Recently, Reddit user mc2901234 took to /r/AskReddit to pose the questions: "What conspiracy theory do you believe to be true? What evidence led you to this conclusion?" The post prompted MANY answers — here are some of our favorites:
1. "UFO sightings are just humans from the future on a time-traveling safari."
"All the UFO sightings throughout history are just humans from the future on a time-traveling safari meant to observe how we were in the past. They are supposed to keep out of sight, but thanks to human/mechanical errors, there have been hiccups with their cloaking which have resulted in being seen. That's why there have always been so many reports of them throughout history, but there has never been an attack. It's just us.
Also the reason why we don't see as many examples of UFOs now even though pretty much everyone has a camera is because people are not that interested in this time period since we already document aspects of human life all the time."
2. "Priceless artwork and historical documents are replicas."
"I’ve always speculated that a lot of priceless artwork and historical documents are actually replicas or copies.
Obviously a painting by a world-famous artist using a very specific technique would be very hard to fake, and I don’t think that every art scholar in the world is paid off in some grand conspiracy. Rather, I just think that either the national treasures never left their vaults or that some national treasures actually were lost to history but they were copied."
3. "Restaurant owners sing 'Happy Birthday' to embarrass you."
"Restaurant owners know how awkward it is to be sung to in front of the whole establishment, and they do it to discourage people from taking advantage of their free birthday food."
4. "Beards are messing with facial recognition software."
"I think the government orchestrated the news report about beards containing more bacteria than a dog that just licked his own asshole. Beards are messing with facial recognition software. 'The Man' wants beards to not be trendy anymore."
5. "The US will never publicly fund college because no one would enlist in the military."
"The US will never add colleges to public funding like they did high schools because then the enlistment rate for the military would plummet."
6. "Disney only named a movie Frozen to distract from 'frozen head' Google searches."
"That Disney made a movie named Frozen so that when people google things like 'frozen' and 'Disney' together, info about the movie comes up instead of stories about Walt Disney’s frozen head.*"
*Walt Disney is rumored to have been cryogenically frozen after he died.
7. "White Star Line swapped the identities of the Titanic and the Olympic so they could collect insurance money."
"At some point after the Titanic was completed, White Star Line switched the identities of the ships. The new 'Titanic' was actually the Olympic and the 'Olympic' was actually the brand-spanking-new Titanic, fresh from the construction yard with zero problems and zero history. They intended for the 'Titanic' to suffer some sort of failure that would result in the destruction of the problem ship so they could collect the insurance money. Read more about it here."
8. "The 10-year challenge was used to collect facial recognition data."
"The 10-year challenge all over social media is actually a way to record and gather more facial recognition data."
9. "Modern art exists solely for money laundering."
"I believe that modern/minimalistic art exists solely for money laundering. It's just a way for rich people to move money around. There's a reason why paintings of plain geometric shapes sell for millions of dollars, and it's not because the buyers are really into shapes."
10. "Apple started the AirPod memes."
"I believe that Apple started the 'wearing AirPods = cool/rich' meme intentionally to boost sales. They became the best-selling wireless earbuds worldwide after the meme."
11. "The Hawaii nuke false alarm was a test."
"The Hawaii nuke false alarm last year was actually the US government testing to see how the general population would react if an actual nuclear war broke out."
12. "Women's fake pockets are a marketing ploy."
"Women's pants have fake pockets to make us buy purses."
13. "Tinder gives fake 'You got a new match!' notifications to get you to swipe more."
"I have a theory that Tinder gives fake 'You got a new match!' notifications so people get excited and open Tinder, which leads them to swipe more."
14. "Jamie Hewlett from Gorillaz is Banksy."
"A forensics specialist believes Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz is Banksy. Metro wrote an article about it that made me a believer."
Oh, and let me just add that BuzzFeed does NOT necessarily endorse any of these theories. JSYK.
Answers have been edited for grammar and/or clarity.