What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: These Five Niche Conspiracy Theories

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Before we get started, check out this tweet from U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene:

While Greene spreads a ton of conspiracy theories herself, she's not wrong here: A lot of Americans do believe in absolute nonsense. But we all believe in different levels of nonsense. To someone of Greene's ilk, Jewish space lasers and government control of hurricanes are not conspiracy theories, but "Donald Trump is a shape-shifting lizard" is a conspiracy theory.

When you drill down on any conspiracy, you get more specific theories that fewer people believe, like "we know how to control the weather, but we don't," or "we did go to the moon, but we faked the photos." Conspiracy theories, like Spotify playlists and TikTok feeds, are becoming more individualized.

In the near future, each person will believe in their own specific conspiracy theory, with evidence and arguments crafted to individual biases automatically by artificial intelligence and served up on search engines and social media. Or maybe that's just my personal conspiracy theory.

For a look into this possible future, I dug up some micro-conspiracy theories, batshit things that very few people—maybe only one person—believe.

Computer chips are demon prisons

This conspiracy theory maintains that our computers are filled with literal demons. It starts with Solomon. Solomon, the Bible says, built the First Temple in Jerusalem. In The Testament of Solomon, an apocryphal text attributed him, Solomon imprisons various demons using mystical symbols. These symbols (the seals of Solomon) ensure that the demons can never show themselves or make themselves know to us. They also look a little like circuit boards, leading to the belief that our computer chips hold demons, and although they can never interact with us directly, they influence us through the internet.

Runescape players are controlling actual humans in New York City

Runescape is an MMORPG that people have been playing since 2001. This theory began with the observation that Runescape's virtual world vaguely resembles New York City—a series of boroughs with a central marketplace. This led (somehow) to the theory that the government is conducting a mass mind-control experiment where unwitting drone New Yorkers are literally being controlled by Runescape players. Like the best conspiracy theories, the only way to learn more about it is to click on a YouTube video of a guy with a beard talking to his camera.

King Charles is a vampire

Some believe that Charles, the current king of England, is a vampire. Here's the evidence: He is related to Vlad the Impaler, the 15th Century Romanian warlord who inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the royal family has a genetic blood disorder. That's really it, but that's enough for me.

Queen Elizabeth was a cannibal

Another British royal family conspiracy theory holds that Queen Elizabeth was a cannibal. It was first suggested (supposedly) by "Hubert Humdinger," an "exiled cultural philosopher," who "exists" in that you can buy his book on Amazon. Anyway, in an article supposedly published in 1973, Humdinger supposedly wrote of the then-queen: “She must eat human flesh to be so vivacious. There is an immense amount of spiritual energy in human muscle.” Later, a workman repairing the royal freezer supposedly said he'd found all kinds of human parts in the deep freeze. I can't find any real evidence of any of this, for what it's worth.

Doveland, Wisconsin: A town that doesn't exist

Many people on the Internet say they remember visiting a small town called Doveland in Wisconsin, but the town isn't actually there. It supposedly vanished at some point in the 1990s and left behind no historical record, map, or even a contemporaneous written account. There is a photograph, though, supposedly taken in the town.

When the initial posts about Doveland appeared, people started searching for it on Google, and to their surprise, they found shirts, mugs, hats, and other Doveland, Wisconsin merchandise for sale. Does the existence of Doveland merch prove that the town once existed and sold town-based swag? Nah, it only proves that AI will go ahead and create merch if enough of us go searching for it.