A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era • Hacker News Board

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#41

Post by gdulli » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 4:00 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #33

There are more conspiracies. Here are some well-verified ones: - Epstein and way too many important people. - The big one from the 1970s onward to increase the return on capital by lowering living standards, the "Powell memorandum".[1] That's the founding document of the modern conservative movement. - Facebook/Meta being behind schemes for age verification.[2] [1] https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/powellmemo/ [2]…

I wouldn't say that Epstein is a vindication of conspiracy theories, at least not the "Bigfoot" type. Epstein was already in trouble with the law for trafficking over 20 years ago. The pedophilia in the Catholic church was known decades before that. It's shameful that these stories didn't get more attention sooner, but the general veracity of them wasn't in question.

The prototypical pedophilia conspiracy theory we didn't believe at all is the Comet Ping Pong one, which was appropriate.

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#42

Post by mikert89 » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 4:10 AM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #32

mikert89 wrote: post #18

I used to look down on conspiracy theories, now I think many are actually true, or are mixed with truth. Its really unlikely that a theory circulates widely but has no basis in reality

Popular conspiracy theories are psyops to either discredit people, movements or ideas The government spent a lot of time and energy pumping up UFO conspiracy theories to hide sightings of classified aircraft, and they're getting pumped up again in the age of developing cheap weaponized drones. I would not be surprised that the whole human sex trafficking and Qanon related conspiracy theories are also psyops to hide w…

Wild to think Q anon could have been truth mixed with wild fiction to throw people off. Thats really only something I thought happened in movies, or novels. I'm willing to believe alot more than i ever thought I would

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#43

Post by antognini » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 4:15 AM UTC

In a similar vein I highly recommend Behind the Curve, which is a documentary about the flat Earth movement. It was a pretty fair film and tried to get to know the people involved in the movement and what it was that motivated them.

It was interesting to see that one of the main figures featured in the documentary started out pretty generically wanting to get into conspiracy theories and started reading up on one after another until he found a particular one that clicked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behind_the_Curve

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#44

Post by II2II » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 4:18 AM UTC

zyxzevn wrote: post #9

Physics is needed to fully understand the demolition of 3 towers..

Funny story there: I was stuck with a conspiracy-minded high school teacher who insisted that some sort of flash lower down in one of the towers was proof of a demolition. I got fed up with listening to it each day, so I calculated how long it would take a shock wave to propagate through steel, from the crash site to the flash below. It pretty much worked out.

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#45

Post by jibal » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 4:32 AM UTC

mikert89 wrote: post #18

I used to look down on conspiracy theories, now I think many are actually true, or are mixed with truth. Its really unlikely that a theory circulates widely but has no basis in reality

> Its really unlikely that a theory circulates widely but has no basis in reality

No, this is not at all true. For example, the only "truth" of BigFoot is the hoax video that many people are emotionally inclined to think isn't a hoax. The only "truth" in Qanon is the messages that Q wrote. Pizzagate was believed by people emotionally inclined to believe that Hillary drinks children's blood. And on and on. Did the government fake the moon landing? Many people believe so, despite no "truth" to it. Is the Earth flat but NASA is conspiring to tell people it's a globe? Is evolution a hoax? There are reasons that these circulate widely despite having no truth to them.

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#46

Post by jibal » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 4:37 AM UTC

mikert89 wrote: post #42

heavyset_go wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Popular conspiracy theories are psyops to either discredit people, movements or ideas The government spent a lot of time and energy pumping up UFO conspiracy theories to hide sightings of classified aircraft, and they're getting pumped up again in the age of developing cheap weaponized drones. I would not be surprised that the whole human sex trafficking and Qanon related conspiracy theories are also psyops to hide w…

Wild to think Q anon could have been truth mixed with wild fiction to throw people off. Thats really only something I thought happened in movies, or novels. I'm willing to believe alot more than i ever thought I would

> I'm willing to believe

Well there you have it. That has nothing to do with truth, only an emotional inclination. For instance, you are strongly inclined to believe the claims in the comment you responded to, despite it being almost entirely BS.

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#47

Post by nullorempty » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 4:55 AM UTC

II2II wrote: post #44

zyxzevn wrote: post #9

Physics is needed to fully understand the demolition of 3 towers..

Funny story there: I was stuck with a conspiracy-minded high school teacher who insisted that some sort of flash lower down in one of the towers was proof of a demolition. I got fed up with listening to it each day, so I calculated how long it would take a shock wave to propagate through steel, from the crash site to the flash below. It pretty much worked out.

Congrats. You solved the puzzle.

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#48

Post by mukmuk » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 5:24 AM UTC

Somewhat relatedly, there is a pretty plausible theory that some “find the Yeti” expeditions were in fact cover for operations by my country’s intelligence services to sabotage China. See e.g., https://topsecretumbra.substack.com/p/the-secret-history-of-...

(Btw the general idea that there are animals that we don’t know about is not remotely far-fetched. A new possum genus was discovered like a month ago.)

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#49

Post by noman-land » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 5:38 AM UTC

II2II wrote: post #44

zyxzevn wrote: post #9

Physics is needed to fully understand the demolition of 3 towers..

Funny story there: I was stuck with a conspiracy-minded high school teacher who insisted that some sort of flash lower down in one of the towers was proof of a demolition. I got fed up with listening to it each day, so I calculated how long it would take a shock wave to propagate through steel, from the crash site to the flash below. It pretty much worked out.

What was the teacher's reaction?

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#50

Post by DANmode » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 6:12 AM UTC

lp4v4n wrote: post #31

mkoubaa wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're all on a spectrum between flat earth and Epstein didn't off himself, with some clustering at either end

A few years ago, the "tinfoil hat crowd" had this absurd claim that Ghislaine Maxwell was a reddit powermod: https://www.vice.com/en/article/incoherent-conspiracy-sugges... The article above is from 2020, and later the FBI itself used the user maxwellhill as evidence in Ghislaine's investigation: https://www.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/1qsf6y6/reddit_pos...

The Overton Window shifts,

no matter what the “we always believed and knew” crowd tries to say.