Conspiracy!

The world abounds with conspiracies. Was the King of Rock and Roll behind the murder of JFK? Was Roswell connected to alien encounters? Is a shadowy elite out to take over the world as puppet masters of existing governments? Was tofu created as a means of pacifying the male population by hormonal control? Is the BBC hoarding massive numbers of missing 'Doctor Who' episodes? There are so many more conspiracy theories out there that I could go on for pages more!

What are we meant to believe? Personally, I have come to the conclusion that it is best to either believe none of the theories or all of them, the latter option being more entertaining. So they're all true, there is no smoke without fire (a patently false old saying), and the world is an incredibly interconnected mess of conflicting, competing and contradictory conspiracies that would make any theorist sob in joy at the levels of deceit to be unravelled. How fun.

Upon looking up conspiracy theories on the ever perfect Wikipedia - accept no substitutes and help keep it going! - the list of conspiracy theories delivered is monumental in its size. At some point upon reading through it all, a lot of the theories sadly being too serious to mock, you begin to wonder if some of them must be true just on statistical grounds. Certainly technology suppression is, with new models of various devices being held back until maximum profit has been reached on the current versions, but what else? Where do conspiracies end and begin?

<puts on 'fraudulent paranoia' hat>

Maybe the conspiracies have always been there? Wouldn't that make sense? Right from the beginnings of time itself... Yes, it all makes sense now, all the way from cottage cheese to yo-yos. The question is not what is being hidden, but what is lies and what is truth. Ha ha! Cottage cheese! Ahem.

<takes off hat as it's proving to be an incoherence promoter, and incurring a tendency to burble>

The real conspiracy that goes on all around us isn't primarily political or social, but commercial. Advertising is the conspiracy I fear the most, designed as it is to convince the people that all sorts of things are necessary that really aren't. Millions of gadgets fly all over the world that aren't actually needed purely on the basis of advertising. Gadgets which then need fixing, upgrading, replacing and so on, all of which begets more advertising. It's monstrous and manipulative beyond all belief. Less debateable than that though is the conspiracy of food. The great food conspiracy is appalling. When freezers came into being, so did a whole new industry of processed gunk which would be 'just as good' as own prepared food, so instead of people maybe buying frozen vegetables and freezing their own meals a world of awful nutrition was founded and promoted in many cases by certain institutions. In this world that has now seemingly acknowledged tobacco for what it is, ready meals are surely what have to be faced next.

Hmmm, that turned out to be more serious than I thought, probably as a consequence of having to eat far more healthily recently. Hopefully it will pass. Did you know that cottage cheese was actually designed as a primitive air-to-surface anti-tank weapon but was deemed 'too hideous for military use' by the Soviet Air Force and then pushed over into dietary use instead? You don't believe me? Conspiracy!

O.