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fourfourzero t1_itld7p0 wrote

Reply to comment by FanngzYT in Michigan family of 4 who went missing for a week has been found by wwabc

that's what "conspiracy theorist" means

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CrashRiot t1_itlfl17 wrote

Honestly it’s a lot more complex than that. It’s true that most conspiracy theorists are somewhat delusional or misinformed, but some do actually turn out to be true.

For example, during prohibition if someone stood up and said, “I got sick from drinking alcohol. The government is poisoning me!”, most of us would assume they were a nuts conspiracy theorist.

We would be wrong. The government purposefully increased methanol without notice in industrial alcohols to get people to stop drinking. It killed up to 10000 people.

If in the 50s and 60s someone were to say, “the CIA has been performing mind experiments on me!”, again, we’d often consider them crazy conspiracy theorists.

We would be wrong. This became known as MKULTRA, perhaps the most infamous “conspiracy theory” in US history.

Point is, it’s not always delusional. Most of the time? Almost certainly. But definitely there are multiple “true” conspiracies.

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hiS_oWn t1_itlr0u7 wrote

Except the government did so openly and with warning labels on all alcohol poisoned in such a manner. This is as much a conspiracy theory as the onion article "man discovers link between government and NASA".

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DeepSpaceNebulae t1_itlodex wrote

To be clear, they publicly mandated industrial alcohols, i.e. those not for human consumption, have additives . While not exactly good, it’s not like they were poisoning drinking alcohol or did it secretly as it was new regulation for public companies that were making those industrial alcohols

The number of deaths is also impossible to calculate as even un-modified industrial alcohol can cause deaths when improperly distilled by bootleggers

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dustygultch t1_itlkur3 wrote

What was your intent with posting this? Are you agreeing or disagreeing with who you responded to. The man most definitely is delusional

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AtsignAmpersat t1_itlqmsq wrote

They’re just going after a blanket statement because of the very rare occurrences of conspiracy theorist being right? I don’t know who the conspiracy theorist even was in their examples. It’s also entirely possible to be a delusional conspiracy theorist and also right occasionally.

This is Reddit. When you say an absolute, someone will chime in with a argument with “well actually”.

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Legitimate-Cow-6859 t1_itm21sa wrote

That’s what they want you to think

Real shit, the US government has done so much fucked up shit (mk-ultra, Tuskegee syphilis experiment, dropping bio weapons on San Francisco, Iran-contra and importing cocaine while ramping up the war on drugs, various forms of corruption in our electoral system, etc) that there’s a very tangible benefit to people dismissing conspiracy theorists as crazy kooks.

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