I won’t deny that I invest way too much of my mental energy into thinking about conspiracy theories and how logical or illogical that they are. I have spent countless nights watching YouTube videos of people contriving fear into the viewers mind via their conspiracy theories. The reason why some conspiracy theories scare us is because some (if they are true) would have life altering ramifications (like the 9-11 conspiracy, Roswell/Area 51, Skull and Bones, the Illuminati, etc); whereas a lot of the conspiracies that we hear about are largely localized inside the world of Pop Culture. Now it is not to be said that, if true, these Pop Culture conspiracy theories wouldn’t strike a mighty blow upon the established governments and would be very daunting. To qualify one of these events/theories as a Pop Culture Conspiracy Theory, we’re going to say that their scope could go beyond the realms of ‘pop culture’ and impact a larger audience; but they more-or-less have a larger impact the Pop Culture world. So in hopes that these Pop Culture Conspiracy Theories can make you laugh, think, blush, or scare the bajesus out of you; I present to you Top Cat’s Tuesday Top 10: Pop Culture Conspiracy Theories.
Honorable Mentions: Kim Kardashian Faked the Paris Robbery – Kim Kardashian is always finding ways to stay relevant…I mean how she is being used to distract us from the government…I mean to distract us from how talented she is not…no… Let me start that again. Kim Kardashian is finding ways to stay relevant and conspiracy theoriests say that one way she did this involves a conspiracy theory. The conspiracy involving Mrs. Kardiashian-West was fueled by internet trolls, Twitter users, Reddit scholars and myself; when we wondered whether or not Kim faked the now infamous Paris Robbery to boost ratings for her reality show: Keeping Up With the Kardashians. The conspiracy is that she could have also done it for the publicity or maybe even the insurance money. Probably not the insurance money part…since she’s now worth even more than her famous rapper husband.
Khloe Kardashian is O.J. Simpson’s daughter – I don’t watch Keeping up with the Kardashians. Sorry. But I do know that one of the few times that it flashed up on my TV screen at home while flipping through the channels, I remember hearing a conversation with Khloe about her paternity. She asked her mom if she had been adopted because she looked different from her siblings and the topic was visted again on the show in 2012 when Kris tried to get Khloe to do a DNA test to prove that she was Robert Kardashian’s daughter. So the conspiracy is that Kris Jenner and O.J. Simpson had an affair and Khloe was the result. So I hate to keep mentioning the Kardshians but this is one of my favorite conspiracies because despite my not having proof, I most definitely think its true. The Simpsons (not the cartoon) and the Kardashians had been friends for many years. They had traveled together and spent a lot of time together, so him joining O.J.’s “Dream Team” when he was on trial for murder. But man what does that make Kris look like; when she’s in the court room watching her baby daddy on trial for murder while being defended by her husband while sitting beside her future husband Bruce? Sounds like someone with that much drama would end up with a reality show. Oh wait.
10. Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears were Instruments used during the Presidential Administrations – This conspiracy theory goes beyond Pop Culture and dives deep into the government conspiracies that I said that I wasn’t going to talk about; but I can’t help it. This conspiracy says that Miley Cyrus’s infamous VMAs performance and her completely erratic Bangerz-era behavior stemmed from her being used by the Obama administrations ploy to distract the American people as their liberties were being taken away. Fellow pop star Britney Spears was supposedly also a tool of a Presidential administration. Remember when Britney had her very public breakdown? The shaving her head and hitting car windows with umbrellas Britney? Well the conspiracy is that Britney wasn’t doing this as a result of her own personal issues; but she was being paid by the Bush Administration to grab headlines away from a corrupt and incompetent White House. These conspiracies sound outlandish but why not imagine that they are true? Could the aforementioned Kim Kardashian and her sisters be our current distraction? Hmmm.
9. Katy Perry is JonBenet Ramsey – This one is kind of pushing the realms of believability but its still a legitimate conspiracy theory that has caused a lot of buzz on the interwebs. There have been thousands of conspiracy theories about JonBenet Ramsey’s murder but there is one that involves pop star and current American Idol judge Katy Perry. A 2016 YouTube video by Dave Johnson resurfaced and in which he claimed that JonBenet’s murder was a hoax so that Katy Perry the pop star diva could emerge. The claim is that JonBenet and Katie Perry are the same person; and that she was being groomed for superstardom by the Illuminati. I know. All that he really had to go on in his basis for this claim is that Katy and JonBenet look a lot alike, both sets of parents look a lot alike, that the murder was never solved, and that both of them were talented youths. Do I believe this one? Can’t really put merit into that one; but as you’re watching the next episode of American Idol think about this conspiracy theory and you be the judge. Get it. You be the judge. 😉
8. Elvis Presley is Still Alive – Before you think that this is just some tag line from a National Inquirer magazine or the title of an alien article in another supermarket tabloid; here me out. I know that the official word is that Elvis died of a heart attack in his Graceland home in 1977 because every August 16th my mom sends me a text to remind me that that day was the day that Elvis died. But since that sad day in 1977 fans around the world have sworn that they’ve seen the King ‘walking in Memphis’. (Cue Marc Cohn song.) The main conspiracy theory surrounding Elvis still being alive is that Elvis faked his own death and lived out his remaining years away from the public eye as Jon Burrows….or Jimmy Ellis (depends on who you’re asking). Fans even swore that they saw an aged Elvis in the airport line as an extra in the 1990 movie Home Alone. Some believe that Elvis has been ‘home alone’ the whole time and has been living as the Graceland’s groundskeeper. Either way Elvis will always be alive in the hearts of his fans; but you can’t blame the ‘Suspicious Minds’ who want him to be alive. Sorry. I couldn’t resist that last one. 🙂
7. Paul is Dead – So this urban legend/conspiracy theory has been around since Paul McCartney’s supposed death in the 60s. The conspiracy is that Paul died in 1966 and was replaced with a hired doppelganger. The conspiracy pot was stirred in 1969 when American college students published a number of articles that gave clues to McCartney’s supposed death. The clues were found in lyrics and Beatles album artwork. The clue-hunting became an obsession for fans and within less than a month, it had become a worldwide phenomenon. Hundreds of supposed clues about McCartney’s death had been reported and they had done everything from investigated photos to listening to songs played backwards to interpreting song lyrics and album cover imagery. The various clues suggested led to believers saying that three years prior (on November 9th, 1966), that McCartney had an argument during a band recording session and had driven off angrily in his car. As a result of his anger, he crashed his car and died. To spare the public from the inevitable grief, the Beatles replaced him with the winner of a McCartney look-alike contest. Fans, as recent as 2015, have been attempting to present new clues to back up this conspiracy; so this could be more than just a rumor. I mean, it’s believable. Record company doesn’t want to lose money, so they replace him with a look alike? Sounds logical. They did it with Avril Lavigne when she died in 2003 and was replaced by her look-alike? 😉 Don’t worry I’m not going there today.
6. The FBI Killed Biggie and Tupac – It has been discussed at length, that these two rap legends were murdered by someone in authority. There are even rumors that Tupac is still alive and is living on an island somewhere in the Caribbean; but the conspiracy about who really killed Biggie and Tupac is really juicy. After two decades, the murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious BIG are still unsolved. The conspiracy builds its evidence from the fact that Tupac and Biggie were in the center of a heated East Coast vs West Coast feud. Now this wasn’t a ‘man our rap is better’ feud; people were taking this feud serious. The conspiracy is that the FBI ordered hit jobs on both of the rappers to put a wrap on the rap war. (Sorry I couldn’t resist myself.) Court documents and interviews with members of the FBI and CIA both suggest that Tupac was under FBI surveillance before he was murdered six months before the murder of Biggie Smalls. The deaths of these two rap legends have sparked the topic to be discussed in TV shows, movies, books, magazine articles, and countless documentaries.
5. Stanley Kubrick was hired to Fake the Moon Landing – Ever heard someone say that they don’t believe that we went to the moon because the whole think looked like it was done on a big stage in Hollywood? We could talk about the belief in or disbelief in the moon landing forever but since we’re going with Conspiracy Theories that center around Pop Culture figures, there is not much of a greater name in Pop Culture than that of Stanley Kubrick. You’re probably thinking: “Ground Control to Major Tom. Stanley Kubrick doesn’t have anything to do with the moon landing, he’s from Hollywood; not the government.” To properly diagnose this conspiracy, lets just say for arguments sake that no one went to the moon. There was no placing an American Flag on the moon after a landing and definitely no small step for mankind. Secondly, Stanley Kubrick directed 2001: A Space Odyssey which came out in 1968. 1968 was a year before the U.S. ‘supposedly’ landed on the moon. The conspiracy theory (as I have heard it) was that NASA and the American Government got Kubrick to make a completely realistic ‘moon set’ and hired him to ‘direct’ the moon landing. This ‘moon landing’ was broadcast live on TV and he did such an amazing job that the rest is as they say: ‘history’. Now I don’t believe this conspiracy theory but it is one of my favorites because I love history, Stanley Kubrick, and the NASA space program. So the thought of the scope of Kubrick’s work on this undertaking is quite interesting to think about. You can get excited at the thought of this theory but just keep your ‘eyes wide shut’ and remind yourself that it’s just a fan-fueled conspiracy theory.
4. The Titanic Didn’t Sink – Oh the hearts that would be broken if they couldn’t imagine a world where Jack and Rose could have potentially fallen in love and inevitably their world was torn apart by a sinking ship. Well this literally could not have happened on a ship called The Titanic if this conspiracy theory is true. The theory I am referencing was popularized by the 1998 book, Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank? by Robin Gardner. In this book, it is theorized that the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic was actually the ship that sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic on that dreaded April night in 1912. The theory is that the whole ordeal was part of an insurance scam that began when the Olympic crashed into the Royal Navy Warship, The HMS Hawke, in 1911 and White Star Line (the owner of the two ships) was found to be at fault of the collision. That means that the White Star Line was going to have to dish out enough money that would equal way more than that Heart of the Ocean diamond necklace. So the theory says that the White Star Line patched up the damaged Olympic and sent it out disguised as its identical sister ship the Titanic. They then orchestrated the sinking for an insurance pay out that would make up for the previous blunder. ‘My heart will go on’ thinking that J.P. Morgan (yes that J.P. Morgan) planned it all and knew what was going to happen. Morgan, the owner of The White Star Line, planned to be aboard the Titanic for its maiden voyage but canceled his plans last minute. If they did it, knowing that there was a potential for people to die was just ice cold; like iceberg cold.
3. Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper – Hear me out. I outlined in a previous blog that Lewis Carroll could have been a slightly creepy guy. I mean people accused him of being a pedophile and that the stories of Alice were actually his secret love letters and cautionary warnings to her; so is it any stretch of the imagination to conspire that he moonlighted as a serial killer? Of course there is no substantial evidence to prove that he was Jack the Ripper but in 1996 writer Richard Wallace published a paperback book entitled; Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend. In this book he hints that Carroll had teamed up with Thomas Vere Bayne (an Oxford scholar and good friend of Carroll) to commit the murders. Wallace based his conspiracy on anagrams from two of Carroll’s works: The Nursery and the first volume of Sylvie and Bruno. You really have to go down the rabbit hole to follow this conspiracy; so follow the white rabbit if you choose to.
2. The Simpsons can predict the future – In 2018, if you sit through 28 seasons and meander through over 600 episodes; you’ll see some eerie scenes. The reason why a couple of these scenes would creep you out is because there have been at least 15 times that The Simpsons have made eerily accurate predictions of future events. With everything from Disney‘s Fox Takeover to Siegfried and Roy’s Tiger Attack to Smart Watches to the Ebola Outbreak or even Donald Trump’s Presidency. Even eerily creating scenes that would later be played out in real life almost identically. It is undeniable that the critically-acclaimed, longest-running American sitcom and animated program will forever be known as a pop culture phenomenon; but could the Bartman really have the power to predict the future? Is the Illuminati using The Simpsons to gauge how people would react to seeing certain situations played out?
- Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain – It’s been more than 20 years since I sat in front of my parent’s TV and cried on the beige carpet of their living room floor. The day Kurt Cobain died, something in almost all of we Nirvana fans died. Most of those fans, and many other naysayers still find his death fishy. After all of these years, we still believe Kurt was murdered. Suspects have included everyone from his fellow bandmates to crazed fans; but it was private investigator Tom Grant who gave the most damning evidence that it was actually Courtney Love, Kurt’s widow. Tom Grant was hired to investigate the death by Courtney herself and the more he dug up, the more he didn’t believe that it was a suicide. There have been countless documentaries made about this conspiracy and headlines were made again when the Seattle Police Department released never-before-scene photos of the shotgun found in Kurt’s home. You can watch the documentaries for yourself and you can look at them subjectively but there is more evidence supporting her guilt than there is to free her. I am not saying that she pulled the trigger or inserted the needle which injected more than 10 times the lethal dose of drugs into his system…but I bet she knows who did.
Final Note: Am I one of those crazy conspiracy nuts that believes everything he reads or follows the fear mongering of every YouTubist? Most definitely not. But if the information is there and it sounds plausible; then it may just be plausible.
Images:
Paul McCartney, previously credited, Fair Use.
The RMS Titanic ready for launch by Robert John Welch (1859-1936), official photographer for Harland & Wolff – Public Domain. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3a27541.
A View of Main Street in Springfield, Oregon by and accredited to Visitor7 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32118280
The Suicide Note by Kurt Cobain found on April 8, 1994 but is suspected to have been written April 5 – http://kurtcobainssuicidenote.com/kurt_cobains_suicide_note_scan.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46886558
The Pop Culture Kings present The Archives of Wisdom 
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