Ask HN: What is your favourite conspiracy theory?

I tried to start one, but it didn't get any traction.

My theory was that Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David were involved at one time in something very shady, and that they created the "Seinfeld" TV show as part of a plot to protect themselves in the case their past activities came to light.

Consider that the show "Seinfeld" is about a comedian named "Jerry Seinfeld", and the part was played by the real Seinfeld. The character Seinfeld's best friend was George Costanza, and it was well known that he was based on Larry David, and that many of the things George did on the show were based on real-life Larry David incidents.

Note that a few years into the show, character Seinfeld and his best friend get a chance to write a pilot for NBC for a show called "Jerry" about a comedian named Jerry Seinfeld and based on the life of character Jerry Seinfeld, and that included characters based on the character Jerry's friends.

Then, after Seinfeld ended, Larry David went on to make "Curb Your Enthusiasm" for HBO, a show about a character named Larry David who was a comedian and was the Seinfeld co-creator, and real life Larry David played character Larry David. Much of the incidents in CYE were based on real-life Larry David incidents.

These two shows, especially Seinfeld when it went down the recursion rabbit hole with "Jerry", seem designed to blur the line between fictional Jerry Seinfeld and real life Jerry Seinfeld, and between fiction Larry David and real life Larry David.

It's well known that human memory is malleable. If you remember something fairly accurately, but then you hear someone else's recollection of the same event and their recollection differs, your memory can change to better reconcile your account and their account. (This can be a big problem in criminal justice matters...it is not hard for an interviewer to alter the memory of a witness by phrasing questions in a way that suggest something at odds with what the witness remembers).

So my theory was that the purpose of the Seinfeld and CYE shows was for Seinfeld and David to present alternate versions of themselves and of incidents they had been involved in many years earlier to reshape the memories of others who witnessed those incidents, to get them to forget or doubt something that Seinfeld and David did that would be very embarrassing or damaging to their careers if it came to light.

Definitely the Dihydrogen Mooxide one: http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

I would add some comment but I don't want to spoil it to people that never heard of it.

It's just worth a reading :)

Finland doesn't exist:

https://www.reddit.com/r/finlandConspiracy/comments/2y0oog/t...

It's about as silly as most of the commonly cited responses, and yet oddly cute.

Project Blue Beam. I wrote about half of this (and felt stupider afterwards): http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Beam

I don't have a "favorite" but I once heard a consipracy theorist discuss a supposed CIA term called "slides" which is explained below. Regardless of where the term might come from or who wrote the passage below, I think the concept exists (just look to modern-day political discussion).

An excerpt from the first Google result regarding the term:

Most people have built in "slides" that short circuit the mind’s critical examination process when it comes to certain sensitive topics. "Slides" is a CIA term for a conditioned type of response which dead-ends a person’s thinking, and terminates debate or examination of the topic. For example, the mention of the word "conspiracy" usually solicits a slide response with many people. -Fritz Springmeier, author of The Top 13 Illuminati Bloodlines and de-programmer

'Google moving away from Java in favor of Dart and Go because they couldn't get legal control of the Java language.' I have no solid evidence but from legal battles with Oracle and Google's focus on wanting to control their entire stack it might have some merit.

Carly Rae Jespen is an Actual Vampire: http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/24/9189289/carly-rae-jepsen-v...

See the first youtube video.

One that (as far as I know) I made up: that the mortgage deduction on US income tax is to keep the middle class occupied with home improvement so that it won't have time to interfere in government.

Mine is the one where people say we live in a simulation. Gulp

Hillary Clinton had John Kennedy junior killed so she can get the Senate seat he was designated for. She definitely had motive.

more of a hoax than a conspiracy theory:

https://www.truthorfiction.com/msoffer/

Old one: Bonsai Kitten