I'm not sure I agree completely. Certainly over the pandemic I saw conspiracies appear right from the start, and then the goalposts shifted on most of them to fit around the current situation and messaging. I think a handful of people took huge advantage of a difficult situation to further their own agenda.
That said, I absolutely agree 'normal' people were pushed to the limit in a way that made them look for anything that made sense of what was happening around them.
Conspiracy theories spread when you let a medium that profits off "engagement" take over humanity's social fabric.
Back in the day that kind of crazy was relegated to the dark corners of the Internet and you had to explicitly seek it out.
Nowadays social media apps that claim to make it easier to connect with your family/friends will happily push these in front of you, knowing that getting you deep into that rabbit hole is likely to net them more "engagement".
The net result is that naive but well-meaning people who originally just wanted to keep in touch with friends/family got sucked deep into this bullshit.
That said, I absolutely agree 'normal' people were pushed to the limit in a way that made them look for anything that made sense of what was happening around them.