Conspiracy theories are a prevalent form of belief that a group of people, often powerful individuals, conspire in secret to create plans that are widely perceived as malevolent or evil. These theories can have disastrous effects on society, such as the mob that stormed the Capitol and the online conspiracy theory about child trafficking. A new study by Karen Douglas, PhD, from the University of Kent in the UK, explores the intricate psyche of conspiracy theorists, attributing their beliefs to a mixture of personality traits and motivations.
Conspiration theories are often fueled by misinformation, which can lead to the unexplained suicide of Jeffrey Epstein. People often seek simplistic answers when confronted with complex issues, such as health-related conspiracy theories. Social media has played a significant role in facilitating the spread of conspiracy theories in the modern age, making them harder to combat. Conspiracy theories have legitimized violence, impaired public health, and undermined democratic governance.
Belief in conspiracy theories is often considered a paradigm of epistemic irrationality, but it is essential to understand that they can reveal a lot about what’s going on in our lives. Conspiracy beliefs result from a range of psychological, political, and social factors. Examples of conspiracy theories include the dead internet conspiracy theory, 9/11 Conspiracies, Princess Diana’s murder, subliminal advertising, the Moon landing hoax, and Paul McCartney’s involvement in the moon landing hoax.
In conclusion, conspiracy theories are a common form of belief that can lead to fear, disempowerment, and the belief in something that is not entirely accurate. Understanding the factors that contribute to conspiracy beliefs is crucial for combating these harmful ideologies and promoting a more just and equitable society.
📹 Debunking Tiktok Conspiracies
Get started with Odoo today and get a free custom domain for 1 year! https://www.odoo.com/r/448 The Shirt I’m Wearing!
📹 The CRAZIEST TikTok Conspiracy Theories
Second Channel! I’ll start posting here soon! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFYigfrmqcDQRuyUCZaDD7w My friend’s …
i’ve gone through psychosis and these people sound worryingly close to how i sounded in psychosis, especially the language of ‘they’. i remember one day where i didn’t eat or drink anything because ‘they’ had put trackers in my food and would kill me if they were able to track me. there were no specifics as to who ‘they’ were, just like with a lot of these people. so yeah. it’s funny because it’s so ridiculous but it’s deeply, deeply worrying as well
The rate at which bones decay is actually a HUGE point of frustration for paleontologists because it means we have very very little material from dinosaurs that lived in, for example, mountainous environments–there’s not much sediment deposition in those places, much less to the degree required for fossilization, so there are entire gaps in the fossil record that are just genuinely impossible to know. A dinosaur that died out in the open would be gone within decades–but a dinosaur that was immediately buried in a shallow ashy lake would be preserved down to the last feather.
The Photoshop contest made me realize how funny it is if ancient people made something for shits and giggles and the mainstream of today take it extremely serious. Like the meme of thinking every ancient artifact was used in religious ceremonies instead just being a funny cup a guy made when he was bored.
My mum has a coworker who’s a full on conspiracy theorist. Has a necklace that wards off the 5g waves and all that. The best one I’ve learnt about her so far is that she doesn’t eat pigs because they’re actually humans that were experimented on and turn into what they are now. I think the kicker to all of this is that my mum, and thus her coworker too, are librarians. I can’t imagine having a job that revolves around helping the education of the public and the pursuit of knowledge and being this way. I can’t imagine living my life this way, thinking pigs are actually humans and everyone is fine with eating them. How can you live like that.
My favorite part of flat earters online don’t realize that if the earth was flat the internet wouldn’t work. We’re able to send signals to exact locations based on projections. Use the wrong projection and ur data is off. None of the projections would be correct if it’s actually flat. I work in GIS/mapping
My childhood best friend turned into one of these people. I remember with a sinking feeling thinking “oh no…” when she started getting genuinely angry with me when I wouldn’t take her One World theories seriously. She would say things like “you just don’t understand what’s really out there.” And when I’d ask her to tell me she would shut down and say I’m too weak minded to understand. I ended up having to walk away from our friend group soon after. She’s fully antivax, moon landing is fake, all that now at a conservative college. It’s hard to watch.
I stumbled across a great book that breaks down conspiracy thinking last year called “How to talk to a science denier: conversations with flat earthers, climate deniers, and others who defy reason” by Lee McIntyre. He goes to a flat earth convention and uses that to try to understand/explain conspiracy thinking from the perspective of flawed reasoning and science philosophy. Super fascinating read, and he gives some great advice on how to talk to these people about it without pushing them further down the unreality rabbit hole.
Fun fact: the camera obscura existed way before the 1800s. It was basically a projector and many artists used it to trace stuff onto the canvas. The only thing they didn’t know yet was how to capture the picture in a way our cameras do it today. I know this wasn’t the point of what Jarvis said about the Mona Lisa, just thought it might be interesting. Art nerds please look it up, this shit is interesting as hell.
“If dinosaurs existed, why aren’t the bones everywhere?” That’s thing, they ARE. fossils (not bones, yes, they are different!) are literally everywhere! Everyday average people have stumbled across dinosaur fossils all the time! The only reason it’s more common that palaeontologists find them is because they are actively looking
15:45 That’s essentially the textbook definition of the Dunning-Kruger effect. You are absolutely correct. Most people only remember the “the less you know, the more confident you are” but the explanation for WHY this is the case is because people take knowledge of one thing and incorrectly relate it to something else. Such as, “bones decay within 30 years” is correct. “People are not finding dinosaur bones” is also correct. “Dinosaurs did not exist” is incorrect. Just because people aren’t finding dinosaur bones doesn’t mean dinosaurs did not exist: “People are finding dinosaur fossils” is correct. The less you know about the topic, the less you are able to judge how well you know it.
one of my favorite things about these conspiracy people is how they claim info is constantly being hidden from us yet also claim every word can be broken down into a deeper meaning as evidence. like television into “tell a vision”, like if theyre trying so hard to hide info, why would the evidence be in plain sight?
I love so much that she said you have to turn your location off while being around her. As if she isn’t uploading articles….to tiktok ya know the app that sells any and all you allow it access to. I guarantee you she doesn’t even have a vpn in her home to try to protect herself she just thinks turning off your location takes you off the grid.
Honestly, these sort of conspiracy theories feel like old school mythology. “I don’t know how this thing happens, so I’ll come up with a reason why and make it as cool as possible.” Except… we do know how these things happen now. And you don’t need to come up with something new, the person who created the internet is still around, you can talk to him (that person being, of course, Al Gore).
The ‘cutting up the map’ thing is maddening because it could so easily have been more convincing. I could see how someone who’s conspiratorially minded and sceptical of the shape of the earth could look at the interrupted map projections that are all warped and have sections ‘missing’ and be like “what about the empty spaces?” because they’re used to seeing rectangular maps and don’t understand map projection. But then the dude just sloppily crops off half the picture like he’s cropping his ex out of old vacation photos and it’s like… Dude.
I had a friend who bought into the dinosaurs never existed thing. And he brought it up at lunch one day and said, “You’re studying this shit. Prove to me, there are dinosaurs, prove to me they exist, ” so i flicked the bone of my wings at him for the rest of lunch. And just kept saying “evidence” each time
The ” television = tell a vision” type shit is my favorite part of conspiracy theories. As If the people orchestrating everything are leaving trails of bread crumbs, clues, and signs as to the true nature of what they’re doing, even though conspiracy theories are based on the idea that other people or beings are trying to keep shit hidden
For the “WiFi” one, she was talking about the fibre optic cables that are laid at the bottom of the ocean. Claiming that we were unable to lay them, because in all these conspiracy theories modern society is too dumb to do anything. Here’s how it’s actually laid from google: “Submarine cables are laid on the sea and ocean floor using cable laying ships, which are specially designed seagoing vessels that can be over 500 feet (150 meters) long. These cable laying ships load millions of pounds / thousands of tons of fiber optic cable, by spooling it into large tanks onboard the vessel.”
You know how in school, you sometimes have to take one class before you can take another (pre-requisite). You need that base layer of information before you can go into the more complex stuff. The internet has ruined that. People will go to the absolute top without having any of the necessary underlying basic knowledge and then just make up wild ideas that don’t actually make sense if you have the basic knowledge. Honestly, this is why I actually hate the whole, “why do they teach us stuff we won’t use in school?” you actually are using a lot of it as a foundation for continuing your education (outside and inside of school), your day to day life, and common sense. 15:33 yesss thiss!
This makes me mad that college’s in america like Vermont and North dakota have been removing their geology departments. Geology is such an important science that grounds a lot of the other sciences. It helps us understand geography and the earth and how we exist with one another. Defunding that science is going to allow more of these conspiracy theories to thrive and will not give future generations the perspective of the earth and the universe.
The Simpsons genuinely don’t predict the future actually, like even by accident, most of the examples of it happening have either been false or have happened after everyone already knew that there was a possibility of it, the most famous one is the bit with trump as president, and that bit was made and aired AFTER he announced his candidacy
I just realized that modern conspiracy theories are very similar to ancient mythology. hear me out they come up with an explanation for something they don’t understand that makes sense to them and they share it to others for them to also understand what’s going on even though its not what causes it. The biggest difference is that conspiracies are conspiracies and not mythology, because we do know what causes the things they are trying to explain so they are just wrong.When mythology was created, they legit had no idea.
Worth1000!!! What a throwback! I used to download them as phone backgrounds! Also the whole dino one just really got me. “How come average people don’t find them?” They do, famously. “Wouldn’t bones decay?” Yes, fossils aren’t bone tissue. Like you’re sooooo close. This is how so much misinformation happens with vaccines.
After coming in contact with many of these people, I’ve learned that the ONLY way to help or change their thinking is to simply listen to them. Sitting down with them and letting them talk to you helps them think over their thoughts and reasonings. The more logical questions you ask them, the more their hypotheses break down, and they end up questioning themselves to the point where they’ll actually start properly researching and asking the same questions. Most of these people don’t have degrees or a low level of education, so you can’t blame them if they don’t know any better. Hope this will stop some people here from fighting those keyboard wars that go nowhere 🙂
Fun fact: “Birds aren’t real” conspiracy was all fake! I’ve heard tales of it and never understood it but I recently learned how it was all a lesson in how people will believe anything. Truly one of my most favorite conspiracy theories. My favorite part from everything however is this statement, “While 22 of the men made it to Nevada, one man did not. Neil Ford was the only engineer that lived to tell the story, as he was left in a Waffle House bathroom because the others claimed,” he had to pee too many times, and was ruining the vibe of the road trip.” Neil died after meeting one of the founding members in 1994.” It’s like shitposting but with conspiracy’s and I love it.
I was just talking to a friend of mine who got wrapped up in conspiracy nonsense, and she was confused as to why I was irritated with her. We have so much knowledge and studies at our fingertips and yet no one bothered to teach internet literacy, so now we have people getting famous for asking questions that we’ve answered decades ago, and just making a crackpot fabrication of what the answer “should” be. It’s like the flat earth thing
I learned about fossils from a test I took in second grade. I was fascinated that the soft tissue could disappear and leave behind these imprints. Now I make molds and casts for crafting. Alginate is the soft tissue that gets disposed of, coated in layers of plaster to make the perfect hero mold. It’s a process that is able to be recreated. Like there’s no conspiracy there. Now I struggle with huge concepts a lot. I barely passed a geology course just this semester because large scientific processes tend to evade me. But I still believe them because I don’t have a better guess. Sometimes that’s okay. Not understanding is not equivalent to anything being hidden and doesn’t equate to intelligence either. If you feel like you have to compensate and believe in something to replace what you don’t understand, try to focus instead on areas where you are knowlegable and maybe you’ll find factual connections that can explain it rather than turning to the Internet conspiracies. Inner reflection has more bearing on intelligence than scouring for theories
oh man. i was chatting with a woman about a cute dog and then she started to point out an airplane and its “chemtrails”; since i didnt have much time nor knew her well i just went “no its not :D” “no it doesnt :D” to her assertions. to my amused surprise, she conceded that maybe the trails werent as bad as she thought. i won that confidence game i guess! lol
a lot of the memes about the Simpsons predicting the future is also just lies. like djt coming down an escalator, the real thing happens first, the Simpsons parody/reference it, and then people put it on the internet saying it’s from an episode from years ago when it isn’t. it works because nobody watches the Simpsons anymore to recognize the lie.
cannot imagine hanging out with someone like this. like “idk man why are you talking about bones and turning off my location, I asked how work was going?? idc about “connecting dots”, I just wanna eat— yes I am gonna eat that, they’re literally FRIES vanessa— no I don’t think the earth is flat? I remember why we stopped talking now”
LOLLLLL I have a story about the giant fossils 😂 When I was 21 I dated a guy who was 23 and confidently dumb as a box of rocks. He constantly talked down to me because he was TWO YEARS older than me, complained when I wore too much makeup (i.e., mascara on my bottom lashes) and when I wore too little (I looked “sick”), and always had the most “deep” takes on the world…. One day, he excitedly showed me photos of the giant skeleton, saying “Omg look what they found, isn’t this crazy!!?!??” Now, I’m a scientist through and through, always have been – a thirst for knowledge but healthy skepticism and prioritizing evidence and reliable sources (I was also in the middle of earning a degree in Biology). However, I was also a chronic people-pleaser who had often been teased for being nerdy, and this guy had a hair trigger for feeling emasculated/insecure…. So anyway, dude excitedly shows me this “evidence” of giants, with a bit of an air of being happy he finally knew something I had never heard of. I could tell he was pretty emotionally invested in this “discovery”, so I tread VERY lightly. Even though I immediately saw red flags of this being an old hoax, I responded with “oh, wow, that’s really incredible!” He then proceeded to go on and on about how amazing it was, so under the guise of amazement, I gently started asking some basic questions to ascertain the validity of the giant skeleton…. Things like, “Oh wow, where did they find it?” and “When were the fossils discovered?
16:30 YOOOOOOOO I haven’t heard of Worth1000 in like 15-20 YEARS I used to look through the galleries of their Photoshop contests in middle school! I think they had one called “What if real life looked like Anime?” and one for making realistic Pokémon. Those are the only two I remember right now, but what a blast from the past
Ah finally a Jarvis article I can nerd out on. Im not a paleontologist but I like to research it in my free time. We don’t just have fossils of dinosaurs— we have fossils showing us the history of mammal evolution itself. We know dimetrodon and similar pelycosaurs were the beginning of the chain, and we watched as they separated from their lizard-like ancestors, developed fur, whiskers, self-heating systems, etc. It bothers me when people know NOTHING about dinosaurs will claim they are fake, or here to “test” us. THEYRE NOT EVEN THE BEGINNING OF ALL FOSSILS WE HAVE! We even have evidence dating back to when the earth was covered in green slime 😭. Anyway, thank you for explaining how fossils are created and proving this person wrong !!
I love the dinosaur one because she’s asking good questions but just couldn’t be bother to go far enough to google the answers. ‘Why doesn’t the average joe find dinosaur bones? Don’t bones decompose fairly quickly?’ Because YES bones WILL disintegrate over time which is why you wouldnt find skeletons EVERYWHERE even if a t-rex died in your backyard. fossilisation occurs is pretty specific circumstances. she needed like ONE more google search to see her questions were good but led to a different answer 🙁
to me, when it’s impossible to actually discern whether something is parody or not, treating it like it’s not is the best approach. if your audience isn’t understanding that what youre doing is parody, youre just being part of a problem. I feel like every time a commentary website talks about something, or even on other platforms when someone duets or comments on a article, there are always the people rushing to be like “what’s actually messed up is the fact that you don’t understand the whole account is satire” and that just gets frustrating. so whether this lady is trying to make satirical content or not, shes feeding a lot of conspiracy theorist echo chambers and that’s not a very good thing.
The more freely information is available, the less people seem to care to learn. We think that because we have ACCESS to it, that must mean we are intelligent. I have no idea how people make these leaps in logic, but I chose to learn through mathematics and nonstop studying; so much so I made it my career (Ph.D. student researcher). These people genuinely scare the fuck out of me. They have large platforms and people agree with this shit. It’s truly terrifying.
I’m rly worried about ppl like this when I think about the progress of AI. Some fascinating type of gullible you have to be to just blindly trust the shit you heard years ago and never verified, just trust anything you know because “you know it” as if 1. human memory was infallible 2. what you were told was correct in the first place. Genuinely these people, they’re gonna get cheated out of so much money, even more than they currently are being scammed out of.
My favorite part about the whole dinosaur thing is that she kinda answers herself. Like I know that petrification happens and bones are left behind and whatever. BUT, she literally says why isn’t the everyday joe finding them, and then follows up saying they decompose after 20 years meaning YOU WOULDN’T FIND THE BONES.
what’s with conspiracy theorists and the whole “hidden in plain sight” thing? like the “tell-a-vision” thing. why would anyone keeping a secret ever leave hints like that? is the super secret shadow government a bunch of sphynxes leaving riddles for conspiracy theorists? is dora the explorer in this hidden coalition?
all jokes aside: there is some genuinely intriguing stuff about the map of the earth- – no, it doesn’t say the earth is flat, or made of hot dogs or something or another. but it’s basically this old map made by someone called “al-idrisi”, which, i belive was made in the 1500s? (don’t quote me on that) and it showed places and islands that are believed to be of myth or outright absurd; i don’t really remember it in detail, but we are talking about 500 years worth of terraforming and rising sea levels; so it’s not impossible that these places just sunk under the ocean. look it up if you’d like; as i said: it’s pretty intriguing stuff.
I used to be big on these theories. Then…I got medication. Literally all these people who make conspiracy theories prey on those who have that paranoia and anxiety. Looking back there’s so many things I believed can be traced back to people making shit up and my irrational paranoia and constant state of mania was like yeah. Ok. Makes sense.
“Why aren’t dinosaur bones everywhere and why can’t the average Joe just dig them up” COULD BE SUCH AN INTERESTING QUESTION TOO! If instead of “I don’t know the answer to this, so it must be fake” she had a “What’s the answer to my question, people who know ab this?” mindset. It could really lead to an interesting conversation about fossilization and the conditions in which it occurs!
It’s also hilarious because she also had to do SO much work to get that pic into her tik tok. Like she had to go searching for it, find it, save it, then make the tik tok, and edit the pic into it. And that aspect makes it even more funny, because to even find that, you have to go to the webpage where it says it’s all fake and for a contest. So she completely ignored that it’s fake, still went through the process of getting it and using it in a tiktok and then saying, “hey, how could fossils be real if these things are here?” The lengths she goes to for absolutely fake information is truly astounding.
13:31 “Of course i’m gonna point out all the symbolism in every movie we watch” like, you should be able to recognize symbolism when it’s there, but this lady’s not doing that. She’s not understanding that a certain fictional element is analogous to something in real life, she’s claiming there’s secret messages hidden in meaningless details. She’s not understanding subtext, she’s hallucinating new text.
15:57 Ok: my grandparents’ property is subject to really bad erosion because all the trees there were cut down in the last century, and when the sandy soil gets washed away, rocks with imprints of trilobites and arthropod-looking things are left behind. Fossils are everywhere, at least everywhere it would make sense for them to be. Also, you can go to specialty shops all over the southern and midwestern U.S. and find fossils for sale; I got some from a local business that specializes in plants and yard decorations just last month.
The thing about the bones is that for bones to be preserved they need to be in an area with certain characteristics, mainly that it has sedimentary rock iirc. In the US most of the country isn’t like that so that is why you don’t find them in every single state. Miniminuteman does a great job of explaining this and is actually an archeologist. Or like some scholarly journal prob has an article about it.
In some countries, especially in Europe, gravesites are replaced and used by future dead people every few decades because the remains have decomposed to the point that they’re no longer considered “human remains” (maybe a few bone fragments remaining). Unfortunately, in the 1900s, some cemeteries sold plots without actually testing their soil composition and the soil is not the right kind to decompose remains this quickly. So, in some cemeteries, they’re exhuming mushy human bodies, and it’s a big issue whether they can be removed or not for the next person because they are still too close to being considered “human remains.”
My man I worked as a tech for an isp. What you said about people not understanding networking is just 100% true. The majority of people even younger people don’t know how WiFi work and just think it magically should just work and it should work at 100% capacity full speed over your entire house no matter what the distance is, obstacles are (concrete walls) or how much interference there is 😂
Her makeup makes me angry. Anyway, the combination if multiple conspiracies is standard. When you already believe one tenuous thing, it is easy to fall for others. And especially if those others prop your primary conspiracy with their own “proof.” If you follow any FLERF content for a while, you will see this constantly. It also is amazing how much mind blowing tech and science is used to disprove other mind blowing tech and science in these circles.
This goes along with my recent rewatch of some Dan Olson content: In Search of a Flat Earth and the one about the geocentrism ‘documentary’. I think Mia Mulder also did at least one article about conspiracy theories, including Tartarus and Atlantis, and how most conspiracy theories are warmed-over anti-semitism.
Leaving a comment to support the article, because I just don’t know how much of this I’m going to be able to get through before getting angry and clicking off. Conspiracy theories just rarely feel fun or funny to me, I just get really frustrated by the lack of critical thought, and anxious because I know like 9 times out of 10 it’s just going to devolve into bigotry that encourages actionable “retaliation” against marginalized groups (e.g., anytime anyone EVER mentions “Hollywood Elites”, they’re talking about Jewish people). Regardless, Jarvis, I love your content and want to support you. Hope leaving a comment helps <3
Making the planet a sphere would make it much easier to know if there’s a piece missing because there’s limited space in a sphere. You can calculate the area of sphere just from observations, you can’t calculate the area of a plane, it’s infinite If there was a chunk of the earth missing, we’d have known
As a fan of fossils and dinosaurs got to say how dumb it is for some people to say dinosaurs are fake because we don’t are fake because there is not millions of ‘bones’ of dinosaurs. Yet there are no bones left only fossilized remains of bones, and those same people will say that megalodon still live…. :face-red-droopy-eyes: But anyway, Love the golden article it always brightens my day:hands-yellow-heart-red:
The danger of psuedo intellectualism is a real present one, i fell victim to empty ideals that do not require you to cite your sources, do any type of mathematical equations or studying of anytype, conspiracy theories give the ignorant and the lazy a very easy way to make sense of a confounding and chaotic world, yet it is dangerous to dismiss professionals that have spent decades in a field studying and learning by saying that makes no sense to my small brain so its not real.
The funny thing i think about conspiracy theories is a lot of people think “they” are like hiding little clues in names and logos for you to uncover their secret evil plot like no.. if i had an evil plot im not gonna say “and put three sixes in the logo. That will tell everyone whos in the know to see how evil we are muwahahaha”
“The average joe has never found a dinosaur bone” I have not found a dinosaur (in terms of the reptile) but I have literally been on a chalk mining site where an ocean used to be where you could literally find coral, crabs and more, millions of years old and they just flat out let you keep em cuz there’s so many, like what is this girl on???
Reminds me of a girl I knew in high school that was convinced it was impossible for us to have come from the same ancestors as modern monkeys and apes. She refused to even acknowledge that we are apes. Somehow humans were different entirely. I did my absolute best to explain it to her in every way I could. Even drew up my own evolutionary tree (simplified) for her, and pulled up articles to share with her about evolution. She was willing to admit that dogs came from wolves. But us and chimpanzees having a common ancestor? Nope. Impossible.
10:08 I get you’re clowning her for making fundamentally flawed questions but here she was clearly talking about the fiber optic cable that goes under the ocean across the entire globe. I don’t know why but it seems like you think the internet works through the air or something. Oh, yeah, and Yemen is threatening to cut a lot of those cables if the US doesn’t stop the airstrikes. Allegedly they already started but it was brushed off as a simple malfunction.
What bothers me about online discourse mocking conspiracy theories is that too often the people doing the mocking seem to believe that conspiracy theorists have just been led astray by bad information, and exposing them to a well researched, logical argument will convince them otherwise. That’s simply not the case. Conspiracy theories are a defense mechanism. The theory itself doesn’t matter, and so the facts and arguments don’t matter. The purpose of a conspiracy theory is to paint a complex reality that contradicts your beliefs and values as a deceptively simple one ran by fundamentally and opaquely evil actors. It’s about refusing to face reality, to accept change, to reflect on your beliefs and grow. It’s about feeling superior to those that do, because it’s good to feel superior but it’s painful to admit when you’re wrong. You can never argue with a conspiracy theorist on just the facts because you’re not approaching the core reason of why they turn to theories in the first place.
i really do admire good hoax art i think its so cool that someones art is done so well its believed for years and years later. they basically inspire folklore which is a very cool thing for art to do and i imagine the artist would be so happy lol. obv it can also lead to bad things its not always harmless but the harmless stuff is delightful
the tartaria conspiracy is fascinating, because it’s really obvious it’s fueled by a very palpable grief and disappointment of the present basically, it’s looking at the buildings of the recent past – built in the 20th century – and wondering why we don’t do that anymore and instead of coming to the conclusion that capitalism forces architects to treat space and buildings as commodities and how the nature of that commodity has changed: they instead say that they’re the tips of massive buildings from an ancient all-powerful utopian society wiped out by massive mud floods (and sometimes those precursors were literal giants)
It’s like they haven’t heard of concepts. Yes ofc movies have similar concepts and use similar ideas for their movies/tv shows. Hell there’s thousands of shows/movies that are based off of medieval times and have dragons and magic in it. Doesn’t mean that dragons and magic is real. It’s just a concept that is used time and time again because it’s interesting. It makes a good story.