"Conspiracy theory" is an idiomatic phrase in en_US now.
You don't need to have an actual conspiracy, just a Them that is secretively and maliciously acting against Us. You may label any possible explanation for an observed phenomenon as a "conspiracy theory" if the following conditions are met:
- You wish to pre-empt calls for citations and evidence by admitting up front that you don't have any.
- You admit that you might not necessarily even believe your own explanation is valid in any way.
- You are explicitly discarding Hanlon's Razor. [0] The usual reasoning is that the observed behavior could only be explained by stupidity of such colossal magnitude that a much lesser amount of malice would actually be more plausible. This is usually a backhanded dig at the party that may actually be that colossally stupid. (Seriously, how many merchants can't sort a list of their merchandise by price?)
HN wouldn't let me reply to your most recent response, so I'm replying here:
All it takes is 2 people to conspire, whether they are co-workers or not. It fits very well with your first definition: 1. make secret plans jointly to commit an unlawful or harmful act
You don't need to have an actual conspiracy, just a Them that is secretively and maliciously acting against Us. You may label any possible explanation for an observed phenomenon as a "conspiracy theory" if the following conditions are met:
- You wish to pre-empt calls for citations and evidence by admitting up front that you don't have any.
- You admit that you might not necessarily even believe your own explanation is valid in any way.
- You are explicitly discarding Hanlon's Razor. [0] The usual reasoning is that the observed behavior could only be explained by stupidity of such colossal magnitude that a much lesser amount of malice would actually be more plausible. This is usually a backhanded dig at the party that may actually be that colossally stupid. (Seriously, how many merchants can't sort a list of their merchandise by price?)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor