11 popular conspiracy theories in recent history

A few weeks after Podesta’s emails were leaked and “Pizzagate” started gaining traction online, a 28-year-old man walked into the northwest Washington pizzeria with an AR-15 rifle. After his search of the premises yielded no dungeon holding child sex slaves, he fired his gun at a locked door before surrendering to police. 

Although the would-be gunman later told a judge his actions were “foolish and reckless,” Pizzagate conspiracies continued to proliferate online, becoming the seed for the equally fantastical QAnon conspiracy. In October 2017, an anonymous poster called “Q” began posting on the messaging board 4chan, claiming to be an intelligence officer in the U.S. government. Q expanded the foundations of Pizzagate: Not only are politicians and Hollywood elites really satanic pedophiles, they also harvest the blood of children to stay young. The only person who could stop them was Donald Trump. (After the election of President Joe Biden, some in the Q universe continue to insist that Biden is an illegitimate president and Trump is ruling from the shadows, from which he will one day emerge to take power after the arrests of everyone from Hillary Clinton to Tom Hanks to the Pope.)

There’s so much to say about QAnon, including its promoters in Congress (hi again, Marjorie Taylor Greene!), its popularity among suburban mothers, its role in the deadly January 6 insurrection, and its ties to the wellness industry, but we’ll leave you with this: Even Alex Jones appears to have given up on Q.

8. The Earth is actually flat

The 2017 Flat Earth International Conference featured speakers such as Mark Sargent, who runs the Flat Earth Clues YouTube series and has enjoyed a leading role in Netflix’s Behind the Curve, a documentary about Flat Earthers. Sargent claims that the world is a flat soundstage under a dome, sort of like the Truman Show. Although there’s not extensive polling on how many people think the Earth is flat, there’s evidence that younger people are more likely to believe this is the case.

The basic idea of this movement is right there in its name: The Earth is flat, not a globe. The actual layout of the Earth varies among Flat Earthers, but the majority seem to believe the planet is a flat disc with an ice wall around it. Although it can be easy to laugh off the Flat Earth theory—which theorists themselves accidentally debunked in *Behind the Curve—*this kind of belief can be a harbinger of extreme science scepticism about issues with real-world implications, like vaccines.

9. COVID-19 as population control

Conspiracies about the novel coronavirus are a dime a dozen: The vaccine implants a microchip used to track people; the fatality rate has been wildly inflated; oh, and Bill Gates is not only responsible for the virus but also the head of a plot to use the virus as population control. Are you tired yet? I am.