160 points
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40 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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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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26 points
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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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5 points

Okay, I’m convinced. 😂

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10 points

Half-done virus got out per accident?

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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
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1 point
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7 points

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

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7 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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4 points
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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 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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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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2 points

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

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0 points
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Nvm

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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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111 points

“Moon landing was fake!!!” “You still believe the moon is real?”

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44 points

This was highly effective when I used it in real life.

The conspiracy theorist got real mad demanding I name sources, I kept telling him to find it on the internet with fake search terms.

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24 points

I would have screamed “do your own research!” before just leaving.

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17 points

congress is full of marxist-leninist-pelosi-ists who intentionally cause inflation to distract us from finding obama’s birth certificate! google “MLP inflation” if yu don’t believe me!

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6 points

I once got on the topic of the moon lending with a creationist co-worker. He said he wasn’t sure, but that if it happened we should be able to see it from satellite pictures. So I said “yeah you can”, pulled it up, and zoomed in on a landing site. You couldn’t see footprints or anything, but you could see the shadow of the flag next to clearly man-made debris

I showed him exactly what he agreed would be proof in a difficult to fake form, and it just temporarily nudged the needle for him

Now, I fight conspiracies with the opposite conspiracies.

Earth is a 4D hypersphere, the earth isn’t hollow, Agatha is just another part of the surface reached by holes

The elites are hiding all the best vaccines, like the ones that cure cancer

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5 points

I recently watched “Brief history of the Wrong Earths” by Hardcore Sci-Fi, not many of these are well known so you could have so much more ammunition for fooling around like that with people.

“flat earth? Nah, it’s expanding bro! Oh wait actually it’s 9 hollow earths one in another!”

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95 points

My best friend has an unnatural talent for this sort of thing and really enjoys toying with conspiracy theory nuts.

When folks start talking about crazy shit, it makes me very anxious and I tend to shut down. Not my buddy. He eggs them on, encourages it, and gets them to say things or agree with things that are even more outlandish than where they conversation started. Things will start at “China invented covid to kill off old people” and somehow end up at “Hillary Clinton paid to have her chromosomes added to the covid vaccines so that DNA evidence can no longer be used against her in the courts”.

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43 points

I love this method and employ it at bars. It’s like gonzo conversationalism.

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15 points

Wasn’t that somewhat how Q-anon started?

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7 points

I think that basically is yeah. Then, when they saw that it had gathered a following, admins on a #chan who were pro-Trump and think that they’re super smart because they use Haskell took over to pump up fringe support.

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3 points

Nah. It all started with FBIanon.

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3 points

Yeah, but how do I know that what you just wrote isn’t another conspiracy theory? I’m just so confused

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1 point

It’s possible the name might be related to some TV series that’s been largely un-watched by flyover state boomers who spend 1000s of hours a year listening to MW and SW radio.

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69 points
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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
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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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60 points

I once tried to get a conspiracy theory going that Flat Earth was a fake conspiracy started by the government to cover up the real conspiracy - that the moon is flat. That’s why we only ever see one side of it and why we were able to land on it. It didn’t take lol.

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31 points
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I just need people to know that they didn’t fake the moon landing, that really happened. They faked the moon. It didn’t exist prior to the 1960s when it was created by the US government in order to move the goalposts in the space race.

The insider knowledge that there would soon be a moon to land on gave NASA the head start they needed on the Apollo program to finally beat the Soviets, who were thoroughly blindsided by the sudden appearance of the moon.

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20 points
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This is bullshit. What we see as the moon is actually the earth, after the reptillians ruined it. What we live on is actually a domed space station orbiting the moon-earth.

We didnt go to the moon, we went back to the moon.

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15 points
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why we were able to land on it.

This is why you failed. Everyone knows the moon landing was fake and directed by Kubrick.

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Yes, but you know how Kubrick was. He made them film on location.

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3 points

I messed up, had to say “it was a Hollywood job” instead of it was fake.

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5 points

I was hoping to sneak that in, get people balling on one conspiracy theory to get in on another one lol

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3 points

I believe you!

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