From Flat Earthers to anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists are growing in numbers - to the point where they are now affecting all of us, right down to the democratic way of life we hold dear.
Tagged With pizzagate
Three years ago, a website was created as a refuge for the communities deemed too hateful or toxic to exist on the lenient-to-a-fault social aggregator Reddit. That site was a knockoff called Voat which was identical in purpose and design, only its founding communities were groups like v/FatPeopleHate and the anti-black v/CoonTown.
Video: Stephen Colbert has a message for the "subreddit sub-geniuses" propagating the ridiculous Pizzagate conspiracy theory: "Grow the f**k up."
According to a new New York Times report, Michael G. Flynn, the son of Donald Trump's national security adviser, has been booted from the US president-elect's transition team for tweeting about Pizzagate, the idiotic online conspiracy theory that led a gunman to "self-investigate" a DC pizzeria this weekend.
For months, 4chan and Reddit users have delved deep into the emails of John Podesta as they were released by Wikileaks and concluded that the emails contained coded language about a secret child-trafficking ring operating out of Comet Ping Pong, a Washington DC pizzeria -- a ring run by Podesta and former presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. The theory was known as "Pizzagate", and until recently it was just another of the internet's outlandish conspiracy theories. Two of pizzagate's loudest mouthpieces have backed off their support after a man armed with a AR-15, a Colt. 38 and a shotgun entered the restaurant to "investigate". And yet, pizzagate somehow trudges on, without them.