June 9, 2023 | Molly Seif

Paranoid People Share Conspiracy Theories So Convincing They May Actually Be True


There's no shortage of conspiracy theories floating around out there. It doesn't matter what the topic is—space, politics, religion, pop culture, etc.—chances are, there's a group of people who have stirred up controversy around it. Whether you subscribe to them or not, there are a handful of conspiracy theories with such strong arguments and backing that it's hard to not entertain them, even if only for a few minutes.

You may be surprised to learn just how deep conspiracy theorists are willing to go to prove some of their believed suspicions on certain topics. Just take it from the following paranoid people, who recently shared conspiracy theories that are so convincing they may actually be true.

The views and opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the official position of Humaverse.

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#1 Daunting Details Of Denver Airport

Something is not right about the Denver International Airport. There’s a ton of conspiracy theory’s surrounding it and a lot of them are ridiculous but that airport is weird.

I mean the irregular runway shape could be coincidental. The massive blue horse statue that ended its own creator is weird. The artwork is disturbing. But the size and cost of this place tied into the fact that there was already a fully functioning airport closer to the downtown core just sealed the deal for me. Just, why?

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#2 Secret Inception

Memes about the NSA and other spy programs are encouraged by the very agencies spying on us, in order to humanize their agents.

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#3 The Long John Silvers Scheme

There's a conspiracy theory that Long John Silvers is some kind of money laundering scheme. They have been open for as long as I can remember, but I have also never seen a busy Long Johns Silvers. Is this just a toxic delusion that I ironically entertain? Perhaps.

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#4 Sleeping Through The '70s

The Laurel Canyon Conspiracy. Basically, if you look at the counter-culture revolutionaries in the music industry in the '60s, most of them were the children of military intelligence people. The theory is that the "free love" movement they inspired was done intentionally to distract the youth from a full-scale revolution. The thought was, if the angry youth of the mid-to-late '60s were too busy loving life, they would stop caring as much about societal ills and then basically sleepwalk through the '70s, which they did.

I stumbled upon this when I was reading up on Jim Morrison and how his father was the one who called in the fake strike at the Gulf of Tonkin that kicked off the Vietnam War, and which was shown later to have been a false flag. Turns out, a lot of his contemporaries were also children of highly placed military people with ties to intelligence. Strange that they all wound up in Laurel Canyon as part of the same movement.

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#5 The AirPod Appeal

Apple could have very well started the meme about AirPods being expensive as a marketing ploy. If they did, that was a smart move on their part because AirPods are everywhere now.

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#6 Remote Traffic Control

My friend thinks that cops go on Waze and leave random police sightings to cause people to slow down without actually having to stay and check on people.

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#7 Classic Coca-Cola Conspiracy

In 1985, Coca Cola decided to start a massive marketing campaign for changing the classic formula of Coke to a new flavor because sales of Coke started to slow down over the years. They developed a new formula, did the focus testing, and found a new flavor that more people decidedly liked. They blasted radio, TV, and print ads with the new Coke marketing, and in April released the new formula.

It was a massive flop. Everyone hated the new formula, which then led to riots, protests, the works. Coca Cola heard the cries of the people and lovingly decided to bring back the old formula and release it as Coca Cola Classic. Their sales shoot through the roof.

The conspiracy is that it was all a plan by the Coca Cola corporation from the start. They knew that taking away the classic Coke for a new formula would cause a backlash and that bringing it back would cause a resurgence in sales, making it one of the most complicated and well thought out marketing campaigns ever.

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#8 Faulty Food Pyramid

The recommended food pyramid is created by the FDA, but the FDA is funded by a lot of specific food industries: poultry, dairy, etc. They, in turn, made the recommended nutrition based off of their funding by these companies, and not based on a well-balanced diet.

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#9 Software Engineer Shortage

"Everyone should learn to code" is a movement to flood the market with Software Engineers so that their salaries can be reduced. That's also why they're dropping "Software Engineer" as a title for the lesser title of "Coder."

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#10 Guilty By Genetics

There's a theory floating around that genetics services like 23 and Me may be selling records to the government and insurance companies. There have been cases of criminals being caught with genetic information, so it's not much of a stretch that other agencies could acquire it as well.

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#11 Snatching Snapchats

Snapchat worked with the FBI to popularize (and secretly improve) face-recognition technology. We went from, "Wow, this is like magic," to "This is totally normal" in a few years and there's no way that the technology isn't being used by law enforcement.

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#12 Handbag Hack

Women’s pants pockets are significantly smaller than men’s pants pockets to encourage us to buy handbags and purses.

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#13 Burnt Bread

There's a rumor that "big bread" companies paid toaster manufacturers to put in a setting that is too high so that people would burn their toast. They would then need to buy more bread as a result.

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#14 Escaping The Limelight

It may be absurd, but one theory claims there's a secret underground PR firm that helps celebrities fake their own passing to escape the harshness of the limelight or if they feel like their life is in danger. For example, Tupac, Biggie, Paul Walker, etc.

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#15 Running On Water

One story says that a dude invented a new type of vehicle that runs on water. A year away from putting his cars into mass production, he mysteriously passed away. Before that, he said that oil companies had threatened his life. I got this information from my dad a couple of months ago.

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#16 Currency Competition

The real reason Apple removed the headphone jack was to try to remove Square pay systems as a competitor for Apple Pay.

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#17 House For Cash

I don't see them where I live now, but where I was living previously, there were a ton of these handwritten signs that prompted you to call a listed number and they would pay you cash for your house. There was no more context than that. They were all sloppily hand-written in black marker with the phone number being the biggest thing on the sign.

I fully believe that they were posted to initiate some kind of secret meeting. They'd pop up all at once then disappear a few weeks later. The signs were so ugly that you'd have to be a complete idiot to think they were legit. Maybe they were just scamming people.

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#18 Batteries And Black Screens

Remember when phones used to have removable batteries and now almost none of them do? A law enforcement agency could make you think that your phone is powered off when in reality it's just displaying a black screen. That way they could still track you, listen to your conversations and take pictures. You would never know for sure.

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#19 Visitors From The Future

UFOs are just time travelers from the future just checking us out. They keep their distance in order not to disrupt anything and cause a butterfly effect that may affect them.

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#20 Starbucks Spelling Social Strategy

Starbucks baristas are told to intentionally misspell customers' names so that people post photos of their Starbucks cup on social media. "Check out how this guy spelled Barry!!" It's pretty much free advertising.

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#21 The Queen Of Scandal

Kris Jenner plotted the whole Tristan Thompson and Jordyn Woods scandal because the new season of Keeping up with the Kardashian is airing soon.

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#22 Work Vacations

The one that I heard last year seems entirely possible. Adam Sandler makes movies in vacation spots for his group of friends.

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#23 The Rush For Milk And Bread

I don't know how the details would work, but it doesn't seem that farfetched to me that grocery corporations would pay meteorologists and weather reporters to exaggerate the weather in order to sell groceries. Grocery stores make a killing, and "big weather" gets 10% off the top.  Everybody 'wins.'

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#24 The Case Of Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain didn’t end himself. I’ve always been an anti-conspiracy theorist, but this legitimately haunts me:

The case was opened and closed on THE SAME DAY. Even if you possess stone cold evidence, that does not happen anywhere. Especially for a celebrity of this caliber. Seattle PD had a long-running reputation for corruption.

There are several other red flags regarding the incident, but instead of spoiling them I'll recommend you guys watch the documentary “Soaked in Bleach" instead. It uses real audio recordings from the PI that Courtney Love hired to essentially spy on Kurt a few weeks before his passing.

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#25 Let It Go

The reason Disney came out with a movie called "Frozen" was so that when you Googled "Disney Frozen," you would get information about the movie and not websites talking about Walt Disney's body being frozen.

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#26 Marilyn Monroe Mystery

There's a theory that Marilyn Monroe didn’t end herself. Either her doctors were careless, or she was targeted (maybe even by the Kennedys).

Two things to know first: Marilyn was receiving a bunch of different medicines from her two doctors for her struggles with mental health. Also, after meeting her future husband, playwright Arthur Miller, she wanted to be able to contribute to intellectual conversations with those around her. So, she started keeping a diary where she wrote down all her conversations, including her conversations with her lovers JFK and RFK.

There was a four-hour window between when her body was found and when the police were called. There was no foam around her mouth, nor a glass of water which she would have used to take the pills. She also had lividity on her front and back. The only way she could have had lividity on her front was if she had been facedown for a period of time (the police first saw her lying on her back). That means her body was definitely moved at some point.

Tissue samples sent to the lab for tox screens during her autopsy mysteriously disappeared. One of her doctors could have easily swiped the samples to cover up his malpractice. For the record, the autopsy had found NO PILLS IN HER SYSTEM.

Also, a bunch of people had wiretapped and bugged Marilyn’s house: the CIA, the FBI, and the mob. She ran with a very dangerous crowd. The CIA and FBI were convinced she was a national security threat because RFK and JFK told her all kinds of things, including state secrets, which she had written down in her notebook. After she was essentially cut off from the Kennedys, there was serious concern that she would share what was in her diary with the world, ruining the Kennedys and potentially exposing state secrets. There is a recording of Robert Kennedy at her house the night she passed. He was shouting at her: “Where is it?”

Decades later, the BBC was making a documentary about her passing. The interviewer asked her housekeeper some questions. After they had stopped filming, but before they had stopped recording audio, the housekeeper said, “How much longer am I going to keep covering this up?”

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#27 Avril, Is That You?

There's a ridiculous theory that Avril Lavigne had passed away and the industry replaced her with an identical-looking clone named Melissa. The theory first surfaced on a Brazilian website which compared side-by-side images of the pop star with her alleged clone. Some people believe the switcharoo is the reason why Avril hasn't been in the spotlight for years, but news reports say she took a break from music due to her Lyme disease.

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#28 Killer Clown Conspiracy

The killer clown sighting conspiracy. Remember all of the crazy clown sightings in the woods, which happened conveniently just before the latest Stephen King’s “It” movie came out? It was all a ploy to popularize scary, killer clowns again before the movie came out.

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#29 Banksy Attack

Banksy’s real identity is Robert Del Naja from the band Massive Attack. Banksy strikes in places where Massive Attack tours. Del Naja’s art style is similar to Banksy’s. On a radio show, a friend of Del Naja’s was talking about Banksy, and he started to say “Rob-“ before he caught himself.

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#30 Breast Cancer And Bras

Bras cause breast cancer. The theory goes that constricting bras not only directly cause lymphatic and blood constriction. It's similar to how sitting too much causes health issues.

A more direct example is people who suffer from hidradenitis or rosacea from wearing bras.

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#31 A Slow Death

I have a theory that the world did end in 2012, but not in the way that everyone thinks. The year 2012 was the height of humanity and it's been downhill since.

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#32 Chapped Lips

Chapstick makes your lips more chapped so you use more. I kind of believe this because everytime I use chapstick, my lips always end up dry again like, two seconds later.

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#33 Art Exchange

People pay millions of dollars for bad modern art that a toddler could do not because they like the art, but because it legitimizes handing over large sums of money to someone for other covert reasons.

For example, I want to buy something from a black market dealer. I can't be seen paying that much money without a legal reason for doing it, so on paper, I give it to him for his "art" that he owns. He, in turn, hands me the black market item I'm looking for under the table and the "art" above the table.

He experiences no loss from losing that art because it wasn't an actual work of art, to begin with.

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#34 The Miracle Berry

The miracle berry conspiracy. There is this African berry that contains a protein which binds to your taste buds and changes the way foods taste. It is widely available in both fruit and freeze-dried tablet forms and is frequently used for "miracle berry parties".

Back in the '70s, one company did research on its properties and found that the protein, when isolated, could act as a fantastic sweetener, without the risk of man-made chemicals like aspartame.

Unfortunately, the aspartame and sugar companies worked hard to silence him, and the protein was denied for use in foods by the FDA.

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#35 Sinking The Ship

The Titanic didn't sink from hitting an iceberg. That's why the owner of the Titanic, JP Morgan, took out such a huge insurance policy on an unsinkable ship and then missed its maiden voyage. There's a lot that goes into this one—the night before its maiden voyage, something happened in the shipyard that caused noticeable damage along the ships hull. Because of the damage, the ship couldn't hold up to icebergs as well and the captain accidentally sank it. This is somewhat backed by the fact that JP Morgan and other wealthy individuals wanted to start the Federal Reserve but were being held up by other wealthy individuals that all happened to be on the Titanic. The Titanic also happened to be 40 lifeboats short of what was needed. It all seems like too much of a coincidence.

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#36 Doubting The Dentists

I firmly believe that dentists are 90% fake. They are the only people qualified to tell you what work you need to have done on your mouth, which is something we protect the most. They make a profit telling you that there are tiny holes that need repairing with needles, drills, and crowns. Their instruments haven’t changed much in hundreds of years. And if everyone had great teeth, they’d be unable to support themselves.

Now, I concede that dental disease and cavities are absolutely real. I do, however, contest the trust we put in an individual whose income is determined by procedures their expertise says I need.

I had a toothache but didn’t say which side. The dentist then said I had three cavities but on the wrong side. I got a second opinion and that dentist said I have no cavities. Who do you believe? The guy who found three cavities, or the guy who didn’t find any?

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#37 Questionable Crash Evidence

I’m not a conspiracy theory person, but this blew my mind. Flight TWA-800 crashes over the Atlantic, a few miles offshore. Dozens of witnesses say they saw an object impact the plane's wing before it crashed. The physical evidence of the plane's remains showed a shattered left side wing, pointing to an explosion near or in that wing prior to impacting the ocean.

The federal investigators ignored and threatened local investigations and aeronautical experts from the FAA. An FBI member was caught tampering with the paid out wreckage and changing fragment locations from left to right side. This made it look like the destruction of the plane was evenly distributed, and not just centered on the left. A witness who was not a US citizen but was a few years from taking the citizenship test was told to basically shut up or else they wouldn’t let her become a citizen.

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#38 Facebook Social Controversy

Facebook purposely attempts to ruin peoples' relationships because the drama gets more views and more views sell ads. Several years ago, they introduced a feature so that your comments on other pages would show up in your friends' feeds. So if you're secretly an atheist and you comment on some atheist page, it would show up in your devout Southern Baptist grandma's timeline, even though it was a conversation that had nothing to do with her. As a result, Facebook "outs" you to your family, and grandma spends her days typing away at all the evil Satanists trying to corrupt her grandson.

If you comment on a public post, it's unavoidable. You used to be able to control who could see your comments even on public posts by other pages, but at the same time Facebook introduced their "tattletale" feature, they took that ability away. Now if they were to stumble across the same page they'd be able to see your comment, but after that change, Facebook started pointing everybody you know directly to it. Not to mention, the privacy settings are difficult to find, difficult to understand, and with each passing year gives you less and less control over who sees what.

By forcibly combining everybody's social circles, Facebook is trying to generate conflict. They want to generate conflict because conflict happens. They're essentially an internet tabloid except instead of showcasing the personal drama of celebrities for clicks and sales, they're doing it to you instead. Ever notice how the vast majority of family drama and relationship fights these days happen on Facebook? That's by design. Facebook is literally destroying the social fabric to make a buck. Consuming relationship stability like it's an oil refinery consuming crude.

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#39 The Infamous Illuminati

The Illuminati. Seriously, at the end of the day, almost every major company in the world is owned by an international corporation and there is maybe 20 of them that own the vast majority of wealth in the world. It's not the same image of a group of rich white men around a table playing with the world but it is close enough that I would argue their essence is the same as the Illuminati's.

Especially in western countries, you can't be a complete ethical consumer because at some point you will run into a big company that manages other sketchy companies in foreign countries. It's simply impossible—in one turn or another you will be financing unethical behavior, but I still believe in reducing the most we can.

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#40 The Lost Bag

Many people believe Robert Kardashian destroyed evidence that would have convicted OJ. He was handed a Louis Vuitton garment bag by OJ's assistant right as OJ returned from Chicago. None of the cops paid any attention to him as he walked away with the bag. When the "bag theory" was discovered a month later, Kardashian claimed to have lost it.

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#41 Hot Mic

There's a conspiracy theory that every mobile device microphone is constantly "hot" and listening for keywords to target advertising. The most glaring instance where this happened to me was when I walked into a colleagues office. He had just gotten a standing desk—the type that goes on top of his existing desk instead of those standalone models.

I said, "Nice standing desk, when did you get that?" He replied, "Thanks, just today." That was literally all that was said about the desk. We talked about other work-related stuff and as I walked out to check my phone, there was an ad on Facebook for that exact model. I have never owned one, wanted one, or Googled one before, yet there it was on my feed. Tin foil hat be darned, they listen in.

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#42 Surviving In Space

Yuri Gagarin was not the first man in space, but rather the first person to survive the journey. There is evidence from various ham radio stations around the world leading up to Yuri's flight that suggest Russia attempted multiple unsuccessful manned trips into low orbit before getting Yuri back alive. This theory is given credence because of the notorious secrecy of Cold War-era Soviet Russia, their tendency to erase "embarrassing" people from official records, and because Yuri's pod broke apart on re-entry causing him to have to bail out of his pod in the upper atmosphere and parachute back to the ground. Yuri actually held the record for the highest free-fall ever as a result of his pod breaking apart until his record was broken in 2012 by Red Bull and Felix Baumgartner.

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#3 Plastic And Other Problems

Let's look at plastic. Everybody's got an opinion on places banning plastic bags and plastic straws. People argue about it. The people who are in favor of that stuff say, "Wow, this company is really eco-conscious, it's great."

So while we're all distracted by our arguments about straws, so it doesn't even occur to us that everything we use comes with plastic packaging, and nobody's doing anything about it.

It's not just the plastic, but I'm 100% confident that most entities specifically do and say things to distract us from more pressing issues.

Also, seriously, the next time you go grocery shopping, really take a look at how much plastic packaging there is. I guarantee you most people aren't recycling most of that plastic... if it can even be recycled at all.

And next time you see some politician tweeting about some dumb stuff, or people protesting something stupid, think to yourself: "What's the bigger issue that's happening that they're trying to distract us from?"

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#2 Shakespeare's Assistants

This is more of an academic conspiracy theory: William Shakespeare was more like an editor, and many writers actually wrote the plays but used his name as it was guaranteed a large audience. To me, it seems legit due to the variety and volume of his work.

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#1 The Bachelors Of IKEA

IKEA makes every part of their process frustrating because they're hoping that one of the five fights you and your partner get into is the one that causes you to break up.

Their stores are labyrinths. You're going to get lost. You can't pronounce any of the product names without making a dumb voice. Even though you measured everything beforehand, you still can't fit that stuff in your car like you thought you could and now your wife is riding home with her knees in the dashboard because her seat needs to be all the way up. That's three fights before you start assembling. And now all of the pieces look exactly the same. You can't tell the difference between Board I and Board D, but you'll catch the error right before you finish and you'll have to go back to step three so your bookcase isn't wobbly. "Why is it so hard? Why don't you do it yourself, Michelle?! Why don't you do EVERYTHING YOUR SELF?!"

Six months later, you're divorced. She took everything. You're trying to furnish a studio apartment on $80. There's only one place you can do that. You're going right back and you're getting the meatballs this time too.

IKEA doesn't make furniture. They make bachelors.

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