What happens when the majority of people assume anything that looks like bigfoot is some person in a hairy suit and then a scientist creates a human primate or monkey chimera hybrid for the purpose of harvesting human organs and it escapes? Do game departments and law enforcement ignore all the calls? Are we allowed to capture and tame it? Would it be treated as a human or a monkey? Does it get human rights or animal rights? Do the answers change if it speaks English?
The organ harvesting purpose implies that the monkey chimera would have higher-order intelligence, right? Or are we to assume the organ harvesting is of the "rip and tear" variety as opposed to the "precision" variety?
How very sad. The monkey chimera was fluent in English, but got subdued in India.
If you look up that film stabilized [1], it becomes really apparent that it's just a guy in a ape costume. The shaky camera is the only thing that makes it harder to determine what's going on.
Is it? Because plenty of other hoax-based bullshit, like Flat Earth Conspiracy Theorists and those who believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old continue on in their bubbles regardless of how much evidence is provided to the contrary.
I've always assumed that committed conspiracy theorists are just trolls rolling with it (because nobody could be so stupid as to actually believe in the conspiracy's premise). So no amount of evidence is going to "convince" them, because they already know the truth, and don't care.
But then perhaps over time, they somehow attracted people who genuinely are that stupid, and uncritically believe? That demographic is obviously going to be too stupid to critically assess any new evidence either.
I wonder if it gets a mention? It does get a mention in the recent Bruce Campbell movie https://www.ernieandemma.com/ - which looks to be even more poignant with his recent cancer diagnosis :-(
There are more conspiracies. Here are some well-verified ones:
- Epstein and way too many important people.
- The big one from the 1970s onward to increase the return on capital by lowering living standards, the "Powell memorandum".[1] That's the founding document of the modern conservative movement.
- Facebook/Meta being behind schemes for age verification.[2]
I wouldn't say that Epstein is a vindication of conspiracy theories, at least not the "Bigfoot" type. Epstein was already in trouble with the law for trafficking over 20 years ago. The pedophilia in the Catholic church was known decades before that. It's shameful that these stories didn't get more attention sooner, but the general veracity of them wasn't in question.
The prototypical pedophilia conspiracy theory we didn't believe at all is the Comet Ping Pong one, which was appropriate.
> The pedophilia in the Catholic church was known decades before that.
Except the proportion of paedophile priests is about the same as the proportion of paedophiles in the general population. There are more paedophiles in schools and social services than in religious organisations - and there have even been more convictions of teachers and social workers, at least tin the UK. The reason you think of the Catholic Church this way is BECAUSE it got more media attention earlier than elsewhere. A surprising number of people the UK do not know about the biggest big paedophile scandal in the country, the Islington one, that was huge, and at least one politician who was responsible for the failure to investigate went on to have a successful career in politics (the only time it set back her career at all was when Blair wanted to make her minister for children there was a backlash)
I think if 20 years ago you claimed that there was a global sex trafficking ring that procured young girls for elites, politicians, celebrities, and royalty, you'd be laughed off as a David Icke level conspiracist. These days it just seems obvious that that was going on.
"Bigfoot" isn't inherently a conspiracy theory. If you say that bigfoot exists, you're wrong, but not necessarily a conspiracy theorist. To be a conspiracy theorist, you also have to posit a grand conspiracy to conceal the existence of bigfoot.
If you posit a conspiracy that only involves a few people who could plausibly coordinate to conceal the truth, that's also not a grand conspiracy, and we don't call people conspiracy theorist for believing in regular, everyday criminal conspiracies.
Given that a large portion of the population has a HD or higher quality camera in their pocket most of the time these days, most cryptid style conspiracies seem pretty well debunked at this point.
Funny story there: I was stuck with a conspiracy-minded high school teacher who insisted that some sort of flash lower down in one of the towers was proof of a demolition. I got fed up with listening to it each day, so I calculated how long it would take a shock wave to propagate through steel, from the crash site to the flash below. It pretty much worked out.
Considering how many surveillance laws were passed in the USA after 9/11 (independent whether it was a terrorist attack or some controlled demolition) and wars were started on Afghanistan and Iran (the latter having nothing to do with Al-Quaida or the attacks on 9/11), it should be obvious that at least from the political side there is/was a hidden agenda:
- Conspiracy theory view: Some buildings were demolished. Politics seizes the opportunity to pass surveillance laws and start two wars.
- Non-conspiracy view: Some terrorist attack event happened (but every actuary can give you estimates on how often such an event is to be expected, so nothing surprising here), so politics seized the opportunity to pass surveillance laws and start two wars.
The only difference between these perspectives is what happened the three towers and some part of the Pentagon building to collapse.
Somewhat relatedly, there is a pretty plausible theory that some “find the Yeti” expeditions were in fact cover for operations by my country’s intelligence services to sabotage China. See e.g., https://topsecretumbra.substack.com/p/the-secret-history-of-...
(Btw the general idea that there are animals that we don’t know about is not remotely far-fetched. A new possum genus was discovered like a month ago.)
> (Btw the general idea that there are animals that we don’t know about is not remotely far-fetched. A new possum genus was discovered like a month ago.)
I might be totally mistaken but I think most of the times when a new "species" is found is either a) some different genus which a non trained eye would not be able to distinguish from an existing one, or b) some species that lives only in a very difficult to reach place with some very specific conditions (i.e. underwater near volcanoes).
Something so different with so many "sightings" as a Bigfoot? Almost impossible.
Finding a variant type of possum is not at all the same as Nessie surfacing in front of humans for the first time in a century, or a bipedal ape on a decades-long walking tour, unseen.
> This MSN "article" seems oddly out of place on HN.
Maybe there's something sinister going on: I suspect the shoe sole industry what with these huge foots and all. It'd make sense since Covid people are walking less. Maybe the sole industry caused the lab leak?
In a similar vein I highly recommend Behind the Curve, which is a documentary about the flat Earth movement. It was a pretty fair film and tried to get to know the people involved in the movement and what it was that motivated them.
It was interesting to see that one of the main figures featured in the documentary started out pretty generically wanting to get into conspiracy theories and started reading up on one after another until he found a particular one that clicked.
What does bigfoot have to do with conspiracy? Doesn't bigfoot qualify as folklore/urban legend/pseudoscience/hoax/mythology? Is there widespread belief the government is actively covering up its existence for some reason?
Nothing in the linked story explained it. Did someone make a whole documentary and couldn't get the most basic info right? Or did the reporter mangle the article write-up?
Just because someone is paranoid, does not mean that conspiracy's to do them harm go away.
Capitalism is rapidly moving towards an open establishment of techno/fuedalism, or at least trying very very hard, but as usual it's the end game that tends to fail in these ill concieved plans.
And running populations in circles to speculate about yeti, bigfoot, aliens, atlantis, and variations on the rapture, has served for millenia, but the end of scarcity
is adding a new twist,hence the dusting off of old tabloid's in an act of desperation.
I used to look down on conspiracy theories, now I think many are actually true, or are mixed with truth. Its really unlikely that a theory circulates widely but has no basis in reality
I don't understand the Epstein thing. In particular, I don't know why everyone doesn't agree "Epstein had help offing himself". That's the most natural inference from the evidence I'm aware of, and also satisfies the conspiracist urge for drama. Everyone should be happy with this, but I've hardly ever heard anyone else put it forward. What am I missing?
Wasn't Epstein a conspiracy theory once? Epstein cover up has made me believe that cover ups DO happen, and if this one was covered up, what else has been cover up?
“Reality” applies pretty much zero selection pressure on ideas that are by definition non-actionable.
That’s the real bread and butter of conspiracy theorizing: claims that don’t matter to anyone’s real lives whether they’re actually true or not.
Therefore they propagate primarily for entertainment value and face none of the friction that you’re imagining being generated by “doesn’t actually make useful predictions about the world.”
> Its really unlikely that a theory circulates widely but has no basis in reality
No, this is not at all true. For example, the only "truth" of BigFoot is the hoax video that many people are emotionally inclined to think isn't a hoax. The only "truth" in Qanon is the messages that Q wrote. Pizzagate was believed by people emotionally inclined to believe that Hillary drinks children's blood. And on and on. Did the government fake the moon landing? Many people believe so, despite no "truth" to it. Is the Earth flat but NASA is conspiring to tell people it's a globe? Is evolution a hoax? There are reasons that these circulate widely despite having no truth to them.
Popular conspiracy theories are psyops to either discredit people, movements or ideas
The government spent a lot of time and energy pumping up UFO conspiracy theories to hide sightings of classified aircraft, and they're getting pumped up again in the age of developing cheap weaponized drones.
I would not be surprised that the whole human sex trafficking and Qanon related conspiracy theories are also psyops to hide what's actually going on in plain sight. Obviously, Hillary Clinton wasn't trafficking kids in the basement of a pizza parlor, but there is literally a cabal of elite sex trafficking pedophiles that own and run everything, and one of them is the president.
Wild to think Q anon could have been truth mixed with wild fiction to throw people off. Thats really only something I thought happened in movies, or novels. I'm willing to believe alot more than i ever thought I would
Oh there is truth behind the phenomenon of UFOs. Public perception is changing but many still understandably view this topic as conspiracy. This won't be the case for long.
What happens when the majority of people assume anything that looks like bigfoot is some person in a hairy suit and then a scientist creates a human primate or monkey chimera hybrid for the purpose of harvesting human organs and it escapes? Do game departments and law enforcement ignore all the calls? Are we allowed to capture and tame it? Would it be treated as a human or a monkey? Does it get human rights or animal rights? Do the answers change if it speaks English?
The organ harvesting purpose implies that the monkey chimera would have higher-order intelligence, right? Or are we to assume the organ harvesting is of the "rip and tear" variety as opposed to the "precision" variety?
How very sad. The monkey chimera was fluent in English, but got subdued in India.
Supposedly exposes the Patterson-Gimlin film as a hoax, which is a big deal in the Bigfoot community.
IMO, that was done years ago.
If you look up that film stabilized [1], it becomes really apparent that it's just a guy in a ape costume. The shaky camera is the only thing that makes it harder to determine what's going on.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPlRr_OfxZI
Read the comments on that video to see how many conclude the opposite!
21 replies →
It makes me a little bit sad, I knew it was very unlikely, but I still had hopes just because it would be so cool to find that big foot is real.
Is it? Because plenty of other hoax-based bullshit, like Flat Earth Conspiracy Theorists and those who believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old continue on in their bubbles regardless of how much evidence is provided to the contrary.
There’s no possible evidence against so called “last Thursdayism”, so you are certainly misrepresenting the state of affairs.
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I've always assumed that committed conspiracy theorists are just trolls rolling with it (because nobody could be so stupid as to actually believe in the conspiracy's premise). So no amount of evidence is going to "convince" them, because they already know the truth, and don't care.
But then perhaps over time, they somehow attracted people who genuinely are that stupid, and uncritically believe? That demographic is obviously going to be too stupid to critically assess any new evidence either.
4 replies →
There's a Bigfoot trap in Oregon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigfoot_trap
I wonder if it gets a mention? It does get a mention in the recent Bruce Campbell movie https://www.ernieandemma.com/ - which looks to be even more poignant with his recent cancer diagnosis :-(
Obviously Bigfoot is too smart to fall for those traps
> The trap's door has been bolted open since 1980 for visitor safety.
"visitor safety" indeed!
2 replies →
They were baiting it with carcasses! Everyone knows Bigfoots are vegans and prefer chai soy milk lattes.
1 reply →
There are more conspiracies. Here are some well-verified ones:
- Epstein and way too many important people.
- The big one from the 1970s onward to increase the return on capital by lowering living standards, the "Powell memorandum".[1] That's the founding document of the modern conservative movement.
- Facebook/Meta being behind schemes for age verification.[2]
[1] https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/powellmemo/
[2] https://techoversight.org/2025/07/29/bloomberg-meta-google-l...
I wouldn't say that Epstein is a vindication of conspiracy theories, at least not the "Bigfoot" type. Epstein was already in trouble with the law for trafficking over 20 years ago. The pedophilia in the Catholic church was known decades before that. It's shameful that these stories didn't get more attention sooner, but the general veracity of them wasn't in question.
The prototypical pedophilia conspiracy theory we didn't believe at all is the Comet Ping Pong one, which was appropriate.
> The pedophilia in the Catholic church was known decades before that.
Except the proportion of paedophile priests is about the same as the proportion of paedophiles in the general population. There are more paedophiles in schools and social services than in religious organisations - and there have even been more convictions of teachers and social workers, at least tin the UK. The reason you think of the Catholic Church this way is BECAUSE it got more media attention earlier than elsewhere. A surprising number of people the UK do not know about the biggest big paedophile scandal in the country, the Islington one, that was huge, and at least one politician who was responsible for the failure to investigate went on to have a successful career in politics (the only time it set back her career at all was when Blair wanted to make her minister for children there was a backlash)
2 replies →
I think if 20 years ago you claimed that there was a global sex trafficking ring that procured young girls for elites, politicians, celebrities, and royalty, you'd be laughed off as a David Icke level conspiracist. These days it just seems obvious that that was going on.
3 replies →
"Bigfoot" isn't inherently a conspiracy theory. If you say that bigfoot exists, you're wrong, but not necessarily a conspiracy theorist. To be a conspiracy theorist, you also have to posit a grand conspiracy to conceal the existence of bigfoot.
If you posit a conspiracy that only involves a few people who could plausibly coordinate to conceal the truth, that's also not a grand conspiracy, and we don't call people conspiracy theorist for believing in regular, everyday criminal conspiracies.
7 replies →
Given that a large portion of the population has a HD or higher quality camera in their pocket most of the time these days, most cryptid style conspiracies seem pretty well debunked at this point.
Mandatory XKCD.[1]
[1] https://xkcd.com/1235/
If the phenomenon is itself intelligent..
Conspiracy theories arise from the natural tendency of human brain to look for patterns even where there are none.
That being said, nowadays it seems that a difference between conspiracy theory and confirmed fact is 12-24 months
Physics is needed to fully understand the demolition of 3 towers..
Funny story there: I was stuck with a conspiracy-minded high school teacher who insisted that some sort of flash lower down in one of the towers was proof of a demolition. I got fed up with listening to it each day, so I calculated how long it would take a shock wave to propagate through steel, from the crash site to the flash below. It pretty much worked out.
What was the teacher's reaction?
1 reply →
Congrats. You solved the puzzle.
Considering how many surveillance laws were passed in the USA after 9/11 (independent whether it was a terrorist attack or some controlled demolition) and wars were started on Afghanistan and Iran (the latter having nothing to do with Al-Quaida or the attacks on 9/11), it should be obvious that at least from the political side there is/was a hidden agenda:
- Conspiracy theory view: Some buildings were demolished. Politics seizes the opportunity to pass surveillance laws and start two wars.
- Non-conspiracy view: Some terrorist attack event happened (but every actuary can give you estimates on how often such an event is to be expected, so nothing surprising here), so politics seized the opportunity to pass surveillance laws and start two wars.
The only difference between these perspectives is what happened the three towers and some part of the Pentagon building to collapse.
Somewhat relatedly, there is a pretty plausible theory that some “find the Yeti” expeditions were in fact cover for operations by my country’s intelligence services to sabotage China. See e.g., https://topsecretumbra.substack.com/p/the-secret-history-of-...
(Btw the general idea that there are animals that we don’t know about is not remotely far-fetched. A new possum genus was discovered like a month ago.)
> (Btw the general idea that there are animals that we don’t know about is not remotely far-fetched. A new possum genus was discovered like a month ago.)
I might be totally mistaken but I think most of the times when a new "species" is found is either a) some different genus which a non trained eye would not be able to distinguish from an existing one, or b) some species that lives only in a very difficult to reach place with some very specific conditions (i.e. underwater near volcanoes).
Something so different with so many "sightings" as a Bigfoot? Almost impossible.
the word general in italics was intended to read as “in contrast to this”...
Finding a variant type of possum is not at all the same as Nessie surfacing in front of humans for the first time in a century, or a bipedal ape on a decades-long walking tour, unseen.
> Nessie surfacing in front of humans for the first time in a century
Wait, are you implying that Nessie used to surface in front of humans?
Bigfoot proposes the idea that there are animals we do know about, but just haven't found proof of, which is a little more farfetched.
The documentary does not, in fact, help explain the conspiracy zeitgeist. Human nature has been reason enough through modern history.
This MSN "article" seems oddly out of place on HN.
> This MSN "article" seems oddly out of place on HN.
Maybe there's something sinister going on: I suspect the shoe sole industry what with these huge foots and all. It'd make sense since Covid people are walking less. Maybe the sole industry caused the lab leak?
I'm just asking questions.
Why are explanations so popular? You gotta wonder.
In a similar vein I highly recommend Behind the Curve, which is a documentary about the flat Earth movement. It was a pretty fair film and tried to get to know the people involved in the movement and what it was that motivated them.
It was interesting to see that one of the main figures featured in the documentary started out pretty generically wanting to get into conspiracy theories and started reading up on one after another until he found a particular one that clicked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behind_the_Curve
Obviously, bigfoot hasn't been seen again because he went back to his UFO...
What does bigfoot have to do with conspiracy? Doesn't bigfoot qualify as folklore/urban legend/pseudoscience/hoax/mythology? Is there widespread belief the government is actively covering up its existence for some reason?
Nothing in the linked story explained it. Did someone make a whole documentary and couldn't get the most basic info right? Or did the reporter mangle the article write-up?
I'm pretty sure almost everyone who believes in UFOs also believes that bigfoot is some kind of alien. So that's a lot of people.
Cryptozoology is pretty big in the conspiracy mediascape.
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Just because someone is paranoid, does not mean that conspiracy's to do them harm go away. Capitalism is rapidly moving towards an open establishment of techno/fuedalism, or at least trying very very hard, but as usual it's the end game that tends to fail in these ill concieved plans. And running populations in circles to speculate about yeti, bigfoot, aliens, atlantis, and variations on the rapture, has served for millenia, but the end of scarcity is adding a new twist,hence the dusting off of old tabloid's in an act of desperation.
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I used to look down on conspiracy theories, now I think many are actually true, or are mixed with truth. Its really unlikely that a theory circulates widely but has no basis in reality
They're all on a spectrum between flat earth and Epstein didn't off himself, with some clustering at either end
A few years ago, the "tinfoil hat crowd" had this absurd claim that Ghislaine Maxwell was a reddit powermod:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/incoherent-conspiracy-sugges...
The article above is from 2020, and later the FBI itself used the user maxwellhill as evidence in Ghislaine's investigation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/1qsf6y6/reddit_pos...
2 replies →
I don't understand the Epstein thing. In particular, I don't know why everyone doesn't agree "Epstein had help offing himself". That's the most natural inference from the evidence I'm aware of, and also satisfies the conspiracist urge for drama. Everyone should be happy with this, but I've hardly ever heard anyone else put it forward. What am I missing?
Wasn't Epstein a conspiracy theory once? Epstein cover up has made me believe that cover ups DO happen, and if this one was covered up, what else has been cover up?
1 reply →
“Reality” applies pretty much zero selection pressure on ideas that are by definition non-actionable.
That’s the real bread and butter of conspiracy theorizing: claims that don’t matter to anyone’s real lives whether they’re actually true or not.
Therefore they propagate primarily for entertainment value and face none of the friction that you’re imagining being generated by “doesn’t actually make useful predictions about the world.”
> Its really unlikely that a theory circulates widely but has no basis in reality
No, this is not at all true. For example, the only "truth" of BigFoot is the hoax video that many people are emotionally inclined to think isn't a hoax. The only "truth" in Qanon is the messages that Q wrote. Pizzagate was believed by people emotionally inclined to believe that Hillary drinks children's blood. And on and on. Did the government fake the moon landing? Many people believe so, despite no "truth" to it. Is the Earth flat but NASA is conspiring to tell people it's a globe? Is evolution a hoax? There are reasons that these circulate widely despite having no truth to them.
> pizza gate was corroborated by the epstein emails.
LOL. That doesn't even warrant a response.
pizza gate was corroborated by the epstein emails. not all of it, but plenty
Popular conspiracy theories are psyops to either discredit people, movements or ideas
The government spent a lot of time and energy pumping up UFO conspiracy theories to hide sightings of classified aircraft, and they're getting pumped up again in the age of developing cheap weaponized drones.
I would not be surprised that the whole human sex trafficking and Qanon related conspiracy theories are also psyops to hide what's actually going on in plain sight. Obviously, Hillary Clinton wasn't trafficking kids in the basement of a pizza parlor, but there is literally a cabal of elite sex trafficking pedophiles that own and run everything, and one of them is the president.
Wild to think Q anon could have been truth mixed with wild fiction to throw people off. Thats really only something I thought happened in movies, or novels. I'm willing to believe alot more than i ever thought I would
10 replies →
Oh there is truth behind the phenomenon of UFOs. Public perception is changing but many still understandably view this topic as conspiracy. This won't be the case for long.
Checkout this recently made documentary on the Phoenix lights https://youtu.be/7y1XhyTe4Zs
Note that ridicule as way to discredit sightings of classified craft was the purpose of project blue book. Don't let a good disaster go to waste etc.
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