Top 10 Reddit Conspiracy Theories That Might Actually Be True
#10: Modern Art Auctions Are a Front
Top 10 Modern Conspiracy Theories
Does anybody really get modern art? Like, seriously, who buys a painting when it’s just pure white? And how are these weird non-paintings selling at auctions for millions of dollars? Well, one popular theory holds that modern art and art auctions are just a front for money-laundering practices. Dirty money is used to pay for paintings, whether they’re really worth anything or not, which allows rich criminals to launder their cash in such a way that the government can’t touch it. It would certainly go a long way to explaining how the price of art got so inflated.
#9: WonkaPiercer
There have been some crazy connections made between movies over the years, but one of the most strangely compelling is the idea that the 2013 dystopian movie “Snowpiercer” is really a sequel to “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory!” Proponents of the idea cite numerous similarities, including that both feature characters traveling through a fantastical structure who are then progressively whittled down as they progress through it. The idea is that the train’s inventor, Wilford, is actually an older version of Charlie Bucket, who modeled his frozen dystopia’s lifeboat on Wonka’s self-sustaining candy factory. It may be “pure imagination,” but it’s fascinating nonetheless.
#8: The U.S. Doesn't Offer Free Higher Education Because of the Military
While the US offers free public education up to the end of high school, universities and higher learning cost…well, an arm and a leg would be an understatement. Although there have been growing calls for the government to fully fund higher ed, many see it as unlikely for one simple reason – the U.S. military. In the U.S., military service is voluntary. However, it also offers subsidized access to higher education along with service, giving lower income families opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. The conspiracy theory states that the government would never fully fund higher education, because if everyone had free access to college without the added danger of active service, far fewer would choose the military.
#7: The First Cosmonauts in Space Never Returned Alive
These 10 90s Conspiracy Theories Turned Out To Be True...
Yuri Gagarin was the first human to go to space…right? Well, some have posited that prior to Gagarin’s historic flight, the Soviet Union sent several other cosmonauts to space, where they either died or were captured by foreign powers upon their return to Earth. Given the Soviet Union’s secretive nature, it’s easy to believe this theory, even though there are several big holes in it. For one thing, Soviet space records have been made available to the public, and for another, the U.S.A. was paying a close eye on the U.S.S.R. during the space race and definitely would’ve caught wind of any rocket launches.
#6: Area 51 Is a Decoy
Top 10 Area 51 Mysteries
For over half a century, conspiracy theorists around the world have obsessed over Area 51, a Nevada Air Force base often associated with UFOs and extraterrestrial conspiracies. It wasn’t even publicly acknowledged until 2013! But one Reddit theory suggests that Area 51 is only a decoy for the real location where the U.S. conducts alien experiments. The theory goes that even if Area 51 has conducted experiments on UFO technology in the past, it makes a lot of sense to keep the public’s attention focused anywhere but where the real work is being done currently. Any magician can tell you that misdirection is a powerful tool.
#5: The 10-Year Challenge Was Created for Facial Recognition
Top 50 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out to Be TRUE
Social media is full of memes designed to get people to post photos of themselves, but one in particular has been cited as being more than it appears. The 10 Year Challenge, in which people post pictures of themselves both currently and 10 years prior, has been suggested to have been crafted so as to give facial recognition software a baseline for how people’s faces change over the course of a decade. Although a lot of these photos were already available on social media, specifying the 10-year gap and then placing them side by side would be a lot easier than data-mining millions of people.
#4: The FBI Starts Reddit Conspiracy Threads
Top 10 Foreign Conspiracy Theories that Turned Out to Be TRUE
One of the most meta-Reddit theories out there posits that government agencies, such as the FBI, are actually the ones who start Reddit conspiracy threads. In this way, the agencies are able to better keep track of what the public knows but can’t prove, or else they use these threads to discredit some theories by making those that believe in them seem like they’re unhinged. This kind of thing has the appearance of being believable because of how easy it would be for agencies to use this method for both information gathering and disinformation.
#3: The Roswell Incident Was a Soviet Aircraft
Top 10 Scientific Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out to Be True
In 1947, an unidentified flying object crashed at a ranch in New Mexico. While the military has subsequently claimed it was a weather balloon, UFO believers have claimed that the object was alien in origin, and that the military is involved in a cover-up. However, what if the conspiracy theorists are right about the cover-up, but wrong about the UFO’s origin? One idea suggests that the Roswell incident was actually a Soviet aircraft that was shot or crashed down on U.S. soil (some suggest, conversely, that the Soviets faked a crash to spread panic). The cover-up was to stop people from panicking that America’s Cold War nemesis managed to come close to striking at the heart of the country.
#2: Pockets vs. Purses
The pockets on most clothing marketed towards women… suck. They’re usually too small to hold anything bigger than a toothpick, and whenever there is a piece of clothing with good pockets, it’s exciting. So why doesn’t the fashion industry make bigger or better pockets for women’s clothes if the demand is there? One Reddit theory suggests that fashion companies are purposely keeping these pockets useless to sell more purses. After all, you don’t see a lot of purses made for men and they seem to be doing just fine, so if people who wear women’s clothes didn’t “need” purses anymore, surely purse sales would plummet right? Before we get to our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions: 2018 Hawaii False Alarm Was a Test No Nukes Is Good Nukes? “Frozen” Name Is a Cover-Up Pay No Attention to the Frozen Walt Behind the Curtain Trader Joe’s Small Parking Lots Does This Lot Make My Store Look Big? Banksy Is Jamie Hewlett Gorillaz in the Mystery? Priceless Artwork & Documents Are Fakes The Ones Displayed Are Replicas
#1: UFOs Are Flown by Future Humans
Is the US Government Hiding a Connection Between Nuclear Weapons and UFOs? | Unveiled
As we’ve seen, plenty of theories abound about aliens and UFOs, but one that’s been gaining a lot of traction on Reddit is the idea that the crafts and creatures that some believe exist and originate from elsewhere in the universe actually originate from Earth… from the far future. It would certainly explain why the popular images of aliens look so much like we do, and why so few UFOs have been spotted from space: they never had to leave Earth’s atmosphere. By traveling back in time, perhaps these future humans are trying to investigate their past to solve some future crisis, or stop it from happening altogether.
