[gibba999]

Here's the basic problem: They gave a month deadline. That's not enough time to get permission for time off from work, book a ticket, take photos to show there is no city there, and submit, at least with the required degree of integrity (e.g. confirming GPS coordinates in some temper-proof way, etc. -- they'll just say you took the photos elsewhere).

There is no city there.

Pretending it's a fake conspiracy seems to be convincing people otherwise, though.

A contest with an unreasonable deadline seems, well, like a not very good attempt to prop this thing up.

[close04]

Poppycock! :) You can’t cry wolf for 25 years and then say you didn’t have time to collect evidence. This was the thing to do before making the claim.

After ~25 years of this running conspiracy if none of the evidence was collected we can call it evidence that the conspiracy theory is indeed fake.

[gibba999]

Who says I didn't have the time?

1) The contest has a very specific standard for evidence. Just because I went there and saw no such city existed doesn't mean that gets me a million bucks. That's my testimony.

2) Even going back, I need a high standard of evidence. They want irrefutable proof. That means I'd need to have some way of, in a photographically-secure way, guaranteeing I was there, and some kind of temper-proof photos or similar. That takes time to figure out.

This contest is great since anything submitted will be discredited. They'll claim they proved their existence. It does no such thing. In the rules, they say they'll only post entries online they find amusing (in other words, not the best ones), they decide if the evidence is irrefutable, and that the contestant waives the right to sue / contradict that judgement.

I hope you see the problem here. They'll claim to have generated proof of existence (hey, no one can disprove it), without providing people time to do so, and with tools to bury any proofs which would convince others. They'll post the comical ones, and be done with it.

[close04]

> They want irrefutable proof.

You should have been able to provide irrefutable proof even without the $1.1M. Otherwise you just admitted having an unfounded supposition and pretending it's a fact. Again, 25 years is plenty of time to obtain irrefutable proof. I mean it's not rocket science.

Put a camera on your car (or even have a caravan of cars, harder to fake), live stream the video including a GPS, driving along the known route and filming the mile markers until you get to the vast empty field that is that town. Get people on reddit or something to decide at every step which speed to have, if you should flip the wipers, this kind of thing that proves you're live. You can rent a helicopter, I mean $1.1M will cover a lot of expenses.

And once you have irrefutable proof other people will just claim everyone and everything in there is part of your conspiracy setup. I mean that's the go-to explanation for any conspiracy theorist whenever they are presented with any proof, no matter how solid. So if it works for you it should also work against :).

> They'll claim they proved their existence. It does no such thing

You are correct. This will not prove its existence. It will prove that nobody can provide evidence to support the conspiracy theory even after having 25 years to collect it and $1.1M to motivate them to present it.

> they'll only post entries online they find amusing

Of course. The other entries don't exist. And they'll show you irrefutable proof of that only if you offer a prize.

[gibba999]

Let's say I go into my wife's room and find her purse on the floor. Do I know she left it there? Yes, barring bizarre circumstances. Is it just an unfounded supposition? No. Do I have irrefutable proof the next day? No I don't. I didn't have any reason to generate it.

Perhaps for some odd reason, a bunch of Germans thought it'd be funny to make up a city, claim a conspiracy theory to cover it up, and posted some things about it to the Internet. Perhaps there's more to it than that and there's a great government coverup. Do I really care? Not so much. There's a bunch of people pretending there's a city. I don't know why, and I don't really care why. It's somebody else's problem.

Now, would I go to Europe for 1.1 million dollars? Sure. If I knew I'd get paid. Everything here screams I won't get paid. For the possibility of getting paid, I might even generate proof next time I'm traveling in that part of the world. But at the end of the day, I'm not dropping work deadlines on a few weeks notice for likely not getting paid.

This will absolutely not prove that nobody can provide evidence to support the conspiracy theory even after having 25 years to collect it and $1.1M to motivate them to present it. It will prove no one decided to drop everything in their life and spend a couple grand for the possibility of maybe getting paid by some marketing ploy, con artist, or otherwise.

[dustfinger]

It wouldn't be a theory if they had proof, it would be a fact ;-)

Of course you are talking about evidence which is not the same as proof. However, if we do think in terms of proof for a moment and following that line of reasoning, is it even possible to have a fake conspiracy theory? That is to say, is it possible to have a fake theory? I think the notion is absurd. The moment someone makes a hypothesis the theory is real and by definition, pending proof to qualify as fact. If someone provides evidence disproving the theory, then the theory would be wrong, but not fake.

I like your comment though :-)

[emiliobumachar]

Presumably there's plenty of people nearby, even if you are not.

[InitialLastName]

The fundamental tenet of conspiracy theory is that anyone who gives eyewitness testimony in contradiction of the conspiracy is, by definition, part of the conspiracy. One can only trust testimony if it's formed as a pseudoscientific lecture on Youtube and leads back to biblical numerology.