[MichaelBurge]

> if someone told me 25 years ago that this would be a thing I would have just laughed.

Wikipedia says

    In the modern era, the pseudoscientific belief in a flat Earth originated with the English writer Samuel Rowbotham with the 1849 pamphlet Zetetic Astronomy.
    In 1956, Samuel Shenton set up the International Flat Earth Research Society (IFERS), better known as the "Flat Earth Society" from Dover, England, as a direct descendant of the Universal Zetetic Society.

so flat earth has been around for 170 years. And people did laugh at them:

    The term flat-earth-man, used in a derogatory sense to mean anyone who holds ridiculously antiquated or impossible views, predates the more compact flat-earther. It was recorded in 1908: "Fewer votes than one would have thought possible for any human candidate, were he even a flat-earth-man."

A "modern" conspiracy might be the Sandy Hook, Pizza-gate, etc. but those originate with Alex Jones so not a general example. Maybe "the moon landings were faked" is a good example?

[lotophage]

I don't doubt that the belief has always existed somewhere; tribes with barely any outside contact, for example. I suspected that the belief was once reserved for a few eccentric crackpots and didn't have the momentum to be a movement until the last decade or so, but maybe I'm wrong. Flat-earth theory probably wasn't the greatest example. I think a "myth" connotes something a bit more innocent than a delusional belief or conspiratorial thinking (I'd call the Loch Ness Monster an myth, but I'd call the "moon-landing was faked" a conspiracy).

[knicholes]

Oh my gosh, there are tons of them. My mother-in-law ensures I hear about them all, passionately, each time she visits.

Bill and Melinda Gates are cyborgs whose bodies have been replaced. They're trying to track everyone with vaccine microchips. (There were variations on this theme including 5G)

Michelle Obama is a man.

9/11 buildings were vaporized by a high-powered, government laser.

Chemtrails are full of heavy metal and are being used to control our minds.

Putting hydrogen peroxide in your ear can cure all sorts of things, including cancer and cystic fibrosis.

"The Jews" are disproportionately represented in the government and media and are behind the whole woke movement to punish white people.

Any number of things about George Soros and ANTIFA.

The moon landing was faked.

The list goes on and on. Every time it's something even more crazy than the last.

[usrn]

Alex Jones isn't real and the man who plays him is part of a massive conspiracy inside the deep state.

[ta988]

That's true but only a few of us know and it is better like that.