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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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I read an article from Zerohedge recently that listed a bunch of conspiracy theories that will be proven true on 2023. After well every conspiracy theory last year seems to have been proven true. I can’t find the article right now. I read thru their list and thought all the conspiracies were dumb and basically every conspiracy theory that seemed to be likely true has already been proven true.

I have two questions?

  1. What conspiracy theories still exists that haven’t moved into the >50% now think is likely true.

  2. Presuppose theirs a potential snitch who has all the documents and proof to show the world that the conspiracy your running in fact does exists. Is there any reason to kill him or you should just let the culture war battle happen and not worry about going to jail etc.

Maybe my mind isn’t curious enough to see new conspiracies but it does feel like a lot of them were checkmarked true the last year.

Which conspiracy theories do you think were proven true in 2022? Can you link to examples of them being predicted beforehand?

Off the top of my head

  1. Shadow banning etc on twitter. Heavy bias. Federal government actively engaged in censorship. And a step farther than I expected that the Feds were paying twitter.

  2. Lab leak. Well not proven but it went from crazy town to generally accepted as plausible or possible by most.

  3. Masks work. Well maybe this is just pure culture warred at this point.

  4. Hunter Biden laptop. Not proven point is probably Joe directly getting paid. But that’s culture warred to death until the left doesn’t need Joe.

  5. Lourdon County school tranny (or fake tranny) rape case

  6. Multiple things related to vaccines

  7. Ivermectin is horse paste that will kill you. Believe the government had to retract a lot of this lately and in court. Not sure this stuff works but wasn’t life threatening to take.

There’s probably more but off top of head.

I think current conspiracy theories would be the west far more actively engaged in provoking Russia. I think this is false. Involved as always but more of a minor player.

Maybe one that will pop off soon with Hamlin is an acceptance that the vaccine or more specifically multiple boosters is particular damaging to young males. I’m getting a feeling Hamlins heart was damaged either from vaccine or COVID. He’s still in hospital while Chris Pronged got hit in the chest with a 100 mph puck and came back 2 days later a for a game after losing his heart beat.

Edit: there’s probably some interesting stuff here on where people think the anti-establishment view has been sufficiently proven.

Not sure what you mean by "proven true" here. As you mention in (4) most of those are culture war-y enough that you're going to have difficulty getting anyone to admit they were wrong, so it's unclear who you could even reasonably accept as the arbiter of truth. Obviously you're not attempting to be precise in your list of claims here, but especially thinking of (1) and (7), I could see coming down a semantic argument of your claims being true but the other side claiming they never disputed exactly that claim. I haven't been following (1) past the posts about it here, but for (7) there's a pretty clear difference between "veterinary Ivermectin is dangerous for human use due to it being too easy to get the dose way wrong" and "Ivermectin is dangerous"... and then you get into arguments about which claim was actually made. Similarly, I expect the mainstream response to (1) will involve a lot of "of course Twitter cooperated with law enforcement, what's wrong with that?".

The only news in 2022 on (2) I know of is the papers discussed on TWiV 876: Spillover market with Michael Worobey (paper links and podcast audio at that link), which were relatively strong evidence against the lab leak hypothesis (mapping early cases strongly suggests the market as the epicenter; details of the multiple spillovers strongly suggest wildlife origin... for reasons I'm not qualified to defend but that make sense to the scientists), so I don't know why you think it's gotten stronger over the past year.

I agree about shadow banning being proven true in 2022 . Twitter flat-out lied about shadow banning.

Lab leak. Well not proven but it went from crazy town to generally accepted as plausible or possible by most.

Proven plausible (as in, it cannot be disproven with available evidence) back in 2020, not 2022.

Masks work. Well maybe this is just pure culture warred at this point.

If you mean the "conspiracy theory" that they don't work, this was confirmed years ago. It's why initial government responses were against recommending mandates. It was only later, when they realised the psychological potential of making people wear a symbol of pandemic compliance, that policy changed.

Hunter Biden laptop. Not proven point is probably Joe directly getting paid. But that’s culture warred to death until the left doesn’t need Joe.

Proven back in 2020, not 2022.

Lourdon County school tranny (or fake tranny) rape case

Proven back in 2021, not 2022.

Ivermectin is horse paste that will kill you. Believe the government had to retract a lot of this lately and in court. Not sure this stuff works but wasn’t life threatening to take.

Proven back in 1987, not 2022.