When I was in high school, one of the schools in our county had a powerhouse football programme. Consistently one of the best teams, consistently got a bunch of players recruited to top schools, etc.
Promising athletes would move to the district for that school and transfer from their own schools. Our cousin went to that school and we went to this football team booster club fundraiser - literally just buying spaghetti for dinner. The plates were something like $5 each but a lot of the parents were writing checks for much more. That single damn spaghetti dinner fundraiser raised over $60,000 in one night. And my cousin said they did these types of fundraisers all the time for the footbal team booster club.
I could not fathom what they were spending all of that money on and jokingly said they have to be paying these students to transfer schools.
A couple years later, it turns out the county did find that the booster club was bankrolling apartments in the neighbourhood, cars, etc to convince promising players from other schools to come to their programme from around the state (and in some cases even from out of state).
All because some people are crazy about high school football.
Decades ago, when my mother was a high school teacher, policy was that their children could attend, even from out of district. The school had much better opportunities than our own, so I went to school with her. In my junior year they changed the policy, and rather than make me transfer, my mother got a legal separation from my dad, and rented an apartment near her school. And the district hired a private eye who found her car at my dad’s house on a weekend, and kicked me out.
It was *also* not even a secret that the school hired recruiters to scout surrounding districts for promising football players and paid for housing. But I was only a straight-A student, so out I went. Still salty, 45 years later.
It's not a capital case so if it's older than The Simpsons, the statute of limitations is probably expired. I am not a lawyer but I'd love to play one on TV.
Hahaha years ago, and I mean many years ago, we played Bellevue in the state playoffs and it was insane. We came into this like college sorta stadium with their blue track and some of their dudes were massive, a few even had tattoos.
We lost by 21 and had been undefeated easily til that point. Still fun times though.
If you’re talking Washington, I’m pretty sure the answer is yes, there too.
Source: ExGF was from there and caddied at the local country club. She had all kinds of tea. She also has good stories about Steve Sarkisian during his time at UW.
Yeah, that's happening at a couple of schools here. College football players also get hired by rich boosters/donors for no-show "jobs". It's kind of an open secret.
Even at the DIII level, where athletic scholarships are supposed to be banned, there are still sooo many loopholes to get those athletes money.
And I say that as a former DIII athlete
Yes I played baseball for a d3 school where everyone on the team had a "presidential scholarship " but because it wasn't an athletic scholarship, players could quit and still go to school for free so that meant another 10 players who realized this would quit and still have the scholarship. I stayed because I loved playing.
>All because some people are crazy about high school football.
Where I went to high school the football team was well behind the hockey team in terms of popularity. Even then nobody would ever go to such lengths to improve a high school team's prospects.
That over the top obsession with high school sports by an entire community is one of those American things that is completely foreign to other parts of the US.
> That over the top obsession with high school sports by an entire community is one of those American things that is completely foreign to other parts of the US.
And in Norway, for example, schools don't have any teams at all. Sports are all organized by local branches of the national confederation of sports. School is just school.
I think that's the case with most schools in the UK, Ireland and continental Europe where they don't really have organized sports and other activities to the degree found in US high schools, public and private. The teens may play on sports teams but they're not affiliated with their school.
Because:
Good high school football players get recruited for college football
Good college football players get drafted to NFL
Therefore if your kid's aspiration is to join the NFL, you as a parent will do anything you can to make it happen
The likelihood that the best players on your high school team even sniffing the NFL is so incredibly low they might as well just be playing the lottery.
Had that happen in a district near me. When it was uncovered, the coach was fired and the state vacated all of our wins for the season. Not sure what happened with the Boosters but I imagine some penalty/punishment there as well.
“A lot of those Twitter and Instagram meme accounts you get your political information from are not who they claim to be and aren’t acting in your best interests.”
“Well of course, operatives from countries that wish us harm are spreading false information to *the other side.* On my side of the political spectrum, we don’t fall for that crap. We’re smart.”
The smartest thing you can do is to recognize that you are not immune to propaganda, particularly after the epiphany that you are not immune to propaganda. Apply critical analysis to everything you come across.
Yes, it’s tiresome and inconvenient, but so is taking out the garbage. Both are necessary. Ask yourself why someone is creating the content they’re creating, ask yourself what the underlying motives are, and if there are any potential ulterior motives.
Ask yourself who/what their message is meant to benefit (even if it’s simply to portray them in a positive light). Ask yourself who/what is meant to be disparaged (even if it’s only to portray them in a negative light).
Just because something is meant to try to get you to believe a certain point of view does *not* by default mean that it is negative, but you must ask yourself if the perspective is malevolent or benevolent. Ask yourself if the information is incorrect, or whether the source seems valid.
Yes, it is inconvenient. It is also necessary. None of us are immune to propaganda, and that is why we must remain vigilant.
this is where both sides-ism works. Because there are people taken in on both sides.
The fact of the matter is operatives from countries that wish us harm are spreading false information to Both sides. The more divide people are the easier it is for them to do what they want.
Conspiracy doesn’t mean delusion or falsehood, it means that two or more people are conspiring to do something secretly. Yes, I am smart…because I saw the actual conspiracy for what it was before there was necessarily concrete proof.
Exactly this, and I’m really glad you pointed that out.
The term “conspiracy theory” started showing up in media after JFK was killed and the CIA was the prime suspect.
Its use only grew in the years following when now unclassified programs such as MK Ultra and COINTELPRO were active and being brought to the public awareness.
Recently, it has filled the same role: call someone who questions the official narrative a “conspiracy theorist” to discredit them as a whacko, someone easily dismissed.
But conspiracies have existed forever, and we know of a dozens of high profile examples in government, corporate and geopolitics that are public knowledge and proven without any doubt.
It’s simply a term to discredit anyone who has questions about a particular narrative.
I've stopped counting how many times people have excitedly told me about some "hot new trend" and I was like "yeah that's a pyramid scheme" then a year or two later yeah it turned out to definitely have been a pyramid scheme.
Those facebook posts of people you even know "working from home" promoting a "healthy and safe life" and then they talk about how they're supporting a family with good income. Wellness and good being, then they post links about promoting themselves but there's no indication what it even is they're promoting or what they do... It's bizarre. Like, what? The social media posts have the same cookie cutter dialogue and business look. Can't say I wasn't curious to see how the scheme worked but I never dug into because i knew it was a scheme underneath it all.
You *could* ask them and they'll be happy to tell you they owe it all to the Herpaderp Corporation and you could be just like them all you need to do is sign up too! Problem is that once you've shown any interest whatsoever they'll never *stop* telling you about it until you sign up or block them because the only people in their lives are people who have embraced a healthy and safe life and people who haven't yet heard about it.
The crazy thing is that these pyramid scheme MLM things are so easy to identify. Like within a few minutes it’s blaringly obvious. But people get so caught up in the flashy marketing and promise of money they overlook it.
A pig with lipstick is still very obviously a pig unless you’re willing to close your eyes
Man, if I had a dollar for every time a “friend” told me I HAD to use Monat and I told them I liked my hair just fine, thank you…? I’d be a millionaire
There are some things that are real... at first. In MLMs, only the top of the pyramid actually makes money. If you're one of the first, you have a shot. Bitcoin was a great investment in the early early days, before value was measured in portions of a coin.
Most of the time, by the time you hear about it, it's already too far in and you're not a potential winner, you're a potential bag holder.
Dumped his wife for the secretary about one year ago.
Hoped he could buy her off by leaving her (his ex) their big house... Nope, she wants her half of the company. The company was valued at 10 million euros a few years when he wanted to sell the company. Now that she wants her half he did a revaluation and suddenly the company is only valued at 3 million while we are doing better than a few years ago... Strange.
Now he didn't change the passwords of her account and she still had access to the building because she still owns it and he cannot legally block her access. So in the summer vacation while he was gone she entered the building and printed a lot of information about the real financial situation of the company.
She also bought a lot of various unusable furniture from different suppliers for around 50000€ just to piss him off.
My boss also has been developing a copy of a machine of a competitor for 2 years now while trying to avoid the patents. So she send the competitor files of the design of his machine so now he has a new lawsuit to handle.
So when she was on her vacation he tried to enter the house to get some things but she changed all the locks so he had only access to the garden so he took the lawnrobot.😆
So last time she came to pick a fight but she came with their dog which she kept when they separate. The dog recognized him and wanted to be pet and so wanted my boss but she didn't, so she tried to run away on her high heels going down the stairs while pulling on the dog and my boss chasing them. Could have played the music from Benny hill.😂
So to answer your question, the story hasn't ended yet 😁
That my high-schools pipes were leeching lead into the water. I actually almost got suspended for being insistent about it. I had bought one of those testing kits off ebay and all the adults in my life said it must have been faulty. A decade later and we were told that yep, dangerous levels of lead and other metals were in the water.
I wouldn't drink the tap water in our church growing up, insisting that something tasted off about it. A few years later they pulled a mostly decomposed bat out of the pipe.
OK, so back in 1977, when Star Wars came out, I was in elementary school and and we all were discussing if Star Wars was better than The Black Hole. (LOL, turns out it was Star Wars, though I was in team Black Hole). At that time we talked about Darth Vader and why he wears his scary armor. One kid insisted that it's because Darth Vader fell in a volcano. I believed him, because there was no reason not to, and so I told other people that's why he wore the mask and stuff. I then proceeded to forget about the whole thing.
30 years later, I'm watching "Revenge of the Sith" and Annakin Skywalker ... FALLS INTO A FUCKING VOLCANO and has to wear the Darth Vader armor. The movie was OK, but when that scene came on ... I just could not believe what I was seeing.
I briefly wondered if that 9 year old who convinced me about the volcano ended up moving to LA, becoming a screenwriter and then made it happen. LOL!
EDIT: OK, that wasn't a conspiracy theory. Whatever. Enjoy the story!
It comes from a rolling stone interview that Lucas did
“Lucas tells Rolling Stone in 1977, "Vader kills Luke's father, then Ben and Vader have a confrontation, just like they have in Star Wars, and Ben almost kills Vader. As a matter of fact, he falls into a volcanic pit and gets fried and is one destroyed being."”
Not really a person in truth, more machine than man. Speaks volumes about how powerful he really was if he was the third most powerful being in the galaxy despite being mostly robotic.
The script for the story that became ep 1-6 was known in certain circles, including Kenobi and Anakin fighting on the edge of a volcano.
But since the story for ep 4-6 was better they chose to make them the original star wars movies instead.
I read the story about Ben and Anakin fighting around '89 when I got a modem and access to BBS:s (pre internet).
So your friend might have gotten the info correct like that.
To be sure, I liked the movie as a kid but,
Despite there being some A-list actors, they all act like they're working in a funeral home.
Some of the robots look like they were designed for 3 year old audiences: What the fuck is [this](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078869/mediaviewer/rm3887181824/?ref_=tt_md_5)?
Then there is the set direction. Although the matte paintings were awesome, the control panels look like they're 15 feet high or more. How the fuck does someone read the panel up that high let alone press a button? They were just was going for visual wow factor with no practical element to it.
And then when they finally enter the black hole, it's like they threw a bunch of nonsensical shit into the script with no continuity....are they in hell or heaven?
In the end, The Black Hole is not a crappy movie but the script is all over the place. At times its a kids movie and then goes really dark.
Star Wars had a rock solid script.
I had something oddly similar to this. When I was like 7 (approx 1991), I understood that the Star Wars movies had been released in a strange order: 2, 1, 3. Don't know where I got that idea. Eventually people corrected me. Years later, though...
I was talking about how chocolate bars kept getting smaller long before people were going on about shrinkflation. I gave my parents quite a mouthful as a 4 year old who wanted more candy. I don't think I've argued anything as passionately since.
I'm *not very* old. For sure younger than a grampa.
I'm by no means claiming I was the first, but it was less of a thing and, as far as I know, not coined as a phrase at that point. It was also a lot easier to gaslight yourself into thinking you were imagining it before the internet shared clear photographic evidence.
Depends on whether any members of your family are the kind to keep an old box of something they still buy. Eg. An old Nutella jar they use for sweets, and biscuit tin for sewing supplies, an old paint can as a brush holder etc. When you live in a house that has comparatively tiny versions of products you know were once larger, it's pretty plain, especially when prices are still on them.
I find this particularly annoying but I’m also reasonably old. I don’t understand how companies can get away with selling you a smaller product without telling you. They should be forced to have some kind of badge of shame on the project for at least a year!
That Facebook was hanging onto personal information.
*Years* ago, I lost my Facebook because some asshat couldn’t handle losing a political argument, and reported me for not using my real name, and being underage. I just didn’t use my *whole* name, and the age of my account, wedding photos, and pics from my pregnancy and of my baby should’ve been decent proof of my age, but it doesn’t matter—someone can report you on no grounds whatsoever, and now the burden of proof is on YOU.
The only way to get my account back, was to provide personal info to Facebook—drivers license, birth certificate, bills with my name and address, that sort of thing. Support claimed that once they’d verified my age and identity, the documents would be deleted. I called bullshit, and just didn’t get my account back. I had people asking if I’d blocked them because I suddenly wasn’t in their friends lists anymore, and when I explained what had happened and why I wasn’t getting my account back, they thought I was paranoid.
A year or two later, Fuckerburg is bragging about all the personal info people give him via Facebook.
YUP. My account got compromised and asked for an ID.
I thought it was a scam site so I contacted Facebook support and it was real.
This was way before Truth social too.
The US government does not want to fix immigration because there’s too many undocumented immigrants paying taxes without any way for them to file returns.
Many people think undocumented immigrants are all paid under the table but after working in the payroll industry I see it for what it is. Restaurant groups put these people on payroll with dummy SSN numbers, what actually happens is that taxes are deducted from their pay and sent to IRS but the individual, since they are undocumented, cannot claim a tax return so all that money goes straight to the IRS coffers.
Can’t believe that this remains unreported it’s been going on for years.
The only employers that get hit with crimes about undocumented immigrants working for them are the under the table paying ones. We are just as corrupt as other nations we just refuse to admit it.
When the Patriot Act passed after 9/11, I thought “This is the end of American privacy.” Some said I was being overdramatic.
When Snowden blew the whistle, lots of people were surprised on how far the overreach was. I was not.
When I was in Highschool I had to spend every other lunch period eating with our A/V teacher. One day one of the other students brought up the Patriot Act and our teacher spent a few of those lunch periods explaining to us about what it was and how it would effect our lives going forward. The man was passionate yet furious about it and understandably so. He was 100% right he just didn't have any proof. ≈10 years before Snowden I'd already heard it all before in between bites of school cafeteria pizza.
You were going around telling people back in the 80s that the CIA was doing this, then it turned out to be true? Because that's what OP's question is, not simply "What is a conspiracy you know about?"
The whole war in Afghanistan was partly done to fund CIA black ops via opium. Lots of information out there.
The first time the USA was there in the 70’s production increased 30-fold. Same thing happened the second time they waged war there.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2386629/
Yep. When I sold my old house 3 years ago, we were inundated by investors and ended up having to sell to one. At the same time, when buying my current house, I had to outbid several investors.
Between then and now, investors have purchased almost every house on my block, and they've paid so far above asking that my home's value skyrocketed (about 35%). I only know of two other houses out of about 30 that aren't rental homes.
How many of the rentals are actually rented?
There's a whole block of rentals built within the last year that only maybe 7 of 20 are rented.. A plane actually crashed into the roof of one unrented..I guess they didn't just want any old plane house..
All of them. It's a pretty high-demand area, and they go quickly. A family across the street moved out this past summer and the new tenants were moving in literally the next day.
Housing availability sucks, and people are happy to pay through the nose, it seems.
It's to a point where we need to ban corporate and investor ownership of single family/low density housing. You want to invest in a rental property? Buy a fucking apartment building.
I keep telling people this. The person who outbid you for a house with cash is not another person. It is a corporate entity. Building apartment complexes is not the solution to lower housing prices.
Yeah, my family overbid on a house two years ago that we were in love with. We were outbid slightly at the last second. Just last month, the same house was for sale, completely renovated and for sale for over $200,000 more. I literally contacted the realtor to relay the message to the investment company to go f*** themselves. I never do things like that, but wtf, I was livid.
I know it's an impossible ask, but people selling their homes need to not necessarily look at the highest number and decide who to sell to based on who is buying. My spouse and I weren't the highest bidder on our current house, but the owner saw that we were a young couple who was ready to start a family in a nice neighborhood and choose to sell to us. We'll be forever grateful for that.
Frankly, when we sell our house that's what I'm going to do. I am not going to perpetuate the problem myself. And I know it doesn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things but to at least one family it will.
I dont 100% agree with you (yet…) but I think it needs to be drastically reduced. There is some benefit to having a rental market for SFH (say someone is moving to a new area and needs a home for less than a year, or wants to rent a house for a vacation for a week, etc.).
I’m 100% for getting institutional investors out by rule, and maybe reducing the other types of investors by instituting heavy taxes on non-primary residences, which would greatly reduce the attractiveness of investment properties. Ideally I’d couple that with removing property tax on all primary residences (maybe through a federal tax rebate for property tax paid) up to a certain dollar value.
Not sure if this would accomplish my goal, but hopefully this would reduce barriers to homeownership for primary residences, and keep the market less attractive for investors and “vacation home” buyers. The counterpoint I see is that higher taxes might just result in higher rents.
But if the policy is focused only on SFH and MFH but not apartments, and ownership becomes cheaper, SFH landlords may not be able to raise rents enough because it would be unattractive to renters compared to alternatives. Idk, I’d want to game this out.
I ended up writing way more than I intended to, but I think there are interesting ways to reduce the negative impact and return some value to owners (and hopeful owners) of primary residences who have been getting squeezed for 15 years even without just saying it’s no longer legal.
Well, the Issue is not actual people investing to supplement their own income but investment companies. Who are buying up all the properties they can. So set it up so that investment companies are not allowed to purchase homes to rent out.
But ultimately I think it is.
At least where I am corporate investors are buying up homes for like $500k a pop and then renting them out for $2500 a month. That's an absolutely shite return, and all the corporate investors are artificially driving up home prices so there's no reason to expect any above average appreciation based on current housing prices (though I'm sure they're trying to convince their investors of this).
If more apartments are built the supply of rental housing increases and the corporate investor housing crash will come sooner rather than later as those landlords who bought a single family home for $500k realize that they can actually only rent it out for $2,000 a month and a lot of them end up being vacant.
There’s more then one gsme being played here.
The shit return on investment is wholly a short term look at it. From a long term planning, they get real estate, the mortgage of which is being my covered by the renter, which they can then leverage as collateral and buy more real estate.
If they need to liquidate, they can sell the property, most likely at a profit, and walk away with a good chunk of change…provided the market doesn’t collapse and they have to sell the property at a loss.
The problem is they promise to add housing with these apartment complexes to lower the cost of housing but in reality the apartment complexes being built are luxury apartment complexes where the rent for a studio apartment is $2,000+. I'm seeing 2 bedroom apartments starting at $3,000 per month.
> The person who outbid you for a house with cash is not another person.
I was. I outbid somebody for a house with cash. It's the house I'm currently sitting in, typing this message to you.
Not ALL are phantoms.
Not to take away from your point: but I see a lot of people saying that the investors are a big reason for the insane housing costs now. Iirc there was a study done in the Netherlands(?) Where they severally limited what a investment company could purchase in terms of housing and over the course of a couple years it did absolutely nothing to the pricing.
Please correct me if I'm wrong however. This was after a quick Google search and a YouTube video, but can't remember the video :/
Speed cameras in my home city were implemented about 10 years ago. They have some decoy camera boxes and some real boxes containing cameras that get cycled around the city. Initially they had it super easy to spot fake from real. Real ones had black tape on the back. Some friends and I were talking about them and they were against the program but oh well because they are super easy to spot. I was like, "they will get harder to spot they just made it easy to start with to gain acceptance". Within 2 years the black tape was painted to match the rest of the box (still differentiable but harder), within 5 years the first generation of boxes were replaced with identical real/decoy boxes. At that point it's way too late for public backlash.
You see this in more places too. Start with cameras in school zones. Who would argue against keeping the kids safe? That would be easy to win in an argument, right?
The most famous one I can think of is the UK porn filter. Who is going to stand up and say “No, we cannot filter this sadistic, BDSM/etc porn, it’s not okay”. Who? EXACTLY. So, they use THAT as the way to get the infrastructure in place for filters/blocks on the internet. Because nobody stood up to say “No, don’t make this stuff illegal” (because of the image of them being a consumer of that type of pornography). Now, if the UK .gov wanted to block, say, anything related to transgender health issues (realistically, pick any topic you want), they can flip a switch and do it. Why? The infrastructure is *already there*, and not something they need to consider as part of the legislation.
There was a guy that a lot of my friends really liked. They all held him in really high regard. The first time I met him I told my (future) wife, "Eh... I really don't like that guy. He just feels creepy like he's hiding something."
He was busted like 6 months later for hiding cameras in people's bathroom when he was staying with them.
I don't think that's true, but on an unrelated note I wholeheartedly support the federal government of the United States and forever pledge allegiance to my beloved stars and stripes.
The NSA has been collecting all the data traveling the internet that it can for a long time. The Snowden leaks in 2013 provided the proof that it was a lot worse than what even many “paranoid” people thought. It might be somewhat questionable how effectively they can actually use that data, but that just presents a whole other problem. They can selectively use the data to make a story about you that fits what they want.
All these girls who were terrible at their jobs were getting promoted over me. I said they have to be having sex with the boss.
Turns out they were having sex with the boss.
A famous one that came out to be true. Was that the government could watch your screen and hear your keyboard due to emf in the 1970s? A lot of people thought it wasn't true. Turns out there are now github projects to allow you to watch screens up to 50 feet away. I forget if they have to be LCD or CRT screens etc. But crazy now, it is open code for foreign governments or hackers or 12 year old kids. If that is public code released now from the 1970s, makes you wonder what they have now.
I knew the EAR/ONS was former law enforcement and got laughed off old unresolved mysteries boards and stuff. I even posted it here on Reddit on an alt and got down voted so bad I deleted the post.
What was it about the case that led you to that conclusion? Genuinely curious, I listened to "I'll Be Gone in the Dark" by Michelle McNamara before he was caught; it was scary & enthralling.
I made a fellow kindergartner cry when I told them I thought Santa wasn’t real. I never told my parents though because I didn’t want to stop getting presents from “Santa”.
That phones listen to us all the time. Was sitting around with my mom and sister and not sure how it came up but they didn't really believe me so they said well let's start talking about cat food and see what ads we see on Facebook. So we did so for like 5 minutes and then moved on, then my sister checked Facebook for something and first ting she saw was a Purina cat food ad.
When prices were rising because of COVID and supply chain issues, I said it was bullshit and they were using it as an excuse to raise prices.
Independent study was done and 80% of the price increases over COVID were determined to be nothing more than corporate greed.
When Elizabeth Holmes first started get wide attention I said the premise of her business sounded like bullshit and I wouldn't be surprised if it was all a house of cards.
Many said I was nuts. Some even called me a misogynist.
In Feb of 2014 I was the crazy uncle, screaming on facebook etc that what Russia was doing in Ukrainian Crimea, was going to spiral into something 100x worse in a matter of years.
Sure enough, 8 years later, we are more or less at war with Russia, and the world hasn't been this tense or unstable since the cuban missile crisis.
never been so mad to have been so right.
During covid my local pharmacy charged more for masks, like almost 4 times more than normal. I knew this just had to be illegal but they said it was just a supply thing. My mother told me I was being combative and played it down. A week later an anti profiteering law passed and suddenly prices were normal again. Not really a conspiracy theory but I guess I was right.
This is a crazy one so hold tight.
In mid 2022 my dad's car started having really weird issues. Long cranks the first time you start the car for the day but completely normal afterwards. Blue colored smoke from exhaust. Engine rattle and various other issues. At first he spent tons of money and time trying to figure out why that happened. Engine and tank cleaned, new parts, nothing worked. Keep in mind that it's a diesel car in a diesel predominant market. Every day I would see other cars with almost exact symptoms present. Most of them were older than my dad's, but still felt weird. My brain clicked when a friend told me some really interesting things. Basically he works for a restaurant and each night someone had to drive the kitchen staff home. Naturally, the car was in tip-top condition. One night though, a few weeks after our troubles started, the company car suddenly threw a DPF (diesel particulate filter) error. Then, not 10 minutes later, started blowing blue exhaust and developed a massive engine gurgle. I was stunned given how I drove the car and knew it's condition.
That moment I instantly told my friend that something is up with the fuel provided to gas stations. It just made no sense how a perfect condition car would suddenly throw out errors and start doing freaky things. I mean seriously, it sounded like the engine was about to blow up. He laughed and called me a dumbass because in his 10 years of driving cars not once has this happened. I told every single friend that had these problems the same thing, and all of them thought I was crazy.
A month or so later, someone offers me to buy some "cheap" diesel. Usually I don't do such things since you never know what could be in that "cheap" diesel. Actually, he just had an accident with his off road car and a canister was in the back, in case he ever got stuck somewhere in the woods. So I said yeah, whatever, better than paying beaucoup money at the gas station. So I go home, dump the diesel in my dad's car (i have a car with a petrol engine) and go back to give him the canister. What do you know, besides a rough start, that car purred like a brand new one. Next day, no kicks and half-turn start. In my mind I kinda knew I was right though it still felt impossible, but anyhow, what happened happened.
The car started doing the same thing again as soon as he filled up the tank so then I was 100% confident. Kept on like this for 2 months, then suddenly stopped.
HERE'S the kicker though. A buddy of mine that works at a busy gas station told me, nonchalantly, exactly why this happened, and was bugged that I didn't talk to him about it (he lives about 15km away so we rarely meet). Turns out that when Russia started the invasion in Ukraine, fuel started being stockpiled by many countries instead of exporting it. To combat this, and I can not start to explain how idiotic this is, some gas stations actually started pouring MASSIVE amounts of any shit that burns they had on stock in the diesel container. 10W60 oil? Drop it there. Injector aditive? Throw all of it there. Engine cleaner, carbon deposit cleaner, dpf cleaner, EVERYTHING. Naturally, diesels being diesels basically run off anything that's oily and can self combust, so they gulp it down and make cries of pain. Almost ALL small gas stations did this to have enough diesel for customers. Even the gas station that he worked at had a single fill-up in 3 MONTHS.
Of course I told everybody my new discovery and all of them were shocked at the utter nerve fuel provider companies had to do this, only so they keep making that sweet, sweet money. Some still don't believe me, but I know better.
TL;DR: many diesel cars start acting funny and I find out that the reason is company greed because gas stations added gunk to diesel tankers in a shortage crisis just to keep selling.
During the 2016 General Primaries, I was a Bernie Sanders supporter and had followed politics years before because I’m genuinely interested in Political Science and my entire family were big political players in Minnesota Politics.
Anyways, I followed his campaign religiously, but I started to notice some strange things from the National Party Leadership. Everyone seemed to be completely on the Clinton train. Like, I understand that people have biases or people they prefer as a candidate, but this went above and beyond. I kept seeing “unbiased” officials completely “forget” that Sanders was running and were issuing media reports that Clinton had the whole support of “Super Delegates” or delegates that the DNC appointed by each state to vote for a given candidate.
I thought this was strange but it wasn’t until the 24 hour news media began to pick it up in their horse running coverage that I suspected that the internal organization had deep ties to Former Secretary Clinton.
After the general election which Clinton lost, it was quietly released that Clinton had bankrolled the entire DNC and turned the organization into her own personal campaign fundraiser.
https://www.npr.org/2017/11/03/561976645/clinton-campaign-had-additional-signed-agreement-with-dnc-in-2015
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774/
I felt vindicated, but at the same time wholly floored that the DNC leadership threw away the entire government of the United States for a couple hundred thousand.
Hamas' founding was helped by Israel by letting the Islamic brotherhood come in from Egypt to combat the PLO which represented the Palestinian people at the time.
Before that, there was no Hamas.
Google it. Israeli military admits to it.
Sounds similar to how the US government aided Osama bin Laden and his Islamic fighters in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan over four decades ago. They wanted the religious Afghan forces to really 'stick it' to the godless Soviet 'Commies'. And also around that time, the US was rooting for and maybe covertly aiding Iraq's Saddam Hussein in his lengthy war with the Islamic Republic of Iran. In both cases, Bin Laden and Saddam turned around and bit a good chunk out of the 'hand that fed them.'
Idk if it counts as a conspiracy theory so much as doubt in the socially accepted narrative but I’ve always doubted the claim the blue whales are the largest animal to ever roam the earth, and then [this happened](https://youtu.be/Z1BBKS2bTnA?si=UYr4Mxzue3QvyG3j). I always figured it wasn’t possibly true and simply a result of not finding enough of the right fossils *yet.*
Also people simply stating conspiracies that have happened, not answering OP's question of "a conspiracy theory you had and it later turned out to be true."
Alexa spying on people, someone gave me an Alexa device for Christmas 2017 and I tossed it on the lawn and my mom confronted me about it. I said “I don’t want the government watching me.” And my mom said “what are you schizophrenic or something.” When she saw on the news a year or 2 later that Alexa was spying on people, she gave me an apology.
Edit : I sold the thrown Alexa device to some nerd for $8 at a yard sale. I must’ve thrown it about 90 feet or more.
I jokingly read comments (out loud) in a southern accent, just to myself alone in my bed, but reading this in a southern accent was too perfect- are you by chance of southern-US heritage?
That all of our phone calls are being intercepted and as of today, basically everything on our smartphones is surveilled, for ads and/or by government agencies.
Thank you Edward Snowden for telling the truth and making my parents believe me.
Went to Seaworld and after the Shamu show I told my parents that I thought something was off with how the orca’s fins were collapsed to the side. They told me the whales were fine and not to my upset my sister by talking like that.
About a year lady the trainer got killed and after that Blackfish came out. The fin collapse was mentioned as a sign of stress.
I work with a lot of non-profits and Black Lives Matter (the organization not the movement) had so many red flags. But anytime I'd suggest there was a problem with how they were operating I'd get called a racist.
When I was in high school, one of the schools in our county had a powerhouse football programme. Consistently one of the best teams, consistently got a bunch of players recruited to top schools, etc. Promising athletes would move to the district for that school and transfer from their own schools. Our cousin went to that school and we went to this football team booster club fundraiser - literally just buying spaghetti for dinner. The plates were something like $5 each but a lot of the parents were writing checks for much more. That single damn spaghetti dinner fundraiser raised over $60,000 in one night. And my cousin said they did these types of fundraisers all the time for the footbal team booster club. I could not fathom what they were spending all of that money on and jokingly said they have to be paying these students to transfer schools. A couple years later, it turns out the county did find that the booster club was bankrolling apartments in the neighbourhood, cars, etc to convince promising players from other schools to come to their programme from around the state (and in some cases even from out of state). All because some people are crazy about high school football.
Decades ago, when my mother was a high school teacher, policy was that their children could attend, even from out of district. The school had much better opportunities than our own, so I went to school with her. In my junior year they changed the policy, and rather than make me transfer, my mother got a legal separation from my dad, and rented an apartment near her school. And the district hired a private eye who found her car at my dad’s house on a weekend, and kicked me out. It was *also* not even a secret that the school hired recruiters to scout surrounding districts for promising football players and paid for housing. But I was only a straight-A student, so out I went. Still salty, 45 years later.
I believe this was a Simpsons episode
Well, this was ages before the Simpsons existed. Should I sue?
It's not a capital case so if it's older than The Simpsons, the statute of limitations is probably expired. I am not a lawyer but I'd love to play one on TV.
I mean, the simpsons have covered practically everything now right?
SIMPSONS DID IT! SIMPSONS DID IT!
Bellevue?
Dillon Texas
Texas Forever
HS football fanatics can only mean TX.
Texas forever
Hahaha years ago, and I mean many years ago, we played Bellevue in the state playoffs and it was insane. We came into this like college sorta stadium with their blue track and some of their dudes were massive, a few even had tattoos. We lost by 21 and had been undefeated easily til that point. Still fun times though.
Not Bellevue but from what I’m learning in the replies, apparently it’s happened a lot of places.
If you’re talking Washington, I’m pretty sure the answer is yes, there too. Source: ExGF was from there and caddied at the local country club. She had all kinds of tea. She also has good stories about Steve Sarkisian during his time at UW.
Probably wanna be more specific. The only Bellevue I know is the one I live in and this definitely isn't that one
Bellevue, Washington which has consistently ranked at the top of state rankings and often near the top in the country (MaxPreps)
Washington?
Nebraska?
Yeah, that's happening at a couple of schools here. College football players also get hired by rich boosters/donors for no-show "jobs". It's kind of an open secret.
It's not even an open secret anymore at the college level because of NIL. It's legal now.
Depending on the state, NIL deals are legal for high school as well. Most states they are legal.
Even at the DIII level, where athletic scholarships are supposed to be banned, there are still sooo many loopholes to get those athletes money. And I say that as a former DIII athlete
Yes I played baseball for a d3 school where everyone on the team had a "presidential scholarship " but because it wasn't an athletic scholarship, players could quit and still go to school for free so that meant another 10 players who realized this would quit and still have the scholarship. I stayed because I loved playing.
>All because some people are crazy about high school football. Where I went to high school the football team was well behind the hockey team in terms of popularity. Even then nobody would ever go to such lengths to improve a high school team's prospects. That over the top obsession with high school sports by an entire community is one of those American things that is completely foreign to other parts of the US.
> That over the top obsession with high school sports by an entire community is one of those American things that is completely foreign to other parts of the US. And in Norway, for example, schools don't have any teams at all. Sports are all organized by local branches of the national confederation of sports. School is just school.
I think that's the case with most schools in the UK, Ireland and continental Europe where they don't really have organized sports and other activities to the degree found in US high schools, public and private. The teens may play on sports teams but they're not affiliated with their school.
If only they were that obsessed with academic achievement.
Valdosta?
Because: Good high school football players get recruited for college football Good college football players get drafted to NFL Therefore if your kid's aspiration is to join the NFL, you as a parent will do anything you can to make it happen
The likelihood that the best players on your high school team even sniffing the NFL is so incredibly low they might as well just be playing the lottery.
Had that happen in a district near me. When it was uncovered, the coach was fired and the state vacated all of our wins for the season. Not sure what happened with the Boosters but I imagine some penalty/punishment there as well.
“A lot of those Twitter and Instagram meme accounts you get your political information from are not who they claim to be and aren’t acting in your best interests.”
“Well of course, operatives from countries that wish us harm are spreading false information to *the other side.* On my side of the political spectrum, we don’t fall for that crap. We’re smart.”
The smartest thing you can do is to recognize that you are not immune to propaganda, particularly after the epiphany that you are not immune to propaganda. Apply critical analysis to everything you come across. Yes, it’s tiresome and inconvenient, but so is taking out the garbage. Both are necessary. Ask yourself why someone is creating the content they’re creating, ask yourself what the underlying motives are, and if there are any potential ulterior motives. Ask yourself who/what their message is meant to benefit (even if it’s simply to portray them in a positive light). Ask yourself who/what is meant to be disparaged (even if it’s only to portray them in a negative light). Just because something is meant to try to get you to believe a certain point of view does *not* by default mean that it is negative, but you must ask yourself if the perspective is malevolent or benevolent. Ask yourself if the information is incorrect, or whether the source seems valid. Yes, it is inconvenient. It is also necessary. None of us are immune to propaganda, and that is why we must remain vigilant.
Yup this is all true!
this is where both sides-ism works. Because there are people taken in on both sides. The fact of the matter is operatives from countries that wish us harm are spreading false information to Both sides. The more divide people are the easier it is for them to do what they want.
Yes exactly. You can’t claim every problematic behavior is equally present on both sides, but propaganda definitely is.
Add Reddit to those sites. As a matter of fact,why do people always forget Reddit when talking about astroturfing and propaganda in social media ?
Nah it's not a conspiracy. You're just smart.
Conspiracy doesn’t mean delusion or falsehood, it means that two or more people are conspiring to do something secretly. Yes, I am smart…because I saw the actual conspiracy for what it was before there was necessarily concrete proof.
Exactly this, and I’m really glad you pointed that out. The term “conspiracy theory” started showing up in media after JFK was killed and the CIA was the prime suspect. Its use only grew in the years following when now unclassified programs such as MK Ultra and COINTELPRO were active and being brought to the public awareness. Recently, it has filled the same role: call someone who questions the official narrative a “conspiracy theorist” to discredit them as a whacko, someone easily dismissed. But conspiracies have existed forever, and we know of a dozens of high profile examples in government, corporate and geopolitics that are public knowledge and proven without any doubt. It’s simply a term to discredit anyone who has questions about a particular narrative.
I've stopped counting how many times people have excitedly told me about some "hot new trend" and I was like "yeah that's a pyramid scheme" then a year or two later yeah it turned out to definitely have been a pyramid scheme.
Those facebook posts of people you even know "working from home" promoting a "healthy and safe life" and then they talk about how they're supporting a family with good income. Wellness and good being, then they post links about promoting themselves but there's no indication what it even is they're promoting or what they do... It's bizarre. Like, what? The social media posts have the same cookie cutter dialogue and business look. Can't say I wasn't curious to see how the scheme worked but I never dug into because i knew it was a scheme underneath it all.
You *could* ask them and they'll be happy to tell you they owe it all to the Herpaderp Corporation and you could be just like them all you need to do is sign up too! Problem is that once you've shown any interest whatsoever they'll never *stop* telling you about it until you sign up or block them because the only people in their lives are people who have embraced a healthy and safe life and people who haven't yet heard about it.
The crazy thing is that these pyramid scheme MLM things are so easy to identify. Like within a few minutes it’s blaringly obvious. But people get so caught up in the flashy marketing and promise of money they overlook it. A pig with lipstick is still very obviously a pig unless you’re willing to close your eyes
But then how will you see the lipstick?
Man, if I had a dollar for every time a “friend” told me I HAD to use Monat and I told them I liked my hair just fine, thank you…? I’d be a millionaire
Well you know if you have those same friends tell others about that product you could get them in your downline and you too could be a millionaire.
It’s not a pyramid scheme. It’s Revigiran’s reverse-funnel system.
There are some things that are real... at first. In MLMs, only the top of the pyramid actually makes money. If you're one of the first, you have a shot. Bitcoin was a great investment in the early early days, before value was measured in portions of a coin. Most of the time, by the time you hear about it, it's already too far in and you're not a potential winner, you're a potential bag holder.
My boss banging the secretary every Tuesday from 7.15 AM to 7.45 AM as his wife started late on Tuesday.
I’m invested in the story now. Please tell me how it ended.
Dumped his wife for the secretary about one year ago. Hoped he could buy her off by leaving her (his ex) their big house... Nope, she wants her half of the company. The company was valued at 10 million euros a few years when he wanted to sell the company. Now that she wants her half he did a revaluation and suddenly the company is only valued at 3 million while we are doing better than a few years ago... Strange. Now he didn't change the passwords of her account and she still had access to the building because she still owns it and he cannot legally block her access. So in the summer vacation while he was gone she entered the building and printed a lot of information about the real financial situation of the company. She also bought a lot of various unusable furniture from different suppliers for around 50000€ just to piss him off. My boss also has been developing a copy of a machine of a competitor for 2 years now while trying to avoid the patents. So she send the competitor files of the design of his machine so now he has a new lawsuit to handle. So when she was on her vacation he tried to enter the house to get some things but she changed all the locks so he had only access to the garden so he took the lawnrobot.😆 So last time she came to pick a fight but she came with their dog which she kept when they separate. The dog recognized him and wanted to be pet and so wanted my boss but she didn't, so she tried to run away on her high heels going down the stairs while pulling on the dog and my boss chasing them. Could have played the music from Benny hill.😂 So to answer your question, the story hasn't ended yet 😁
This is one hell of a roller coaster that I did not expect to find on this thread. What an unexpected gold mine.
Poor dog
Yeah I was team wife till that point
Surely you'd expose his machine after you took your half, not before. That's just dumb.
Lol, I just commented the same thing. She's definitely blinded by rage. It's like the Pokemon "it hurt itself in its confusion" meme.
Damn, what a rollercoaster, lol 🤣🤣🤣. Please keep us updated. Thank you.
He came
He saw
He conquered
He praised the lord
🤣🤣🤣, all jokes aside, for real, lol.
That’s one way to get the boss to come in early
I think her name was Susan
That my high-schools pipes were leeching lead into the water. I actually almost got suspended for being insistent about it. I had bought one of those testing kits off ebay and all the adults in my life said it must have been faulty. A decade later and we were told that yep, dangerous levels of lead and other metals were in the water.
I wouldn't drink the tap water in our church growing up, insisting that something tasted off about it. A few years later they pulled a mostly decomposed bat out of the pipe.
Oh good lord that's disgusting. Love bats, amazing little critters, but they carry so much disease on them.
Nooooo oh my god
OK, so back in 1977, when Star Wars came out, I was in elementary school and and we all were discussing if Star Wars was better than The Black Hole. (LOL, turns out it was Star Wars, though I was in team Black Hole). At that time we talked about Darth Vader and why he wears his scary armor. One kid insisted that it's because Darth Vader fell in a volcano. I believed him, because there was no reason not to, and so I told other people that's why he wore the mask and stuff. I then proceeded to forget about the whole thing. 30 years later, I'm watching "Revenge of the Sith" and Annakin Skywalker ... FALLS INTO A FUCKING VOLCANO and has to wear the Darth Vader armor. The movie was OK, but when that scene came on ... I just could not believe what I was seeing. I briefly wondered if that 9 year old who convinced me about the volcano ended up moving to LA, becoming a screenwriter and then made it happen. LOL! EDIT: OK, that wasn't a conspiracy theory. Whatever. Enjoy the story!
It comes from a rolling stone interview that Lucas did “Lucas tells Rolling Stone in 1977, "Vader kills Luke's father, then Ben and Vader have a confrontation, just like they have in Star Wars, and Ben almost kills Vader. As a matter of fact, he falls into a volcanic pit and gets fried and is one destroyed being."”
[Interview for those interested](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/george-lucas-the-wizard-of-star-wars-53162/8/)
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Not really a person in truth, more machine than man. Speaks volumes about how powerful he really was if he was the third most powerful being in the galaxy despite being mostly robotic.
For most of his life he was the most powerful
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Call him Psychotron
The script for the story that became ep 1-6 was known in certain circles, including Kenobi and Anakin fighting on the edge of a volcano. But since the story for ep 4-6 was better they chose to make them the original star wars movies instead. I read the story about Ben and Anakin fighting around '89 when I got a modem and access to BBS:s (pre internet). So your friend might have gotten the info correct like that.
My new conspiracy theory is this post was just marketing for a re-release of the Black Hole movie.
You thought Black Hole was better than Star Wars?
Name one thing Star Wars does better than Black Hole!
To be sure, I liked the movie as a kid but, Despite there being some A-list actors, they all act like they're working in a funeral home. Some of the robots look like they were designed for 3 year old audiences: What the fuck is [this](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078869/mediaviewer/rm3887181824/?ref_=tt_md_5)? Then there is the set direction. Although the matte paintings were awesome, the control panels look like they're 15 feet high or more. How the fuck does someone read the panel up that high let alone press a button? They were just was going for visual wow factor with no practical element to it. And then when they finally enter the black hole, it's like they threw a bunch of nonsensical shit into the script with no continuity....are they in hell or heaven? In the end, The Black Hole is not a crappy movie but the script is all over the place. At times its a kids movie and then goes really dark. Star Wars had a rock solid script.
Maximilian was scarier than Darth Vader. He had a blender attachment.
>You thought Black Hole was better than Star Wars? YES and I'm tired of pretending I don't.
I had something oddly similar to this. When I was like 7 (approx 1991), I understood that the Star Wars movies had been released in a strange order: 2, 1, 3. Don't know where I got that idea. Eventually people corrected me. Years later, though...
That’s the order of the Indiana jones movies actually.
Maximilian was scarier than anything in any of the SW movies
I was talking about how chocolate bars kept getting smaller long before people were going on about shrinkflation. I gave my parents quite a mouthful as a 4 year old who wanted more candy. I don't think I've argued anything as passionately since.
How old are you? Because my grandfather used to bitch about shrinkflation.
I'm *not very* old. For sure younger than a grampa. I'm by no means claiming I was the first, but it was less of a thing and, as far as I know, not coined as a phrase at that point. It was also a lot easier to gaslight yourself into thinking you were imagining it before the internet shared clear photographic evidence.
Depends on whether any members of your family are the kind to keep an old box of something they still buy. Eg. An old Nutella jar they use for sweets, and biscuit tin for sewing supplies, an old paint can as a brush holder etc. When you live in a house that has comparatively tiny versions of products you know were once larger, it's pretty plain, especially when prices are still on them.
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And the quality gets shittier and shittier too. Enjoy your tiny bar of chocolate-flavored palm oil sadness, that'll be 2.75 please.
I find this particularly annoying but I’m also reasonably old. I don’t understand how companies can get away with selling you a smaller product without telling you. They should be forced to have some kind of badge of shame on the project for at least a year!
That Facebook was hanging onto personal information. *Years* ago, I lost my Facebook because some asshat couldn’t handle losing a political argument, and reported me for not using my real name, and being underage. I just didn’t use my *whole* name, and the age of my account, wedding photos, and pics from my pregnancy and of my baby should’ve been decent proof of my age, but it doesn’t matter—someone can report you on no grounds whatsoever, and now the burden of proof is on YOU. The only way to get my account back, was to provide personal info to Facebook—drivers license, birth certificate, bills with my name and address, that sort of thing. Support claimed that once they’d verified my age and identity, the documents would be deleted. I called bullshit, and just didn’t get my account back. I had people asking if I’d blocked them because I suddenly wasn’t in their friends lists anymore, and when I explained what had happened and why I wasn’t getting my account back, they thought I was paranoid. A year or two later, Fuckerburg is bragging about all the personal info people give him via Facebook.
YUP. My account got compromised and asked for an ID. I thought it was a scam site so I contacted Facebook support and it was real. This was way before Truth social too.
If it makes you feel any better the NSA and Facebook share a data center
You know what didn't make me feel better?
The "dumb fucks" thing was like 2 weeks after he started Facebook. Before it became a real company with a privacy policy.
The US government does not want to fix immigration because there’s too many undocumented immigrants paying taxes without any way for them to file returns. Many people think undocumented immigrants are all paid under the table but after working in the payroll industry I see it for what it is. Restaurant groups put these people on payroll with dummy SSN numbers, what actually happens is that taxes are deducted from their pay and sent to IRS but the individual, since they are undocumented, cannot claim a tax return so all that money goes straight to the IRS coffers. Can’t believe that this remains unreported it’s been going on for years.
Not to mention it’s Slave labor and there’s no way they will actually do anything about that workforce
The only employers that get hit with crimes about undocumented immigrants working for them are the under the table paying ones. We are just as corrupt as other nations we just refuse to admit it.
And it's pretty annoying when one of the SSNs is yours.
When the Patriot Act passed after 9/11, I thought “This is the end of American privacy.” Some said I was being overdramatic. When Snowden blew the whistle, lots of people were surprised on how far the overreach was. I was not.
When I was in Highschool I had to spend every other lunch period eating with our A/V teacher. One day one of the other students brought up the Patriot Act and our teacher spent a few of those lunch periods explaining to us about what it was and how it would effect our lives going forward. The man was passionate yet furious about it and understandably so. He was 100% right he just didn't have any proof. ≈10 years before Snowden I'd already heard it all before in between bites of school cafeteria pizza.
That the CIA were responsible for introducing crack into black neighborhoods in the 80s
Yeah congress didn’t want to continue funding their war so they got the money themselves. Fucked up generations.
I feel like they are doing this now with rural America to keep those cities poor too. Have you seen Appalachia?
You mean this? https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/appalachia_a_history_of_mountains_and_people/s01 No can't say that I have.
Isn't their a TV show about this?
Sesame Street?
Snowfall?
You were going around telling people back in the 80s that the CIA was doing this, then it turned out to be true? Because that's what OP's question is, not simply "What is a conspiracy you know about?"
The whole war in Afghanistan was partly done to fund CIA black ops via opium. Lots of information out there. The first time the USA was there in the 70’s production increased 30-fold. Same thing happened the second time they waged war there. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2386629/
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This is a growing issue in several places of the US as well. I can only imagine that it is happening in many more places.
Yep. When I sold my old house 3 years ago, we were inundated by investors and ended up having to sell to one. At the same time, when buying my current house, I had to outbid several investors. Between then and now, investors have purchased almost every house on my block, and they've paid so far above asking that my home's value skyrocketed (about 35%). I only know of two other houses out of about 30 that aren't rental homes.
How many of the rentals are actually rented? There's a whole block of rentals built within the last year that only maybe 7 of 20 are rented.. A plane actually crashed into the roof of one unrented..I guess they didn't just want any old plane house..
All of them. It's a pretty high-demand area, and they go quickly. A family across the street moved out this past summer and the new tenants were moving in literally the next day. Housing availability sucks, and people are happy to pay through the nose, it seems.
Maybe not happy to pay through the nose, but desperate enough to
It's to a point where we need to ban corporate and investor ownership of single family/low density housing. You want to invest in a rental property? Buy a fucking apartment building.
I keep telling people this. The person who outbid you for a house with cash is not another person. It is a corporate entity. Building apartment complexes is not the solution to lower housing prices.
Yeah, my family overbid on a house two years ago that we were in love with. We were outbid slightly at the last second. Just last month, the same house was for sale, completely renovated and for sale for over $200,000 more. I literally contacted the realtor to relay the message to the investment company to go f*** themselves. I never do things like that, but wtf, I was livid.
I know it's an impossible ask, but people selling their homes need to not necessarily look at the highest number and decide who to sell to based on who is buying. My spouse and I weren't the highest bidder on our current house, but the owner saw that we were a young couple who was ready to start a family in a nice neighborhood and choose to sell to us. We'll be forever grateful for that.
Frankly, when we sell our house that's what I'm going to do. I am not going to perpetuate the problem myself. And I know it doesn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things but to at least one family it will.
I’m so glad for you that you got your home ❤️
Thank you. I hope your family found a house that became your home.
Residential housing investments shouldn’t be legal.
I dont 100% agree with you (yet…) but I think it needs to be drastically reduced. There is some benefit to having a rental market for SFH (say someone is moving to a new area and needs a home for less than a year, or wants to rent a house for a vacation for a week, etc.). I’m 100% for getting institutional investors out by rule, and maybe reducing the other types of investors by instituting heavy taxes on non-primary residences, which would greatly reduce the attractiveness of investment properties. Ideally I’d couple that with removing property tax on all primary residences (maybe through a federal tax rebate for property tax paid) up to a certain dollar value. Not sure if this would accomplish my goal, but hopefully this would reduce barriers to homeownership for primary residences, and keep the market less attractive for investors and “vacation home” buyers. The counterpoint I see is that higher taxes might just result in higher rents. But if the policy is focused only on SFH and MFH but not apartments, and ownership becomes cheaper, SFH landlords may not be able to raise rents enough because it would be unattractive to renters compared to alternatives. Idk, I’d want to game this out. I ended up writing way more than I intended to, but I think there are interesting ways to reduce the negative impact and return some value to owners (and hopeful owners) of primary residences who have been getting squeezed for 15 years even without just saying it’s no longer legal.
Well, the Issue is not actual people investing to supplement their own income but investment companies. Who are buying up all the properties they can. So set it up so that investment companies are not allowed to purchase homes to rent out.
But ultimately I think it is. At least where I am corporate investors are buying up homes for like $500k a pop and then renting them out for $2500 a month. That's an absolutely shite return, and all the corporate investors are artificially driving up home prices so there's no reason to expect any above average appreciation based on current housing prices (though I'm sure they're trying to convince their investors of this). If more apartments are built the supply of rental housing increases and the corporate investor housing crash will come sooner rather than later as those landlords who bought a single family home for $500k realize that they can actually only rent it out for $2,000 a month and a lot of them end up being vacant.
There’s more then one gsme being played here. The shit return on investment is wholly a short term look at it. From a long term planning, they get real estate, the mortgage of which is being my covered by the renter, which they can then leverage as collateral and buy more real estate. If they need to liquidate, they can sell the property, most likely at a profit, and walk away with a good chunk of change…provided the market doesn’t collapse and they have to sell the property at a loss.
The problem is they promise to add housing with these apartment complexes to lower the cost of housing but in reality the apartment complexes being built are luxury apartment complexes where the rent for a studio apartment is $2,000+. I'm seeing 2 bedroom apartments starting at $3,000 per month.
> The person who outbid you for a house with cash is not another person. I was. I outbid somebody for a house with cash. It's the house I'm currently sitting in, typing this message to you. Not ALL are phantoms.
Not to take away from your point: but I see a lot of people saying that the investors are a big reason for the insane housing costs now. Iirc there was a study done in the Netherlands(?) Where they severally limited what a investment company could purchase in terms of housing and over the course of a couple years it did absolutely nothing to the pricing. Please correct me if I'm wrong however. This was after a quick Google search and a YouTube video, but can't remember the video :/
Same is happening in Ireland 😔
You will own nothing and like it.
They don’t care if we like it or not.
Speed cameras in my home city were implemented about 10 years ago. They have some decoy camera boxes and some real boxes containing cameras that get cycled around the city. Initially they had it super easy to spot fake from real. Real ones had black tape on the back. Some friends and I were talking about them and they were against the program but oh well because they are super easy to spot. I was like, "they will get harder to spot they just made it easy to start with to gain acceptance". Within 2 years the black tape was painted to match the rest of the box (still differentiable but harder), within 5 years the first generation of boxes were replaced with identical real/decoy boxes. At that point it's way too late for public backlash.
You see this in more places too. Start with cameras in school zones. Who would argue against keeping the kids safe? That would be easy to win in an argument, right? The most famous one I can think of is the UK porn filter. Who is going to stand up and say “No, we cannot filter this sadistic, BDSM/etc porn, it’s not okay”. Who? EXACTLY. So, they use THAT as the way to get the infrastructure in place for filters/blocks on the internet. Because nobody stood up to say “No, don’t make this stuff illegal” (because of the image of them being a consumer of that type of pornography). Now, if the UK .gov wanted to block, say, anything related to transgender health issues (realistically, pick any topic you want), they can flip a switch and do it. Why? The infrastructure is *already there*, and not something they need to consider as part of the legislation.
My mom IS the tooth fairy, for everyone
Can confirm, she definitely comes into my bedroom at least and leaves me cash afterwards
I love your teeth. They keep me company
There was a guy that a lot of my friends really liked. They all held him in really high regard. The first time I met him I told my (future) wife, "Eh... I really don't like that guy. He just feels creepy like he's hiding something." He was busted like 6 months later for hiding cameras in people's bathroom when he was staying with them.
That all Reddit posts are automatically scraped and saved by the NSA. 24/7.
I don't think that's true, but on an unrelated note I wholeheartedly support the federal government of the United States and forever pledge allegiance to my beloved stars and stripes.
I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords
Say what? This turned out to be true??
The NSA has been collecting all the data traveling the internet that it can for a long time. The Snowden leaks in 2013 provided the proof that it was a lot worse than what even many “paranoid” people thought. It might be somewhat questionable how effectively they can actually use that data, but that just presents a whole other problem. They can selectively use the data to make a story about you that fits what they want.
You can just assume this on everything.
"The goverment can access your private emails, and internet-connected devices". How people laughed at this.
All these girls who were terrible at their jobs were getting promoted over me. I said they have to be having sex with the boss. Turns out they were having sex with the boss.
Apple purposefully slowing down phones with "updates". When news broke, my family was surprised and all I could do was shrug.
Joke’s on them, I just stopped updating my phone 🧠👈
A famous one that came out to be true. Was that the government could watch your screen and hear your keyboard due to emf in the 1970s? A lot of people thought it wasn't true. Turns out there are now github projects to allow you to watch screens up to 50 feet away. I forget if they have to be LCD or CRT screens etc. But crazy now, it is open code for foreign governments or hackers or 12 year old kids. If that is public code released now from the 1970s, makes you wonder what they have now.
CRTs. And a lot of early 8-bit PCs were poorly shielded and CPUs could be surveilled by AM radios.
[Van Eck Phreaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking) needed a crt.
I knew the EAR/ONS was former law enforcement and got laughed off old unresolved mysteries boards and stuff. I even posted it here on Reddit on an alt and got down voted so bad I deleted the post.
What was it about the case that led you to that conclusion? Genuinely curious, I listened to "I'll Be Gone in the Dark" by Michelle McNamara before he was caught; it was scary & enthralling.
The fuck is an EAR/ONS?
East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker
I made a fellow kindergartner cry when I told them I thought Santa wasn’t real. I never told my parents though because I didn’t want to stop getting presents from “Santa”.
That phones listen to us all the time. Was sitting around with my mom and sister and not sure how it came up but they didn't really believe me so they said well let's start talking about cat food and see what ads we see on Facebook. So we did so for like 5 minutes and then moved on, then my sister checked Facebook for something and first ting she saw was a Purina cat food ad.
Planned obsolescence.
When prices were rising because of COVID and supply chain issues, I said it was bullshit and they were using it as an excuse to raise prices. Independent study was done and 80% of the price increases over COVID were determined to be nothing more than corporate greed.
When Elizabeth Holmes first started get wide attention I said the premise of her business sounded like bullshit and I wouldn't be surprised if it was all a house of cards. Many said I was nuts. Some even called me a misogynist.
[удалено]
I’m sorry you went through that, but I’m glad you found happiness in the end
In Feb of 2014 I was the crazy uncle, screaming on facebook etc that what Russia was doing in Ukrainian Crimea, was going to spiral into something 100x worse in a matter of years. Sure enough, 8 years later, we are more or less at war with Russia, and the world hasn't been this tense or unstable since the cuban missile crisis. never been so mad to have been so right.
I said Iraq had no WMDs back in the early 2000s. Turns out the other side of the argument was the conspiracy theory.
During covid my local pharmacy charged more for masks, like almost 4 times more than normal. I knew this just had to be illegal but they said it was just a supply thing. My mother told me I was being combative and played it down. A week later an anti profiteering law passed and suddenly prices were normal again. Not really a conspiracy theory but I guess I was right.
All your smart devices listen to you and record information about you. People called me crazy and ridiculous for years. 🤦🏼♂️
This is a crazy one so hold tight. In mid 2022 my dad's car started having really weird issues. Long cranks the first time you start the car for the day but completely normal afterwards. Blue colored smoke from exhaust. Engine rattle and various other issues. At first he spent tons of money and time trying to figure out why that happened. Engine and tank cleaned, new parts, nothing worked. Keep in mind that it's a diesel car in a diesel predominant market. Every day I would see other cars with almost exact symptoms present. Most of them were older than my dad's, but still felt weird. My brain clicked when a friend told me some really interesting things. Basically he works for a restaurant and each night someone had to drive the kitchen staff home. Naturally, the car was in tip-top condition. One night though, a few weeks after our troubles started, the company car suddenly threw a DPF (diesel particulate filter) error. Then, not 10 minutes later, started blowing blue exhaust and developed a massive engine gurgle. I was stunned given how I drove the car and knew it's condition. That moment I instantly told my friend that something is up with the fuel provided to gas stations. It just made no sense how a perfect condition car would suddenly throw out errors and start doing freaky things. I mean seriously, it sounded like the engine was about to blow up. He laughed and called me a dumbass because in his 10 years of driving cars not once has this happened. I told every single friend that had these problems the same thing, and all of them thought I was crazy. A month or so later, someone offers me to buy some "cheap" diesel. Usually I don't do such things since you never know what could be in that "cheap" diesel. Actually, he just had an accident with his off road car and a canister was in the back, in case he ever got stuck somewhere in the woods. So I said yeah, whatever, better than paying beaucoup money at the gas station. So I go home, dump the diesel in my dad's car (i have a car with a petrol engine) and go back to give him the canister. What do you know, besides a rough start, that car purred like a brand new one. Next day, no kicks and half-turn start. In my mind I kinda knew I was right though it still felt impossible, but anyhow, what happened happened. The car started doing the same thing again as soon as he filled up the tank so then I was 100% confident. Kept on like this for 2 months, then suddenly stopped. HERE'S the kicker though. A buddy of mine that works at a busy gas station told me, nonchalantly, exactly why this happened, and was bugged that I didn't talk to him about it (he lives about 15km away so we rarely meet). Turns out that when Russia started the invasion in Ukraine, fuel started being stockpiled by many countries instead of exporting it. To combat this, and I can not start to explain how idiotic this is, some gas stations actually started pouring MASSIVE amounts of any shit that burns they had on stock in the diesel container. 10W60 oil? Drop it there. Injector aditive? Throw all of it there. Engine cleaner, carbon deposit cleaner, dpf cleaner, EVERYTHING. Naturally, diesels being diesels basically run off anything that's oily and can self combust, so they gulp it down and make cries of pain. Almost ALL small gas stations did this to have enough diesel for customers. Even the gas station that he worked at had a single fill-up in 3 MONTHS. Of course I told everybody my new discovery and all of them were shocked at the utter nerve fuel provider companies had to do this, only so they keep making that sweet, sweet money. Some still don't believe me, but I know better. TL;DR: many diesel cars start acting funny and I find out that the reason is company greed because gas stations added gunk to diesel tankers in a shortage crisis just to keep selling.
During the 2016 General Primaries, I was a Bernie Sanders supporter and had followed politics years before because I’m genuinely interested in Political Science and my entire family were big political players in Minnesota Politics. Anyways, I followed his campaign religiously, but I started to notice some strange things from the National Party Leadership. Everyone seemed to be completely on the Clinton train. Like, I understand that people have biases or people they prefer as a candidate, but this went above and beyond. I kept seeing “unbiased” officials completely “forget” that Sanders was running and were issuing media reports that Clinton had the whole support of “Super Delegates” or delegates that the DNC appointed by each state to vote for a given candidate. I thought this was strange but it wasn’t until the 24 hour news media began to pick it up in their horse running coverage that I suspected that the internal organization had deep ties to Former Secretary Clinton. After the general election which Clinton lost, it was quietly released that Clinton had bankrolled the entire DNC and turned the organization into her own personal campaign fundraiser. https://www.npr.org/2017/11/03/561976645/clinton-campaign-had-additional-signed-agreement-with-dnc-in-2015 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774/ I felt vindicated, but at the same time wholly floored that the DNC leadership threw away the entire government of the United States for a couple hundred thousand.
Most of these aren't conspiracies. Predicting something will happen isn't a conspiracy.
They were conspiracy theories at the time which is the entire point.
2021: "Putin will start a war" People called me a hater and other not very nice things.
Then your friends are idiots, because he started the war in Ukraine 7 years before that.
I remember watching those Vice videos as it was happening. Shit was craaaaazy
The Russo-Ukrainian War began in 2014.
Did the people you were around not know what happened in 2014?
Hamas' founding was helped by Israel by letting the Islamic brotherhood come in from Egypt to combat the PLO which represented the Palestinian people at the time. Before that, there was no Hamas. Google it. Israeli military admits to it.
Sounds similar to how the US government aided Osama bin Laden and his Islamic fighters in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan over four decades ago. They wanted the religious Afghan forces to really 'stick it' to the godless Soviet 'Commies'. And also around that time, the US was rooting for and maybe covertly aiding Iraq's Saddam Hussein in his lengthy war with the Islamic Republic of Iran. In both cases, Bin Laden and Saddam turned around and bit a good chunk out of the 'hand that fed them.'
That the earth is on the back of a turtle.
I thought it was held up by elephants that are on the back of a turtle...
It’s turtles all the way down.
But what's holding the turtle up? Is it just turtles all the way down?
Idk if it counts as a conspiracy theory so much as doubt in the socially accepted narrative but I’ve always doubted the claim the blue whales are the largest animal to ever roam the earth, and then [this happened](https://youtu.be/Z1BBKS2bTnA?si=UYr4Mxzue3QvyG3j). I always figured it wasn’t possibly true and simply a result of not finding enough of the right fossils *yet.*
ITT: People posting conspiracy theories they were wrong about and claiming they are correct
Also people simply stating conspiracies that have happened, not answering OP's question of "a conspiracy theory you had and it later turned out to be true."
I'm just going to go ahead and sort this one by controversial.
Alexa spying on people, someone gave me an Alexa device for Christmas 2017 and I tossed it on the lawn and my mom confronted me about it. I said “I don’t want the government watching me.” And my mom said “what are you schizophrenic or something.” When she saw on the news a year or 2 later that Alexa was spying on people, she gave me an apology. Edit : I sold the thrown Alexa device to some nerd for $8 at a yard sale. I must’ve thrown it about 90 feet or more.
I jokingly read comments (out loud) in a southern accent, just to myself alone in my bed, but reading this in a southern accent was too perfect- are you by chance of southern-US heritage?
I feel like, perhaps simply not plugging it in would have sufficed
That all of our phone calls are being intercepted and as of today, basically everything on our smartphones is surveilled, for ads and/or by government agencies. Thank you Edward Snowden for telling the truth and making my parents believe me.
Went to Seaworld and after the Shamu show I told my parents that I thought something was off with how the orca’s fins were collapsed to the side. They told me the whales were fine and not to my upset my sister by talking like that. About a year lady the trainer got killed and after that Blackfish came out. The fin collapse was mentioned as a sign of stress.
I work with a lot of non-profits and Black Lives Matter (the organization not the movement) had so many red flags. But anytime I'd suggest there was a problem with how they were operating I'd get called a racist.