• Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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    5 months ago

    This is what conspiracy theories are supposed be. Absurd insanity. Not “vaccines are bad for you” or “a secret agent with Q clearance wants patriots to overthrow democracy”.

    • tehmics@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The best conspiracy ever conceived was the one that convinced people that conspiracies are absurdist caricatures of the very real threat of collusion.

      All these crazy conspiracies just weaken the perception of the mundane real ones.

      If I was gonna conspire, the first step would be to trivialize the idea in the first place.

      • palordrolap@kbin.run
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        5 months ago

        Case in point: A reality TV show called Big Brother, named after the nebulous, terrifying, all-powerful overseer in George Orwell’s 1984, was created specifically to rob the name of its power.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It was originally a Dutch TV show by the hack who created Fear Factor and you are giving him way too much credit.

          • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Its usually not the creators that do the obfuscation, its the people with money picking and choosing the “winners” of Hollywood. One of those factors is name

          • Dragomus@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Pleasantly surprised he is mentioned in that way.

            I stood near him on “conventions” a few times with some years in between and he is such a nasty person both while making phone calls and in the way he treats others/his staff.

            Comes over as someone who can’t find any joy in the small things in his life and p*sses on everyone else because of it.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              That doesn’t shock me, but I doubt de Mol has any sort of secret conspiracy with the world powers going on.

        • JackbyDev
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          5 months ago

          More like there being chemicals that actually fucked up frogs’ genitals but we only ever heard about it through the lens of Alex Jones and “turning the freaking frogs gay [sic]” https://youtu.be/i5uSbp0YDhc

          • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            Alex was just yelling about headlines he doesn’t understand, groundwater runoff affecting water tables is serious news covered a lot. It’s not fun so doesn’t make it to memes.

            Alex supports Trump who cut a third of the EPA budget, Biden strengthened the EPA significantly. Things that actually matter get reported on but receive very few clicks, at some point we have to accept we’re responsible and make an effort to change.

            • JackbyDev
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              5 months ago

              Oh, please don’t mistake me as believing Alex Jones is some sort of bastion of truth. While I find it interesting there is truth behind the meme, it’s more upsetting that the manner in which people hear it is still coming from a place of misinformation and bigotry. (Bigotry as in having different genitals doesn’t make you homosexual, yet the claim is that it “turns frogs gay.” Which is why I tossed the sic tag on the quote.)

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I was gonna conspire, the first step would be to trivialize the idea in the first place.

        Not me. That sounds like way too much work. Spending a century or so running skeptic magazines/podcast/book publishers/blogs/whatyou just so i cam sneak my little thing in.

        Be easier to just do it.

    • parpol
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      5 months ago

      “vaccines are bad for you” is extremely absurd and insane, tbf.

      • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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        5 months ago

        It’s vicious and anti-scientific, but it’s not in the same level of obviously untrue statement as good conspiracy theories. Things that were claimed to be safe turning out to not be safe is something that actually happens. They’re just lying that it’s true of vaccines.

        • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          It gets absurd enough when you go back to the original claim

          “My MMR vaccine is completely safe, but the other MMR vaccine gives your child an upset tummy, which causes autism”

    • Sc00ter@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      My favorite conspiracy theory is that Kelly Johnson was read into alien tech at area 51/roswell and he was allowed to reverse engineer it. That’s why he got government funding directly to him, and how he developed the sr71 blackbird so fucking quick

  • ChihuahuaOfDoom@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Yep, absolutely. It couldn’t possibly be that he’s an octogenarian with a known speech impediment, had to be directed energy weapons.

    • Omega@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Also, allegedly had a cold and probably got flustered after the first time he tripped on his words. And inexplicably kept trying to recite various metrics from memory.

      • corroded@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        People really underestimate how bad a cold can be. When I’m sick, it’s so hard to function mentally that I can barely do my job.

        I believe he was sick, and I believe this was just a case of unfortunate timing. What matters in politics is perception, though, and the perception isn’t good.

        • Omega@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          He’s always had it. But it was probably easier to manage it when he was younger.

  • Rottcodd@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    If we’re going to go all conspiratorial, here’s my theory:

    Both campaigns are dealing with old men with diminished faculties.

    There’s some drug cocktail(s) that both campaigns have been using to pep the doddering old farts up for public appearances.

    If you’ll remember, very shortly before the debate, the accusation that “Biden’s on drugs” made the rounds, and Trump made some noises about demanding a drug test.

    For some reason - possibly fear, possibly determination in the face of a challenge, possibly a subtle communication that the Trump campaign had some hard evidence they would, if pushed, release publicly - that led to the Biden team withholding his customary drug cocktail.

    Trump, meanwhile, was dosed to the eyeballs.

    And that was the contrast we saw - Trump was on drugs, while Biden, for whatever reason, for that night alone, was not.

    Remember - for the Republicans broadly and especially for Trump, every accusation is a confession.

    • JackbyDev
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      5 months ago

      every accusation is a confession.

      This is all I could think of when Trump said Democrats would use every avenue both legal and illegal to overturn election results.

      • Rottcodd@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I sincerely think it’s broadly accurate - that, for the Republicans and especially for Trump, (most) every accusation is a confession.

        There’s a simple psychological element to it, most often illustrated by moralists who rail against perversion of one form or another, only to be revealed to be perverts.

        There’s another aspect to it though, and I think this is more often the case with Trump specifically - it’s a way to proactively undermine someone else’s accusation against you. If you can get your accusation out there first, then they end up sounding sort of like a child saying, “I know you are but what am I?”

    • Freefall@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      They are not left or right. They are just people that strictly believe everything that has been disproven or is too stupid to bother disproving, as long as ANY thread of correlation can be made up between it and observable reality.

        • Moneo@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Watch Dan Olsen’s video on flat earthers. I’m having a hard time remembering details but the conspiracy theories are more of a symptom than anything. These people are looking for a community as well as an explanation for why the world is so fucked up, and why they are miserable. Anti-semitism and conspiracy theories are more satisfying than anything the left can provide.

  • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Wow, and here I thought he was an old guy with a stutter getting flustered while a fascist fuckwad spewed inane garbage.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    “It was his stutter.”

    “He had a cold.”

    “He overprepared and got flustered.”

    “A malicious actor used an Inator on him.”

    I wonder what the next excuse is gonna be.

    • Fuzzy_Red_Panda@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      “He’s old.”

      He actually said on camera that the reason he is running this time is because Trump is running, meaning that if Trump wasn’t running, Biden wouldn’t be running, meaning he doesn’t even really want the job.

      The DNC put up a guy that doesn’t even want to be president again, and now 40% of democrat voters want a new nominee because apparently they weren’t paying attention for the last 4 years and only realized now, during the debate, that Joe Biden is dealing with cognitive decline.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        No we realized years ago. It’s the entire reason his campaign started the idea that he’d be a single term president. People brought it up after the midterms when he confirmed he’d run again. It’s been in the news and an open question ever since then. According to insiders, the debate was held early specifically to show he wasn’t too old.

        Biden and the Party have been aggressively going after critics, accusing them of being Trump supporters and disloyal to the very concept of democracy. Which would have worked if he didn’t shit the bed so badly.

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        The DNC basically dragged him out of retirement in 2020 because establishment couldn’t handle anyone scary like Bernie or someone young.

    • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com
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      5 months ago

      so your idea is that people close to Biden are making a conspiracy theory as cover. So your conspiracy theory is that there is a conspiracy spreading conspiracy theories ?

      My dude look inside your own house. The conspiracies are coming from inside your own home.

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        And my prediction came true. There’s already a new excuse. They’re blaming jet lag. When the last time he traveled was 2 weeks before the debate.

  • Steve@communick.news
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    5 months ago

    Have you ever been in a TV studio with all the lights pointed at you?
    That’s exactly what they are. Directed-Energy Weapons.

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    And yet this is still many orders of magnitude more sane than thinking Donald Trump is fit to be president.

  • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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    5 months ago

    Wouldn’t Directed Energy Weapons make him burn and itch so bad he’d jump around?

    We have those, we’ve used them in real combat, but they don’t work like that.

    • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      In My experience energy weapons turn the victim into a toothpaste like glowing blue puddle.

        • evranch@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          Sure lasers don’t have recoil, but I see no reason a laser gun can’t have recoil.

          Anything from flywheel energy storage, a lasing medium compressed by pistons, massive magnetic fields created by high currents, who knows what’s inside that thing.

          A handheld laser gun has to generate a beam of such unrealistic intensity that I’d be surprised if the power stage didn’t buck in some manner.

          • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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            5 months ago

            Yeah all the mass of the photons being propelled out has a real kick. /sarcasm

            No offence to you, at all, but the fact that your comment is a 3:1 ratio makes me sad for the future of humanity.

          • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I don’t need to worry about that, but I have standing wagers with several people here on lemmy and elsewhere that Biden both:

            a) wont be the nominee,

            and

            b) wont be the next president.

            So I’d have to pay up? But I’m not worried about that in the slightest at this point (I got a bit excited after his ‘decent’ state of the Union back in March that he might flip on Gaza, but no, he dug his grave further).

            Too many other seats are on the line to run Biden.

            I took several bets where I was able to get anything from 10:1 or 20:1 in a parlay for a) and b) back in April. I’m confident enough now to do even money if there is no time line associated with it (other than obvious ones like the convention). All in all I probably have about a couple hundred on the line right now? Its all on these two outcomes.

            I’ll take 10:1 that Biden isn’t the nominee at the end of this week if you are willing to offer it, and even money that he isn’t the nominee (no timeline) or president. I’m also interested in parlays if you have any you want to propose.

              • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                He has to be capable of winning to be worth supporting.

                In the past 500 days, at no point had Biden demonstrated any evidence that he can win the election. He didn’t campaign as a two term president in 2020, he specifically acknowledged he would only do one term. His polling has been abysmal, almost all of his term, when we know that he already suffers from a 12 point polling deficit on Trump (Biden needs to be beating Trump by 12 to beat him, statistically). His key policies are deeply, the ones that will define him as president, specifically Gaza and the border, are deeply unpopular with the key demographics he needs to win, specifically middle eastern voters in the upper Midwest and any one under 40.

                So this all is, and always has been, on Biden, to do better on. He’s not a candidate that you can support with these outstanding issues because he can’t win an election with them. Supporting him inspire of those issues does nothing to change the fact that he can’t win. Infact, the blue maga blind support (orange man worse, blue no matter who, etc…) has significantly harmed our ability to beat Trump because it prevented any pressure being placed on Biden to become a better candidate.

                Some one needing to earn your vote in a primary season is bigger than just getting your issues addressed. It’s about carving a candidate into someone popular enough to win an election. That’s how Biden won in 2020. He had to go caress and finesse various voting blocks into supporting him by becoming a candidate and having a platform they could get behind. And it worked. He won that election by stepping left and effectively cloning the entire progressive/ Bernie platform.

                Pretending this guy can win is idiotic and doesn’t work. If for whatever reason we still end up with Biden as candidate, we’re going to lose this election. And it’s going to be because of the blue no matter who/ Blue maga crowd if we do lose. It’s an intentional ignorance they’ve maintained about how electoralism and elections work in an effort to shield an unelectable candidate from criticism, and lemmy.world, the news and politics C’s and their associated mods, are particularly rife with it. If we run Biden inspire of his obvious shortcoming which are frankly insurmountable at this point, I put three blame solely in those who made a concerted effort to lie/disguise/ and prevent discussion about his shortcomings as a candidate.

                • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  Blah blah blah, answer the question please. You talk like a politician. Would you support him?