untrue claim above, is that the japenese soldiers at the POW camps were ordered to kill all pows "to unburden themselves in order to focus on the fight". These executions were to begin on the 17th August.

    The bombs were dropped on the 6th and 9th.

    The bombs actually saved pow lives



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,146 Mod ✭✭✭✭robinph


    You're going to have to talk us through in a bit more detail how the theories that you have equate with what Ghandi, Mandela, Rosa Parks etc did.

    Even if you think you are exposing some super secret information like Snowden or Assange you are so far 100% failing in that regard. They had evidence and documentation to back up their claims, you haven't provided anything whatsoever other than shouting "bad guys are coming for you" but with no explanation of who the bad guys are, what they intend to do or why.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,739 ✭✭✭storker




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 25,916 ✭✭✭✭Timberrrrrrrr


    Yeah thats why I asked for a link, any search I did said that it was 12 US servicemen died.



  • Posts: 25,874 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Watch now as the point is entirely avoided and ignored.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,098 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    "Anyone who disagrees with my views about space travel is a troll, this forum should cater to people like me"



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,098 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    You aren't sceptical. You regularly claim that recorded events didn't happen because you "can't believe it", and conversely you'll parrot exaggerated or false stories without question because they fit into your world view



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,146 Mod ✭✭✭✭robinph


    > The epithet "conspiracy theory" was coined by the CIA in the 1960's. It served to paint the little boy who said "The King is naked!" as insane. And it's served them pretty well.


    It won't surprise anyone to learn that the claim regarding the origins of the term "conspiracy theory" is itself a conspiracy theory.

    https://theconversation.com/theres-a-conspiracy-theory-that-the-cia-invented-the-term-conspiracy-theory-heres-why-132117



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,098 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    Snowden said 9/11 wasn't an inside job.

    As for fear - conspiracy theorists and believers spread irrational fear all the time, it's what they do, go to any conspiracy forum. The dollar is always about to collapse, society is about to collapse, NWO/Jews/Communists/Fascists/Elites/etc are always just about to take over and start their reign of tyranny, yadda, yadda.



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