I love me a good conspiracy. Who shot JFK? We don\u2019t know. There\u2019s weird shit there that doesn\u2019t make sense. Was the moon landing faked? I used to call shenanigans on that, but, my god, we can\u2019t even get out of Earth\u2019s orbit almost 50 years later, so, hmmm, you know? Are there secret societies that run the world behind the scenes? Well, I don\u2019t know how anyone could argue against that if you live in the United States of Corporatacracy. And if you watched that documentary on Scientology how are you not in the streets right now with torches and pitchforks? Oh, right, because you vanished mysteriously as soon as you tried. <\/p>\n
But there are some conspiracies that just don\u2019t make any sense at all. Like, if you buy into them, you\u2019re a really dumb fucking cunt and everyone says that about you as soon as you\u2019re out of earshot.
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Number One: Contrails<\/strong><\/p>\n The conspiracy:<\/em><\/p>\n When you see the condensation trail behind a jet, it\u2019s actually part of a massive, global conspiracy to release chemicals into the atmosphere. These \u201cchemtrails,\u201d depending on who you ask, have many purposes, from controlling the weather, to brainwashing us, to shortening our life spans, to repairing holes in the atmosphere made by UFOs. Most commonly the belief is that they\u2019re part of some attempt to control our minds and\/or make us sick. The “chemtrails are toxins” camp says that we\u2019re being poisoned because of…something something. I prefer the HAARP conspiracy theory. HAARP was cool before the Hadron Collider spelled the apocalypse. It stands for High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, and it\u2019s a real thing. Very simply, HAARP\u2019s mission was to seed the ionosphere to see if we could develop a technology that could boost radio waves. Like, you know, turn the Earth into an antenna or something. Like every evil alien tries to do on Doctor Who<\/em>. <\/p>\n HAARP\u2019s main goal is to improve communications across the board. In theory, your GPS phone can be accurate to within a foot instead of a hundred feet. Which…I guess could be useful if it was stuck in the couch or something. Plus there\u2019d be no weird delays when you talk to your friend in the jungles of Borneo via sat-phone because you\u2019re James Bond.<\/p>\n Oh, and we\u2019d like to understand how the fuck the ionosphere works\u2026because we didn\u2019t really know much about that till HAARP.<\/p>\n The HAARP conspiracy theory is that the government is turning the ionosphere into a mega-weapon and it\u2019s totally in the style of Lex Luther \u2013 weather control! The Earth\u2019s atmosphere itself is being weaponised and, once done, the government will be able to control all aspects of the weather and communications. This nefarious atmospheric magnetic communication can also be used to send high frequency radio waves into our brains and control our thoughts and actions. (The HAARP conspiracy is the root of the iconic “tinfoil hat” image.)<\/p>\n Why you\u2019re a dumb cunt:<\/em><\/p>\n So, look, there\u2019s actual science behind what\u2019s happening. It\u2019s water vapor from the engines. Condensation. You learned this in fucking grade school, as well. Anyone with more than an 8th grade education knows what contrails are. Hell, anyone who drives a car understands this. In fact, if you were born in the last 200 years, you should understand this. I don\u2019t even think you need grade school science. <\/p>\n Besides, how does this poisoning work? We\u2019ve had 80 years of contrails and we\u2019re all the same stupid fucks we\u2019ve always been. Is there some global government invested in a really long game here? Yes, Dark Lord, in just 500 years the human race will belong to us! Or…to our 16 generations removed descendants! Jeez. If so, then fine. Why should I care?<\/p>\n And the HAARP stuff? Look, if the US government could control the weather, then why are we worried about Iraq? Iran? South Korea? Afghanistan? Why aren\u2019t Mummy<\/em>-style evil spirit dust storms swirling through Iran all the time? How come there isn\u2019t 89 feet of snow in Moscow right now? And controlling us with radio waves? We\u2019re more divided and fucked up than we\u2019ve ever been. If someone could control our thoughts, then how come our leader isn\u2019t General Gonzo Bullethead, and the United States doesn\u2019t include the entire world?<\/p>\n Now, the conspiracy nuts say that we have to careful about controlling the weather. Little nudges here and there. If we show our hand, the world will turn against us. Um…dudes, we can control the weather! If everyone launches a nuke at us at once, we can zap them out of the air instantly. HAARP\u2019s been accused repeatedly of knocking planes out of the sky. And who\u2019s going to launch a nuke against us when they know we can control the launch, defend against it, and then send an ocean-sized tsunami at them? I think, even if I were the leader of ISIS, and I was told that my choices were to either watch a category 5 hurricane form in 14 minutes in the swimming pool out back or to put on a uniform and work at Dairy Queen and vote Republican, I\u2019d snap to attention and let them know what my size was. <\/p>\n Number Two: Numbers Stations<\/strong><\/p>\n The Conspiracy:<\/em> <\/p>\n These mystery radio stations (which still exist) and broadcast a seemingly nonsensical string of numbers, phases, and songs are actually transmitting orders to spies. Or, for the real fringers, it\u2019s some sort of mind-control (see HAARP, above).<\/p>\n Why you\u2019re a dumb cunt:<\/em><\/p>\n Well, duh, motherfucker! We\u2019ve been doing that since Marconi\u2019s time. Try reading a book sometime. Hell, when you scurry home to watch Sherlock<\/em> on the BBC you\u2019re tuning into the descendant of a glorified numbers station. People go on and on about numbers stations when they\u2019re obviously not a mystery. It\u2019s like you all are constantly screaming \u201cThe number 2 comes after the number 1!\u201d <\/p>\n Yet people are super devoted to this conspiracy, and it even seeps into our popular culture (see Lost<\/em> as just one of many examples). They write about it, they monitor the stations and try to crack the codes, people even try to pinpoint the location of the stations and travel the world trying to snoop out what\u2019s going on. The conspiracy sites say \u2013 we don\u2019t know anything about them! Aaaahhhhh!!! What are they?!<\/p>\n But… Captured spies have repeatedly \u2013 and we\u2019re talking from 1918 through to 2006 \u2013 said that they were receiving orders from numbers stations, and even explained everything in detail. Not to mention that those people who try to locate the stations have actually found some of them<\/em> and they\u2019re all at military bases. So, okay, there\u2019s your answer. Now try not to get noticed as you slowly back away.<\/p>\n The conspiracy people wonder why no government takes responsibility. Okay, look, the whole point of spying is…what? Not being detected while you steal secrets or otherwise fuck shit up, right? Do you really expect the government to say, \u201cOh, yeah, we\u2019re spying on people. But don\u2019t tell anyone, okay?\u201d<\/p>\n The mind control aspect of numbers stations is a strange thing to claim. That would mean that everyone needs to be listening, right? And, no, the radio waves are not being magically decoded by our cells or teeth or something. Since numbers stations are getting rarer, and since I would be hard pressed to find someone with a shortwave radio, the only way I\u2019ll ever hear a numbers station broadcasting is when one of the conspiracy sites has a recording of it. This means that the conspiracy theorists who think the numbers stations are broadcasting mind control signals are actually the ones propagating these signals to the public. This does actually constitute a conspiracy. <\/p>\n Number Three: Ancient Aliens<\/strong><\/p>\n The conspiracy:<\/em> <\/p>\n That mankind was settled\/seeded\/uplifted\/gang-raped by alien astronauts. Thus the reason so many ancient peoples really seemed to cream themselves when it came to astronomy and liked to stack heavy stones.<\/p>\n Why you\u2019re a dumb cunt:<\/em><\/p>\n You know, lots of this shit boils down to \u201cTry reading a book sometime\u2026\u201d This, like the Maya apocalypse, comes not from anything scholarly but, instead, by hack writers trying to sell books in the mid-20th century. <\/p>\n Ancient astronauts sort of rose in the zeitgeist of silver age sci-fi — the Wells\/Verne era into the 50s. The 50s is when a man named Harold Wilkins took this theory to the next level with his trilogy of books Flying Saucers on the Attack, Flying Saucers on the Moon<\/em>, and Flying Saucers Uncensored<\/em>.<\/p>\n His plagiarized BS was picked up by more academic-minded people and became a thing in the 60s and 70s. The whole idea of ancient aliens hinges on two things \u2013 weird ass drawings that go as far back as the Paleolithic era clearly showing anachronistic things like helicopters and men in spacesuits, and odd artifacts that we can\u2019t explain. <\/p>\n The weird ass drawings, of course, are all subjective and, when you ignore the context and accompanying text, you can say anything. That man has a jackal\u2019s head! Therefore werejackal\u2019s exist!<\/p>\n Seated Mayan astronauts appear to be haloed (or helmeted) and ascending into the stars when, right there on the tomb\u2019s walls or the sarcophagus itself, the Mayans were kind enough to explain WTF was going on. They\u2019d depict their rulers and gods as part of the very terrestrial tree of life, which does look a bit cosmic and out there if you look at it from the right perspective. It\u2019s really unfair to point at the Mayans and use their art and culture as evidence of ancient aliens (or the apocalypse or anything else) because we don\u2019t know too much about them. The Spanish obliterated the culture of the indigenous South Americans \u2013 and they did so with abandon. We\u2019re talking temples razed, documents destroyed, history simply erased. We didn\u2019t crack the Mayan language till 50 years ago, and we didn\u2019t know their actual history till about 40 years ago. There are chunks of the Mayan language that we still don\u2019t understand today and, with each new discovery, everything we know about them changes wildly. In 1970, it was believed that the Maya were primarily contemporaries of Rome and all that, just sort of magicing themselves into existence in the middle of the first millennium AD. Now we know that the Mayan culture goes back to 3200 BC. So, you know, if you said, back in 1960, that you knew what the Maya were up to, you were wrong.<\/p>\n All in all, when it comes to interpreting petroglyphs and so on, it seems odd that we don\u2019t take into account Mankind\u2019s natural storytelling ability and how our brains are basically pattern recognition machines. We\u2019ve been telling fantastical stories since writing was invented. In fact, the first examples of the written language are fantastical stories. It always depresses me when I read books like A Canticle for Leibowitz<\/em>, where the events of a post-apocalyptic future are largely shaped by a shopping list. I think it more likely that the post-apocalyptic future will be shaped by Harry Potter. <\/p>\n So is it odd that, 8000 years ago, people were writing about giants and magic and flying and feats of derring-do? I don\u2019t know. Is it odd that Rick Grimes has killed over 500 zombies right there in your living room in glorious high-definition?<\/p>\n And as to pattern recognition \u2013 such as the Egyptian hieroglyphs that look an awful lot like they\u2019re talking about helicopters \u2013 that\u2019s what our brain does. That\u2019s why we started out with pictographs and symbols as our language. We\u2019re always searching for patterns. It\u2019s why you remember faces better than you remember names. It\u2019s how we got out of the jungles alive. If you show me ancient pictographs then, not being learned in what they mean, I\u2019ll try to match them to patterns. That\u2019s a sun, that\u2019s a cow, that\u2019s a person throwing a spear. Is this a helicopter? Sure, looks like one to me. But the famous \u201chelicopter\u201d pictograph in Seti\u2019s temple is actually a pharaoh\u2019s name that was defaced by his son\u2019s name, which is written overtop it. Seti I had the bad form to die before his temple was complete. When his son, Ramesses, took over, he wrote over his father\u2019s name. Every ruler had five names, and they all start out with these long honorifics that (annoyingly even then, I imagine) are represented by stuff like a rising sun, a falcon sitting around, plants, etc. So if the father\u2019s name is represented by, say, a rising sun, and the son\u2019s name is represented by a falcon sitting on some stuff and curling its wings, and you overlay them… The result? It\u2019s very clearly a picture of the helicopter from Airwolf<\/em>. <\/p>\n In untouched photographs, you can actually see that someone has \u201cwritten over\u201d the original pictographs, and they\u2019re both done by different workers so it\u2019s as clear as two different types of handwriting. We know the images of the names for Seti and his lazy son from other monuments, so there\u2019s no guesswork here. Also \u2013 why is there only this one depiction of Airwolf<\/em>? There were so many episodes of the show, and we were always so eager for them to actually fucking use the Airwolf<\/em>, that I think the pictograms would be everywhere. \u201cRamesses II, he of the sedge and bee, ruler of all the lands, wonders why the Airwolf <\/em>wasn\u2019t featured at all in the season 3 premiere.\u201d<\/p>\n What about megalithic oddities? Stonehenge, Easter Island, the Nazca Lines, the pyramids? Used to be that proponents of the ancient alien theory said that these places only existed because aliens built them. Now, of course, modern discoveries have figured some of this out. We\u2019ve discovered whole towns that rose up around massive projects like the pyramids, and we know where the stones came from and it all makes sense. They were quarried \u2013 we\u2019ve found the quarries. They were transported by land and sea \u2013 we\u2019ve found the transport routes, and even evidence of where quarried blocks fell overboard or sunk their transports. We\u2019re still finding things that help put the whole picture into place \u2013 such as recent finds showing that Stonehenge is, in fact, part of a much larger project. Stonehenge, itself, is a little small, by the way. There\u2019s a henge about 20 minutes north that\u2019s so big the entire village of Avebury is in the middle of it. So why don\u2019t we hear about that? Why\u2019s it always Stonehenge, Stonehenge, Stonehenge? Because all this shit is pop culture stuff. If I talk to you about Avebury you\u2019ll stare blankly at me, but everyone knows what Stonehenge is. <\/p>\n The why of it all? What\u2019s the point of a generation-long project like that? Isn\u2019t stacking things oddly usually best left to the realm of bored poltergeists? <\/p>\n Look, the first thing Humanity did when we reached a point where we had enough people to allow for luxury and a comfortable upper class was look for a way to keep everyone busy. If everyone is busy \u2013 say, building roads, or performing a totally bullshit construction project for 50 years \u2013 then they\u2019re not sitting around the forum saying, \u201cYou know what? I think I\u2019d make a good king.\u201d<\/p>\n The moment you do get a whole class of people who can sit around and wonder idly about how many people need to die before they become king, shit goes wrong. In fact, that\u2019s just about how every ancient empire collapsed. So…let\u2019s build a pyramid! You and 50,000 of your buddies. We\u2019ll start today and we\u2019ll finish up in…30 years. You\u2019ll get a steady paycheck, job security, and you\u2019ll be out there in the desert away from the capital. Hail Khufu! <\/p>\n But you can argue for hours about this stuff because, yes, even if you rationalize it, lots of the shit our ancient ancestors wrote, drew, and built is fucked up and makes no sense. Take, for example, the Dodecahedra \u2013 bizarre, hollow metal balls covered in arcane symbols that, apparently, were widely used throughout the Roman Empire. We have no clue what they were for, and the official science-types have settled on \u201ccandlesticks,\u201d a declaration that feels like it was picked at random. I know I just scream \u201ccandlesticks\u201d whenever I\u2019m trying to get out of an awkward conversation.<\/p>\n What convinces me to not accept this theory is simple: Where are the ancient aliens? What happened to them? Why aren\u2019t they checking in on us?<\/p>\n The response is \u2013 aliens are among us! But, come on. That\u2019s Human hubris talking. The assumption that the Human race is something glorious as opposed to a filthy plague on the surface of this otherwise wonderful world. If the aliens are among us, observing us, waiting for…something…then they\u2019re crazy! That\u2019s like if you put on a cockroach costume and burrow into the wall behind the kitchen sink and live with the cockroaches. For thousands and thousands of years.<\/p>\n Even then, they would always know you\u2019re not a cockroach and would all be WTF is with this guy?<\/p>\n My friend says that the aliens among us all work in secret because we\u2019re not ready for the truth. Slowly but surely, things are leaking out and the cultural zeitgeist is prepping us for the Big Reveal. Missing planes over the Indian Ocean, unsolved mysteries, vanished people, the reboot of the X-Files<\/em>… It\u2019s all part of the masterplan to prepare us for the moment when the alien overlords reveal themselves.<\/p>\n So we can only conclude, I guess, that Donald Trump is an alien. Which explains everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love me a good conspiracy. Who shot JFK? We don\u2019t know. There\u2019s weird shit there that doesn\u2019t make sense. Was the moon landing faked? I used to call shenanigans on that, but, my god, we can\u2019t even get out …<\/p>\n