158 points
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I once heard of a pediatrician who successfully convinced a concerned mother that anti-vax ideology was likely a psyop by the Russians to weaken the health of the American populace starting with our children. Doesn’t hurt that it’s probably true.

EDIT: My personal conspiracy theory is that the Chinese government did engineer (or at least selectively cultivate) COVID, but not to kill Americans. In the early days of the pandemic there was some speculation that it affected some blood types more than others, particularly type A. While no link to blood type specifically was found, type A is a more common genetic trait as you move out of Asia and towards the middle east. China has been heavily persecuting the Uyghurs (Chinese Muslims), and those who have managed to get out of the camps have reported medical experimentation and being injected with unknown substances. In addition, the virus would also kill a significant number of the older population, which is important because of the population crunch they’re about to experience due to one-child policies resulting in a high amount of female-specific infanticide. They’re about to have a bunch of old people and a massive shortage of able bodied young people to care for them. Even if they didn’t directly “engineer” the virus in a gene-sequencing manner, they have a lot off motive to just generally cultivate and spread (you can’t really “breed” a virus) an infectious disease targeting people of middle eastern descent and elders.

Thank you for coming to my tinfoil-hat Ted Talk.

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-12 points
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The Chinese government has not persecuted Uyghurs, tin foil hat person

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14 points

I understand your desire to defend communism.

But really, how far does an authoritarian regime have to go, while calling itself communist, before you judge them?

What evidence would change your mind about the CCP?

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11 points

I was banned from /r/latestagecapitalism for not loving China. Anytime I tried to explain why I do not unconditionally love everything about China, they said “but USA?” Dude, I don’t care about USA. It’s thousands of kilometers away from where I live. Everything I said was interpreted as defending USA. I say “China does this” they hear “USA doesn’t do that”. There are other countries in the world, you know, not everything is about USA. End of rant :)

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7 points

Where did I defend the CCP or communism?

(I do fully support communism and have critical support for China, but that’s not the question here)

What evidence would change your mind about […]

Show me evidence that the Uyghur are being persecuted

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3 points
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My personal conspiracy theory is that the Chinese government did engineer (or at least selectively cultivate) COVID

The theory I’d believe more is that the U S of A govt or one of its agencies engineered and released it in China.

China and India are growing economies, with decent populations and a pandemic would seriously delay their growth and help the U S of A keep it’s top place for a bit longer or destroy its competitors.

I’ve heard the theory being given decent thought by non-western people. And it’s equally, if not, more believable than the other one.

The US is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons on civillians, so them using biological weapons on civillians would not be a big moral barrier for them or a big stretch to think about.

They probably didn’t think it’d spread this much and their own citizens n even president would be idiotic enough to be against vaccines and masks, when people were dying.

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3 points

The theory I’d believe more is that the U S of A govt or one of its agencies engineered and released it in China.

They did a stupid ass job them, killing the older only gonna help China, and it didn’t even killed enough people to make a difference and it backfired in the US, the conspiracy that China was engineering with it and shit escaped make more sense

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1 point
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They did a stupid ass job them

They probably didn’t expect their president to be idiotic enough to be against vaccines and recommend stuff like bleach.

They’re a developed nation and could’ve had better control.
They were able to hinder Chinese trade a bit.

And didn’t they try and fail to kill Castro in many stupid ass ways?

I think them doing it is more likely than China doing it to their own, considering the trade issues that the virus caused for China at the time.

And again, they were the first to use nuclear weapons on civillians. Did it twice even.
I don’t think they’d have an qualms about using biological weapons, if they thought that it’d give them an edge.

They also can float the ‘China virus’ conspiracy to confuse the public and make them anti-China too.

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3 points

The US is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons on civillians, so them using biological weapons on civillians would not be a big moral barrier for them or a big stretch to think about.

That’s such a small stretch that it’s actually a confirmed fact that the US has repeatedly used chemical and biological warfare. Korea and Vietnam are merely two easy examples.

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7 points

The one child policy has been abolished a good while before covid.

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4 points
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…you realize generations are longer than five years…right?

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8 points

That doesn’t change the distribution of demographics by itself. Even assuming the birth rate skyrocketed after the nixing of the one child policy, it takes ~20 years before those people are working age.

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3 points
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The big problem China faced and why the one-child policy was abandoned after all is that there was a staunch focus on having a male child to “keep the bloodline alive” (cultural reasoning) which led to a stagnation in the 0-14 years age group due to an overpopulation with males. This is not fixed by killing off your elderly.

Covid was most deadly for the age group of 65 and above and in 2019, they had proportionally less people aged 65+ than the US (13.50% in China vs. 16.4% in the US). Either China’s scientists failed immensely or the virus stemmed from bad hygiene practices in livestock markets selling bats.

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38 points

The reason I absolutely believe this to be true? Because I’ve used this on my little brothers since we were kids. I’m 45.

It’s called “reverse psychology.”

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4 points

It’s a bizarre and (afaik) unfounded conspiracy theory, but I don’t think this reasoning works as a refutation. It’s still very possible that the experiment got out, and even if not they still needed policies to protect all the people they didn’t want to be affected because the targeting isn’t perfect.

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0 points
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Nvm

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19 points

Can confirm this is true because the same was true for my mum. She was against the COVID vaccine, but then she started believing that the theories were started by the Chinese government to target people who don’t listen to the authorities.

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4 points

…she wasn’t wrong tho!

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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23 points

How are China’s stringent lockdowns explained in this conspiracy theory? Also, where do I sign up as a member?

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25 points

Well you can’t not do that, especially not if you’re already known for doing that kind of thing anyway for other things.

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5 points

Okay, I’m convinced. 😂

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15 points

A repressive regime that becomes less repressive during a global pandemic is highly suspicious. Gotta keep up appearances.

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10 points

Half-done virus got out per accident?

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2 points

Citations needed or all citations point to unreliable sources (Adrian Zenz).

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50 points

Dank memes can’t melt steel beams.

7/11 was a part time job.

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68 points
*

I fondly remember reading a comment in /r/conspiracy on a post claiming a geologic seismic weapon brought down the towers.

It just tore into the claims, citing all the reasons this was preposterous bordering on batshit crazy.

And then it said “and your theory doesn’t address the thermite residue” going on to reiterate their wild theory.

Was very much a “don’t name your gods” moment that summed up the sub - a lot of people in agreement that the truth was out there, but bitterly divided as to what it might actually be.

As long as they only focused on generic memes of “do your own research” and “you aren’t being told the truth” they were all on the same page. But as soon as they started naming their own truths, it was every theorist for themselves.

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17 points

I have never heard the term “don’t name your gods” but it’s my new favorite phrase of possibly the whole fucking year. Thank you.

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13 points

a lot of people in agreement that the truth was out there, but bitterly divided as to what it might actually be.

This has been my take.

They’re not there for the truth. They’re there for validation.

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1 point

A lot of people are predispositioned to believe that the official story is automatically true.

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11 points
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It’s ego powered with insecurity jetfuel, still can’t melt steel beams tho.joke

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29081831/

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1 point

oh shit, is that the problem with leftism

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49 points

Jet fuel indeed doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel. Forging temperature, OTOH, no issue.

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1 point
*

Yeah let’s ignore the fact that it loses 70% of its strength at like 800 F, that fact invalidates my meme catchphrase!

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60 points
*

You don’t understand, steel is either solid or melted. No in-between. No idea what you mean by forging temperature, swords for example are forged by pouring liquid steel to a form, it’s in so many movies!

/s obviously.

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12 points
*

I know the /s but I also want to introduce you to amorphous solids! (Because I like them so now you get to read this lol) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_solid

Which is essentially a “solid” structure without a proper crystalline structure. This will cause it to move as a liquid at incredibly slow speeds. Such a glass for instance. Extremely old historical glass can be seen to be thicker at the bottom than the top. Not because it was built this way, but because over hundreds of years it has “poured” down [1].

*This is a simplified explanation and therefore may not be acutely accurate for sake of simplicity

TL;DR Some solid stuff is really just super slow liquids. I.E. Glass

[1]: See link in comment reply. Glass is an amorphous solid but sources say that glass pane construction is the cause of thicker bottoms rather than it’s movement over time.

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1 point

That’s pretty neat!

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2 points

Ice too. Glaciers are flowing.

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15 points

I like to just be the crazier one. Flat earth? You still believe in an earth, you silly goose egg.

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7 points

I’m part of the no-moon society. Flat earth?! How about the fact that the moon is fake!?

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7 points

The sun revolves around the earth just like the moon.

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4 points

That’s what YOU think! Do your own research man! #NoMoon

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1 point

Exactly. What first hand evidence do we personally have that the moon is real?

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