My mom thinks that Eleanor Roosevelt and Lyudmila Pavlichenko were secretly a couple.

  • HiImThomasPynchon [des/pair, it/its]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    The man we know as Tony Hawk is a CIA plant, tasked with making skateboarding cool with teenagers. Said teenagers injure themselves skateboarding, requiring prescriptions of opioid painkillers, thereby boosting sales for decades to come.

    The real Tony Hawk died in 1982.

    • Azarova [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      All the "hey, you look like tony hawk" stories he has are actually people catching on that something isn't quite right :stress:

    • chris_pringle [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      in a different direction, skateboarding was invented to keep teenagers from doing drugs because too many white kids were getting arrested

    • RION [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      That's the red herring, he's actually in the pocket Qunol and big turmeric

      • HiImThomasPynchon [des/pair, it/its]
        ·
        2 years ago

        It doesn't. The CIA knew better than to get Tommy involved because he would never shut up about it.

        The CIA definitely faked the 900 tho. Think about it: do you know any skaters who can pull it off?

        • Redcuban1959 [any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          "Yeah, i work... I worked with the CIA... AND MY MOM IS REALLY PROUD OF IT!"

  • ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Blizzard commissioned a bunch of Overwatch porn in the run up to that game's release. The Internet has gotten horny for fictional characters many times - but the horniness for the OW cast was on a whole different level and the output of smut artists in that period boosted 3D animated porn from a niche of a niche to one of the most popular categories.

    • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I'd believe this if only because it implies that Randy Pitchford heard about this and tried to replicated it for whatever his game that had the word "BADASS" all over it was called, but instead of paying anyone he just made a subreddit and tweeted about it like "Holy golly gee look what they are doing to our video game on the internet!".

    • MaoistLandlord [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Randy Pitchford's company made an Overwatch clone called Battleborn and there was an NSFW sub for it. Weirdly enough, he publicly tweets the direct link to the sub sometime during launch or after when popularity was already waning.

  • elgonzalors [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I don't think it's small, but MLK was definitely killed by the FBI and/or the CIA.

  • Owl [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    New world crops are like that because some Olmec dude discovered Mendelian inheritance.

    • edge [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      What do you mean by "like that"?

      • Owl [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        A large variety of easy-to-cultivate and calorie-rich crops, and hot peppers.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Many of them selectively bred from wild precursors that are almost totally inedible.

          It's one of the big questions about domestication; why did people thousands of years ago select plants that had very limited food potential for domestication? Like obviouslt they were right bc maize is amazing, but how did they know?

          • theother2020 [comrade/them, she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            maize is amazing, but how did they know?

            Then discovering / figuring out nixtamalization to evade pellagra. (Which the whites in the south were going crazy and dying from - this book I read said whites had worse diets - lacking key nutrients-than many enslaved people)

            • Redmutineer75 [he/him]
              hexagon
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Actually, there's some evidence as to how ancient Americans discovered nixtamalization. Among pre-agricultural societies across the world, a common method of boiling water before the invention of earthenware was to dig a hole with the water, put a rock in a nearby fire, and drop the heated rock, called a pot boiler, into the water. What they discovered is that if you used limestone, which is common across the Americas, as a pot boiler, the resulting reaction between the heated limestone and water made limewater, providing the necessary alkaline environment for nixtamalization.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I believe the church of scientology infiltrated the IRS in the 70s.

    The game Metal Gear Survive is made from salvaged code from an early build of Death Stranding.

    Hunter S Thompson was an FBI informant.

    • PROMIS_ring [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White well documented

    • MaoistLandlord [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I believe the church of scientology infiltrated the IRS in the 70s.

      They did. But it's pretty wild they managed to do that and not any other government organization to keep the heat off them. Were they truly that brilliant and stupid at the same time?

  • keepcarrot [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Union salting. Union guy and "non-union" guy at a workplace agitate. "Non-union" guy feeds boss the names of anti-union workers as agitating for a union. The boss gets rid of them without telling them to reason and replaces them with a union guy. Eventually, workplace is riddled with union. Demands are made and met.

    It is a conspiracy, but it's pretty minor and does sometimes happen. Also happens to be a conspiracy whose motivations I agree with.

  • Dolores [love/loves]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    fentanyl is disseminated into american cities by police informers & undercover operations, possibly with federal involvement, possibly independently. obviously not all of it but severely tainted waves of non-opiods that kill a bunch of people and raise a panic thereafter leading to an increase funding to the pigs? :the-pigs: i'm smelling bacon

    • AbbysMuscles [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Not to mention the feds poisoned barrels of alcohol during Prohibition. They've literally done this before

    • edge [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      How would that be possible when cops start convulsing as soon as there's fentanyl nearby?

    • chris_pringle [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      to clarify i made this up literally yesterday but i think it would be funny for someone to call pusha t a reaganite

    • PROMIS_ring [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      reminiscing on the classic twitter thread "90s NY Goons in Hip Hop" (wonder why op deleted 👀 )

      certainly drug money in the mix, and we know all about CIA and the drug trade. idk about direct connections though

      edit - ok i found a re-post of the thread on ktt forums lol https://www.kanyetothe.com/threads/dude-on-twitter-about-the-goons-of-90s-hip-hop-in-long-thread.6584258/

      edit -lmao ok this pic of Obama with Jimmy Henchman looks so fake https://images.genius.com/b961ecfc1f39296b8be3324e61e2650b.778x499x1.jpg

  • WittyProfileName2 [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Antivax as a movement was astroturfed by law firms looking to get rich(er) on legal action suing pharma companies for "vaccine damage" of children.

    Like, you have Andrew Wakefield's initial autistic gastric distress study being funded by a cabal of big legal firms and a couple of legal actions that started pretty much immediately after it was published as if they already had their case ready and we're just waiting for the evidence to be created.

    The court cases went nowhere because there wasn't sufficient popular consent around the belief that vaccines cause autism, despite the media blast at the time to convince parents of this lie.

    The antivax movement has been growing since and now the cranks are everywhere so expect the people who tried to profit from manufactured illness before come crawling right back out of the woodwork.

    • Dolores [love/loves]
      ·
      2 years ago

      i thought that the most suspect financial link with Wakefield was to a medical company marketing a different vaccine/vaccination schedule?

      • WittyProfileName2 [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Wakefield did have ties to a company that packaged the MMR vaccines independently (which he claimed would not cause autism), but that company was created after his paper was released.

        Meanwhile, in 2004 it was revealed that Wakefield was recieving a pay of £150 an hour (plus expenses) from a legal representative of JABS (an activist group that was pushing for vaccines as a cause of autism) to write the infamous antivax study.

        In 2006 it was revealed he'd been paid a further fee of £435,643 as a lump sum by a different group of British lawyers shortly before he began work on the study.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The un-conspiracy thing with anti-vax is that Jenny McCarthy almost single handedly boosted it to national attention by talking publicly about abusing her autistic son. Her minor celebrity, dehumanization of her son, and some talk shows created one of the great public health disasters of the 21st century.

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    the DVR system of recording TV in the US where people "fast forward" through commercials is subliminal messaging forcing the viewer to watch images flashing with rapt attention to resume normal play at the first sign of their actual TV show.

    watching someone use this system is like literally watching dystopian mind control occur in real time and it's perfect because the viewer believes they are the ones gaming the advertising system, refuse to consider the alternative, and frankly seem to turn into a complete dipshit with no media literacy over time.

    • ElmLion [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I'm pleased to report subliminal messaging has never been proven effective in any context.

      • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        sure thing buddy. just stare at the screen flashing boobs, logos, burgers, and soda at you for 20-40 seconds with rapt, undivided attention and your finger on a button every 10 minutes all evening for a decade.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Zoomers will never know the thrill of trying to make out flashing, wildly distorted boobs on skinimax at 2am hoping your parents won't come downstairs, unless that's still a thing.

    • Dolores [love/loves]
      ·
      2 years ago

      i don't think its 'subliminal' if they're just watching sped up ads. seems idk, liminal? but its muted & too fast to read i think a lot of the ad's persuasive power is lost, i can't imagine advertisers prefer a system where half their work isn't reaching the customer

    • 7bicycles [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      An acquaintance of mine once "Infiltrated" the Masons and yeah ii's basically just a good old boys club that gets drunk a lot. They let basically of white cis male statue hang out, it's hardly a secret club.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        It is a secret quasi government, but that's because it's where all the small business tyrants in town network and talk politics before they elect the biggest landlord in the country as county comissioner.

  • cricbuzz [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I don't know that I believe in it but there's a theory that Andrew WK doesn't actually exist.

    It's a really fun theory. That apparently it's just always different people performing or doing interviews

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I've read into this and the conclusion I've reached is Andrew WK is a real person who is doing an elaborate Andy Kaufman style bit to suggest he's not a real person, but rather a corporately owned character. He's doing a mysterious ARG about himself basically. I also think it's something he's doing for fun or artistic reasons, I don't think there's actual weird legal stuff going on. Also I kinda believe he wears a wig and/or facial prosthetics as part of his...pretending to be a character pretending to be a real person. I've seen videos of him in studio settings with a completely different look, like shorter hair and a different look to his face. He probably does this to make it seem like he's more than one person.

      A former classmate of his recalls an instant where in an acting class the students were all talking about their ambitions for the future. Andrew WK said something like he wanted to "construct his own non-existence." Like it's his dream to leave a confused, almost mythical legacy.

    • PROMIS_ring [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      the site dedicated to this theory is 404 now unfortunately http://what-happened-to-awk.weebly.com/awk%20--%20steev-mike-the-basics.html

      this piece covers it well though https://www.stereogum.com/2015589/andrew-wk-steev-mike/columns/sounding-board/

      edit - found this other site is still up http://truthaboutandrewwk.blogspot.com/?m=0

      this one too http://awilkeskrier.homestead.com/

      SORRY, THIS WEBSITE ONLY WORKS ON PC COMPUTERS!

      WARNING: THIS SITE CONTAINS NUDITY

      :gigachad-hd:

    • tripartitegraph [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      he just kinda fucked off in 2021 or 2022. Deleted all social media. I don't think Kat Dennings, who he had been dating, has posted him since then either. I think I might be with axont, I think it's a bit/art piece at this point