Christmas is a great time to point out why conspiracy theories don't work. People suck at keeping secrets. Really, there is only one great conspiracy: Santa Claus.
No, really, stay with me on this.
Santa Claus is not real (spoiler!). But we tell people that he is, we hire actors to imitate him, we leave false evidence of his existence. We do all this to create a sense of joy and, simultaneously, coercive morality in the target of this conspiracy.
And it works. Barely. It helps that children have no real system for evaluating complex truths and are unaccustomed to being lied to by their parents. Also, we're bribing them into believing. And did I mention the mounds of fabricated evidence? And even then, you're lucky if a child still believes past the age of about eight.
So when people complain about a vast conspiracy to steal their freedom of [insert paranoia here], I can't help but laugh. I might believe that if you bribed me, hired actors, and had the rest of the world winking along with you, but only if I were eight or younger.
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