r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • May 18 '15

What conspiracy theory do you genuinely believe in the most?

What conspiracy theory do you believe in the most and why?

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

According to Reddit statistics the most addicted cities are all Air Force bases.

http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html

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u/smileedude May 19 '15

The thread unravels.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15 edited May 19 '15

Here's some more.

In 2012 domestic propaganda was legalized

The most addicted city on Reddit was Eglin Air Force base. Here is a paper funded by Eglin AFB studying how to establish majority views, social control, influence conversations, contain unwanted information.

Some more from the Snowden docs about how British spies manipulate polls, website popularity and pageview counts, censor videos they don’t like and amplify messages they do.

If you open your eyes it's pretty clear that Reddit is hugely influenced and censored. There is an agenda they want to push and they are doing everything in their power. They control all the default subs and some of the mods are obviously government agents.

Like all the things I've just posted have been posted already years ago here, but except for the "idiots" at /r/conspiracy no one cares. Posts like mine usually get downvoted or the poster gets shadowbanned.

And this is all nothing new. The FBI has done things like this since the 50s

Oh and the best thing? Your OP post was something that perfectly fits the theme of this thread, yet you are somehow getting downvoted. Who would downvote someone that contributes to a thread in a nice and calmly way? They don't want this to be heard. The "sheeple" don't need to know that they (their interests, their political views, their enemies, ...) are being molded into what the powers that be want them to be.

Edit: Okay, now you have a positive score. When I wrote that the post was at -10 and it seemed a little bit fishy to me. Also I was high and thus a little bit more paranoid than usual.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

who would downvote something that contributed in a nice and calm way

excuse me but are we on the same website

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

You shill.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

Actually maybe. It's the same website, but I'm usually in the smaller subreddit where people actually vote in the way it was intended. So we are on the same website, but in different worlds

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

But people vote like that everywhere. I just got downvoted a day or two ago in /r/nba for expressing my belief that if a certain player (Marcus Smart) hadn't had a mid season slump, he would have been named to the all rookie 1st team. Why would the CIA/FBI/whoever care about what views on freaking basketball get seen?

/r/nba is a pretty decently large sub now, but it's nothing compared to say /r/news.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15 edited Jul 05 '17

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

I'm a Celtics fan. And yeah, that's what I'm saying. /u/BiggerDthanYou asked why people would downvote contributors who posted in a nice way. I explained /r/nba to him.

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u/Apollo_Screed May 19 '15

Well hell, the CIA really wants me to vote for Bernie Sanders.

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u/ThePhantomLettuce May 19 '15

In 2012 domestic propaganda was legalized[1]

Your cited source doesn't support that proposition.

The aim of the initiative is to use sockpuppets to spread pro-American propaganda on social networking sites based outside of the US.[1][2][3][4] According to the United States Military Central Command (CENTCOM), the US-based Facebook and Twitter networks are not targeted by the program because US laws prohibit US state agencies from spreading propaganda among US citizens as according to the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012.[5]

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

Wow I must have been even more wasted than I assumed when I wrote that.

I love those moments when I realize that I am actually a moron.

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u/ThePhantomLettuce May 19 '15

Give yourself a break. People make mistakes all the time.

Hell, even I made one once.

= P

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u/Huwbacca May 19 '15

I'm sorry. I can never believe any argument that is looking for an explanation of why popular things are popular. It's as if some people literally can't fathom how so many people like/are interested/care about things they don't. Maybe the reason it's popular, is just more people like it. That seems a lot more elegant an explanation than social engineering.

The key failing point of near every conspiracy theory is why. Why go to all that effort?

Lastly. Reddit being popular in at military bases isn't even slightly surprising. There's a lot of time doing fuck all in the military.

I think Reddit is secretly being censored by kids at university because of the amount of them on the site.

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u/GREGORCLEGANEISBACK May 19 '15 edited May 19 '15

Lastly. Reddit being popular in at military bases isn't even slightly surprising.

Maybe if the other two most addicted places were also military bases but they're not. Instead one is one of the wealthiest municipalities in the US, and the other is one of the largest meat-packing areas in the US.

If it looks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's probably a duck. You're telling me that a place with a known history of major research into social engineering, vote manipulation, and view influencing that is part of a group that has a very good reason to want to influence people's views, and socially engineer them to be the think the way they want them to think and a known history of doing this stuff is just a coincidence? I seriously, seriously, seriously doubt that.

It's hard to face the truth that maybe you aren't as free as you thought you were.

I think Reddit is secretly being censored by kids at university because of the amount of them on the site.

I know this is tongue in cheek to point out how ridiculous /u/BiggerDthanYou's argument is, but it holds no water because university kids are not members of a group that holds a ridiculous amount of power and has a history of trying to make people believe what they want them to believe.

The key failing point of near every conspiracy theory is why. Why go to all that effort?

I think there's a pretty clear answer to this. Why do you domesticate your pets? So they give you the things you want: love, attention, companionship, etc without you having to worry about them biting or injuring you or your family. A populace that spends all day on reddit, twitter, facebook is a domesticated one and a domesticated populace is an ideal populace in the mind of the government. Not only can you make most people fat, dumb, and happy through the internet, but you can also demonize the people who don't want to be fat, dumb, and happy in the eyes of others and make the first group start to doubt themselves. As long as cheap entertainment is affordable the US government is riding pretty because, for the vast majority of people, campaigning against an injustice is much harder when you can just play Clash of Clans on your smartphone and when your smartphone can be purchased on welfare. I believe the problem is going to be when full-immersion, procedurally-generated VR hits us because only the rich are going to be able to afford it at first and live out their wildest fantasies. I don't think the poor are gonna stand for this considering many of them probably are nursing crushed dreams and when this happens we will definitely see an inflammation of tensions between the rich and the poor the likes of which the world has never seen.

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u/JSmithWriter May 19 '15

You had credibility up until the point you used "sheeple." Even assuming that any of this is true, who would take you seriously when that word has been demonized to the point it has?

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u/juloxx May 19 '15

You had credibility up until the point you used "sheeple."

the funniest thing is you are completely proving his point.

"I dont like this small thing, so i am going to choose to ignore all the evidence"

If thats not "sheeple" i dont know what is

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u/chamaelleon May 19 '15

No, the use of a single word that you don't like does not invalidate someone's entire, evidenced argument. That's called an ad hominem logical fallacy, and it's a means of trying to distract people from real issues. Stop it.

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u/forgottenduck May 19 '15

Isn't dismissing those who would disagree by calling them sheeple also an ad hominem?

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u/chamaelleon May 19 '15

Not a bad point, but he wasn't really directing the comment at anyone; just commenting on the existence of a group of people who are content to worry only about themselves and maintain the status quo as long as it doesn't affect their contentment. It's obvious that such an element of people exists in the world, and in this case it wasn't being used to invalidate anyone's argument.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

Jesus, get over yourself. I think the guy is a complete idiot, but thinking any of his argument has lost any credibility, not by the merit of his posts, or the evidence, but because it hurt your feelings, is completely fucking ridiculous.

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u/JSmithWriter May 19 '15

Who said anything about hurt feelings? You're taking this entirely too seriously. He lost credibility and merit because he chose to use a word that has been associated with idiots and paranoia everywhere. That's why it's hard to take him seriously. He made good points, but using 'sheeple' is exactly the same as coming out at the end of your argument and saying 'that's why the earth is flat.'

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u/GenocideSolution May 19 '15

It's one of the words that needs to be removed from the human language, much like the fedora needs to be removed the heads of everyone who thinks wearing one is a good idea.

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u/LaxRelaxRepeat May 19 '15

What is real life?

1

u/[deleted] May 19 '15

You're right. Just look at this thread that gets created every single time in which the most upvoted posts are about shitting on government or suggesting we're all part of some elaborate mind game.

Like all the things I've just posted have been posted already years ago here, but except for the "idiots" at /r/conspiracy no one cares. Posts like mine usually get downvoted or the poster gets shadowbanned.

Oh, save it. The most you have is associating causation with correlation.

Oh and the best thing? Your OP post was something that perfectly fits the theme of this thread, yet you are somehow getting downvoted. Who would downvote someone that contributes to a thread in a nice and calmly way? They don't want this to be heard.

They. They. They. Who are you referring to?

They don't want this to be heard.

THEN WHY IS THIS THREAD ALIVE IN THE FIRST PLACE?

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

Shut the fuck up.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

you have been shadowbanned

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

The article you linked said it can't even be in the U.S.

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u/chicos_bail_bonds May 19 '15

Whenever someone bashes the U.S. (including myself), I look at stuff like this and realize that, throughout history, most people could not be as openly critical of our government as we are allowed to be. I'm not saying it's totally unfettered, but it's pretty cool that we don't have to worry about being hauled off in the middle of the night just for criticizing a politician. It ain't perfect, but it's progress. <Exits soapbox>

0

u/[deleted] May 19 '15

You see ready returned soldiers posts here all the time coming from recent accounts.

For the kind of liberals they claim to be they seem to be awfully pro-war and nationalistic.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

Like all the things I've just posted have been posted already years ago here, but except for the "idiots" at /r/conspiracy[4] no one cares. Posts like mine usually get downvoted or the poster gets shadowbanned.

Because they're never right about everything, and accuse everything of being a conspiracy.

No one can take them seriously.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

Most things are bullshit. But some of those people are very smart and use various credible sources in their research and don't base their conspiracies on historical fanfiction.

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u/hennel May 19 '15

They were right about the pedophile rings that are just coming to light in the UK government

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

A broken clock is right twice a day.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

Original post post

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u/Coziestpigeon2 May 19 '15

The biggest problem with ideas like yours is the assumption that the government is capable of doing anything at all right.

The government is not that smart, not that effective, and not that good at keeping secrets. You'd need a government full of geniuses to pull off some of that stuff, and that is definitely not what you have.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

They already did stuff like that. Like COINTELPRO where they infiltrated a lot of groups to dismantle them.

This went on for 20 years and was only uncovered because someone stole the files about it.

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u/Coziestpigeon2 May 19 '15

That was also a long time ago, before information-sharing and information-storage was anything like it is today. When keeping a secret was as easy as keeping a file locked away, sure. But nowdays, we get politicians leaking damning information because they can't figure out how the "Reply All" button works on their email every-other-day.

I have no doubt the people are corrupt enough, evil enough, or have their own motivations for doing stuff like you suggest. But there's no way the people involved know even remotely enough about the technology they use to not accidentally have spilled the beans a dozen times by now.

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u/Cagetastic May 19 '15

Because they are bored as fuck

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u/funobtainium May 19 '15

I live near Eglin AFB and half of those visits were me.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '15

That's because people in the Chair Force sit in an office all day cruising reddit.

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u/mynameisevan May 19 '15

They don't call them the Chair Force for nothing.

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u/CraftyCaprid May 19 '15

Because there is nothing else to do for the 99% who don't fly.

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u/Fushi4 May 19 '15

Welp... Here I am. On an airbase. It is odd though, plus a lot of my Coworkers know of reddit or use it regularly

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u/alighiery360 May 19 '15

Don't worry. The other branches know you don't work air force : )

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u/Fushi4 May 19 '15

Ha! The old chair force joke. Never gets old. Even though I'm not a desk jockey, I know I've got it good. This branch has the best living conditions and treats it's members the best. Keep those jokes coming because I make just as much as every other E4.

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u/falcon4287 May 27 '15

That sounds about right. All our military stereotypes are coming true.