Some people seem so sure about certain things, they must know them for a fact. Right? Well, not necessarily. They might be convinced themselves, yet have no proof to convince you with. Whether it’s a conspiracy theory they’ve made up or a strong belief based on personal experience (for instance, “that sandwiches taste 100 x’s better when cut diagonally”), their minds seem to be set in stone.
Redditors discussed the topic after one of them asked what they believe is 100% true but can’t prove. Quite a few people were willing to share, so scroll down to find their answers and see if there’s anything you believe to be true as well.
#1
I believe that if you separated the population of any country or city based on either religion, skin color, gender, age group, economical class, political affiliation or eye color, you would find the same percentage of a******s in each of those subgroups.
Image credits: da_governator
#2
That my generation (im 25 yo) will bear witness to a cataclysmic event that dramatically restructures the geopolitical system and society as we know it. I am talking an event on par with the great depression or WWII. Perhaps even the fall of Rome or the plague. I feel it is just about time for the wave to crash.
Image credits: zonedout430
#3
That anything and everything we do on our mobile phones, even when you think you are being secretive by using invented usernames and arbitrary passwords, is being logged and electronically documented somewhere. Privacy is a thing of the past.
Image credits: ommyoho
#4
Most (all?) animals are much more intelligent than researchers give them credit for.
I can see a thinking creature if I watch any of them long enough. Praying Mantises especially!
Image credits: HarmoniousJ
#5
Small/lack of pockets in women’s clothing is a thing so that fashion companies can sell more purses.
Image credits: TheSaltiestSaltine
#6
Companies like 23 and me will eventually sell customers dna to health insurance companies, and some folks will be charged higher rates if not kicked off their insurance.
Image credits: phat79pat1985
#7
Talents shows on TV plant the people who they audition and the judges are cued to ask questions based on their stories.
Image credits: spaceboyyy
#8
Subway was much higher quality 20 years ago.
Image credits: RogueModron
#9
Aliens exist.
Image credits: FoolInSpace
#10
Giant creatures exist in the deepest parts of the sea.
Image credits: DOC360noscope
#11
The US government artificially deflates the price of cheap high calorie low nutrition foods because poor fat people don’t overthrow governments, poor hungry ones do.
Image credits: RhodiumPl8ed
#12
Facebook suggested friend algorithm is partly based on people that have stalked you.
Image credits: liontrips
#13
A lot of people don’t actually believe in whatever religious organization they belong to and use it to manipulate those that do and amass power for themselves. Church of scientology isn’t the only example, but it’s a good one. See also the fact that if everyone genuinely believed killing yourself for your religion would lead to eternal paradise, suicide bombings would be reserved for the highest ranking officials.
Image credits: Iron_Man_977
#14
The management at my work have installed some sort of signal-jamming Faraday cage around the toilets so the staff can’t spend time in the toilet using the internet on their phones.
Image credits: anon
#15
That Brooks Brothers in the airport is a money laundering operation.
I fly two or three times a month, and I almost never see any customers in those places at all. But somehow they manage to maintain prime airport storefronts. I am 99% convinced that they only exist to launder money.
Image credits: sell_me_your_kidneys
#16
Elf on the Shelf, the elf doll that supposedly watches children and reports back to Santa that parents love so much, is actually a subversive program by government or maybe corporate interests to desensitize children to being under constant surveillance so they won’t question it as adults. No, I don’t believe there are any cameras or mics in the actual doll. The point of it is to implant the idea into children’s head when they are young that someone is always watching them.
For those of you saying this is no different than Santa who “sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake” or a god who watches you from on night, I agree with you, but the Elf on the Shelf takes it to the next level. The Elf is a visible, tangible representation of surveillance where as an old bearded guy magically watching you from the North Pole or up in the clouds is more of an abstract concept.
Image credits: DangerBrewin
#17
Some employers make having a driver’s license a requirement for jobs that clearly wouldn’t need to involve driving because it’s a legal way to discriminate against disabled applicants.
Image credits: miles_allan
#18
That the Nutella recipe has changed markedly over the last 10-15 years (and not just the most recent highly publicised change). I now find the texture in particular to be almost gross whereas I used to enjoy guzzling it in large quantities.
Image credits: anon
#19
That kids would be generally happier if all schools started later in the day, allowed/encouraged mid-day naps, and had cellphone jammers that were turned on at the start of the day and turned off at the end or in case of emergency.
#20
There is an infinite number of universes.
Image credits: Nerdiant
#21
I’ve waited a long time to be asked this exact question.
1. Skittles are all the same flavor
2. Quail can only fly like 20 feet at a time. They can’t hold sustained flight.
3. When Mormons get married, they are issued a secret sex how-to pamphlet because they’ve had such sheltered lives up until then.
Nobody can convince me otherwise.
Image credits: derdowaggy
#22
30 years ago or so it was the oil companies behind “Save the Trees” to get everybody to use more plastic. Plastic bags, plastic straws, all sorts of stuff. Nobody was cutting down the rain forest to make paper grocery bags. Trees, paper trees especially, are a crop like any other. “Save the wheats! Dont eat bread!” Signed: Corn farmers. That’d be weird, right?
#23
Most of the long winded top posts/comments on reddit are written by professional or aspiring writers who actually do not have the first hand experience they claim to have.
Image credits: flatulential
#24
I’m convinced Botox rots your brain.
Image credits: RitaAlbertson
#25
Whoever started the flat earth conspiracy theory doesn’t actually believe it– they did it as a massive troll for their own amusement of watching dumb people dedicate themselves to something so stupid.
#26
Facial features aren’t unique. They can be repeated like lips is the same feature for 1 in every 200000.
Image credits: wndsaygray
#27
The US govt runs VPN services to collect info on people who attempt to evade the NSA collection programs.
Image credits: cancerous_176
#28
Gatorade switched to curvy bottles to hide that they are 4 ounces smaller Edit:I am not saying it can’t be proven that the bottles are 4 ounces smaller, I am saying I can’t prove that the bottle shape was changed specifically so consumers wouldn’t notice.
Image credits: anon
#29
The timers at McDonalds to determine when the fries are done frying move at a rate of 2 units per second in order to make employees feel like they’re moving too slow and to work faster.
Image credits: iSerpens
#30
That humans have to be, by some degree, psychic or able to tell the future somehow.
Think about it, how many times have you thought of a song in your head right before it comes on the radio? Or had a topic in mind and came across other people discussing it? Or thought of something at the same time as someone else?
That stuff happens too often for it to just be chance.
#31
Random shuffle on Windows Media Player isn’t actually random. Out of all the songs I have, I feel like I get a few specific ones at the beginning pretty much every time I load the playlist, while there are other songs that I even forgot I already have because they never play.
#32
I believe “Bad Luck” exists to steer us in the right direction. For example, turning around because I’ve forgot my wallet to find I’ve left the door front door open. That’s why I’m not so upset about having to cancel a recent vacation. I had vehicle breakdowns, one after another, on a road trip. Had to cancel after only 200 miles and go home. Maybe something horrible would have happened out in the desert if I’d continued.
Image credits: ChevroletAndIceCream
#33
Financial systems are involved in a conspiracy to remove financial education from public schools. This is in order to keep young people financially illiterate and more susceptible to incurring debt. They influence governments to remove or fail to include mandatory financial learning from standard cirricula. Seriously, I never learned anything about the financial reality that I would face as a citizen of my country. I did a brief three month elective rotation at age 14 learning how to write a budget sheet and how businesses worked, but nothing about my personal financial rights and responsibilties.
#34
That there is no afterlife.
#35
I’m into conspiracy theories, but at the end of the day I don’t have a strong belief in any of them. I have an open mind towards them, but I also acknowledge that they are just theories. I’m sure some of them are probably true, but there’s no way to tell which ones are and which aren’t. But I do firmly believe this: There is enough evidence to prove that the CIA and the rest of the government won’t give a flying f**k about the well-being of American citizens if it means their goals will be met. The horrors of MK-ULTRA, bacteria being sprayed across San Francisco to test the effects of biowarfare on their own citizens, all of these events actually happened. If the government would do that s**t to their own people, some of the conspiracy theories don’t sound so crazy now. When it comes down to it, you really are the CIA’s lab rat whether you like it or not.
#36
King St. Old Town, Alexandria VA – there are two, count em TWO, wig shops one building apart. They are outdated shabby looking places whose windows are filled with the fakest looking wigs, mustaches, and toupes on mannequin heads. It’s on the main street, in a very wealthy town. Other businesses come and go under the competitive pressure of the area and high leasing prices but these shops stay open without a single customer. My mom lived there in the 80s and they were there; I live there now and still they stand unchanged. 100% a front for two competing mobsters.
edit: y’all are bolstering my conspiracy theories, now I’m going to investigate the stores myself. If I die you know what happened.
Image credits: Shroffinator
#37
In the 90’s business leaders all bought stock in student loan companies and began demanding BAs for entry/middle level jobs.
Image credits: Peanutbutternut
#38
Late to the party, but I believe that infants, toddlers, and young children have emotions, thoughts and feelings just as rich and complex as adults, if not more-so due to the magnitude of each new discovery.
#39
That a car’s combination meter is also a secret timer that, when it’s clock runs out, starts messing with the electrical systems, turning on warning lights, and sending you back to the dealer for expensive diagnostics and unnecessary replacement parts.
#40
Lindbergh killed his own child and then set up the whole kidnapping thing to cover his a*s.
#41
Health insurance companies regularly give confidential employee health information to the companies that partner with them.
Employees “consent” to this by regularly taking “voluntary” health screenings, biometric surveys, and and exercise data to maintain their premium discount.
I’ve tried to tell my coworkers this but they insist HIPAA covers this and that insurers “would never do that.”
They are wrong and I’ve regularly seen sick or post [expensive] surgery coworkers get terminated for “performance reasons.”
#42
That sandwiches taste 100x’s better when cut diagonally.
#43
That the US military possesses many technological advancements but it is all kept secret so that other countries can’t use them.
#44
I think Maddie McCann’s parents killed her.
#45
Ghosts/spirits/entities/phantoms/presences… Whatever you want to call it/them. They say seeing is believing, and in this case, it’s absolutely true. Very few things, if anything at all compares to the feeling of *knowing* something “else” exists and having not only no proof, but this whole new level of fear that comes with life itself, that very few people can relate to you about.
Seeing things that “shouldn’t” be is frightening enough, but imagine being alone in that, no-one else but a dog as witness. You can talk to him, but he won’t reply. You can’t convince yourself you were just tired, sick, crazy. “It” was real, whatever “it” was, and there’s no-one to explain how or why.
#46
That the vacuum shop down the street is a money laundering operation. Never a customer in the store, no new inventory since what looks like the late nineties to early aughts, and yet, they’ve been open for business since the 1950s. A specialized vacuum shop could never survive in this walmart era, there’s just no way.
Also Mattress Firm. Same deal, I just know it.
#47
That there’s fragments of history behind the legend of Arthur.
A long time ago the only iron they had access to in Britain was bog iron – literally clumps of mud pulled from bogs. They would use them to make iron weapons but the quality of the metal was poor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_iron
“pull the sword from the stone and you will become king of Britain” – this means if you learn to get iron from iron ore (stone) you will get weapons good enough to make your people conquerors.
“a magic sword from a lake”
Heard of quenching? at some stage someone was forging swords with their new iron and accidentally dropped it in some water (or stuck it in because he was tired of waiting for it to cool down) and to his surprise found the new sword seemed “magically” stronger than non-quenched swords.
Remember; millennia ago history was largely (completely, sometimes) passed down orally from generation to generation and changed in the process.
The legend of Arthur that we have now is in fact the relicts of actual historical events so old there’s nothing left of them except the legend…
Not all legends are true; but some may be fragments of oral history.
#48
Most internet providers are throttling your service, so you never reach the advertised speeds. Except for speed-checking websites, which, whilst not normally reaching your advertised speeds, are quick enough that you think it’s just having a bad day.
Image credits: Romulus_Novus
#49
That if someone else lived the exact life and circumstances that I did, they would have done a better job than me.
*edit*: Appreciate the words of encouragement. This is not a self defeating thought. I generally think of this from time to time as a reminder to not take myself too lightly or seriously. As mentioned by many, the converse is probably true as well. It’s probably a good thing that this cannot be proven so there’s really no point comparing with others. What’s more important is to stay humble and do the best that I can given the cards that I’m dealt with.
#50
That ancient civilisations were WAY more advanced than we give them credit for, this line of thinking can go a few different ways, some more ridiculous than others but I think as a baseline it is true. edit: If you are feeling adventurous check out subreddits like /r/alternativehistory or /r/CulturalLayer . There are a lot of questionable posts but it’s interesting stuff and some higher quality posts. It’s mostly in good fun of course it’s hard to prove any of this type of stuff.
#51
More like 65% but……The Hawaiian missile false alarm was intended to see how a large group would respond knowing they are about to die.
#52
When you look at a person completely unaware of you, they have the impulse to turn and look at you too.
#53
Mattress Firm is a money laundering front. There are at least 4 within my small city’s limits. No one buys that many mattress.
#54
I’m Romanian and I’m not sure if it’s the culture or the place I grew up in, but whenever you lose something and are panicking to find it, there’s a simple way to always find it. Just go get a mug, and visualize a smaller version of the object you’re looking for (I do it so it’s kind of spinning like a video game). After seeing it in the can, flip over the can on the table and leave the object covered by the flipped mug on the Table. Stop looking for the object, you will find it in your hands in less than 2 days, no matter what. If it’s something like your keys or wallet or socks or headphones, you will 100% come across them maybe even minutes after doing it, so long as you just avoid thinking of it.
I’m not superstitious at all and I understand that this can be explained just by the way we interact with the tings around us i our day to day lives, but after growing up with this and it never faltering even on big things, I simply feel better off pleading ignorance and understanding that some things are just going to be how they are and putting time into thinking bout them is a waste of my time. Also my mom is a luck magnet and a telepath and a wizard but that’s a story for another day.
#55
Fudgesicles and oatmeal cream pies are smaller than they were when I was growing up in the 1980s.
#56
Governments collude all the time and pretend to be shocked if found out. There is a somewhat universal (not every country participates) ruling class that has chopped up the world like Europe did Africa, and they work together to keep the structure intact.
#57
That in elementary school on day when there was a substitute teacher, Jabrahn stole all my shiny football stickers from my drawer. The sub teacher didn’t know any of the kids and when the real teacher came back a few days later they said there was nothing they could do as they weren’t there. Jabrahn mysteriously had a lot more football stickers to trade at lunchtime. F**k you Jabrahn.
#58
The funeral home by my house is run by some sort of criminal organization. I always see the same gangster looking guys hanging out in front of it smoking cigars and drinking beers.
#59
HQ is a scam… somehow. They’re somehow mining data from us and they’re cheating us somehow.
#60
We’re living in an alternate evil reality, because somebody timetraveled and messed everything up.
#61
I’ve noticed a few way overpriced gas stations in LA, and at first I thought it was because they were off the highway or something and catching people who weren’t locals and didn’t know any better. But then I noticed they’re next to police stations, and have completely convinced myself that they jack up the price because (I assume) the gas money to fill up the police fleet comes from the government and not individual officers, so nobody cares.
#62
Time travel is real but it isn’t what we think, that’s just our name for a concept our limited human brains can’t understand.
#63
That Jeff Bezos is laughing at all of us not realizing that the Amazon arrow is really a penis.
#64
There’s only one property brother, they edit the other one in and that’s why you see them together so little. They do minor changes to make you think they don’t look alike but I know there’s only one! You can’t fool me HGTV and TLC!
#65
The “arms” on Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons are backwards. They ought to be rotated 180 degrees. What good are these stubby little arms for? We have found out relatively recently that T-Rex have feathers. It is now an established fact, T-Rex where not covered in scales but in feathers, like a bird. Take the “arms” on a T-Rex and flip them around 180 degrees. Now you have wings like a ostrich. Now look at a Tyrannosaurus. We used to think of almost all “dinasaurs” as “lizard-like,” in fact the name means “terrible lizard.” Now we know that many different animals that we think of as “dinosaurs” are more bird-like than lizard-like. Rex had wings. Not big wings to fly with, but wings that were perhaps somthing like that of an ostrich, cassowary, or emu, although likely much smaller in proportion to their body. Ostriches use their wings in mating rituals, to make themselves appear larger, and to signal and communicate, perhaps T-Rex used theirs for some similar purpose. They did not have useless stubby little arms.
Image credits: theNextVilliage
#66
OJ’s son committed the murders and OJ went to the scene to help cover it up.
#67
That imaginary friends are real and there is some kind of secret society somewhere.
I still vividly remember my imaginary friend and it kind of creeps me out that I can recall moments of him being very… tangible and not very… imaginary.
#68
If there are people who will pick their nose and eat their boogers, there are people who will wipe their butts and lick their poo. I guarantee it.
We just can’t spot these sickos because doing the number two is always done in private. But they are out there. I’m damn certain of it.
#69
The Denver airport has a doomsday bunker built beneath it for important people like the president (who was Obama at the time).
#70
For a brief window of time following the second world war, the United States could have taken over the world.
Every other industrialized economy in the world was in ruins or exhausted from fighting. We were the only nation in the world that knew how to construct the atomic bomb.
If that advantage had been pressed and the bomb used without restraint the US might have been able to overwhelm the Soviet Union before it developed nuclear capabilities of its own.
The result would have been a dystopian nightmare worse than anything the Nazis could have imagined. A single nuclear-weapon state enforcing a global hegemony through the threat of nuclear war.
(All of this is wild, brain-dead speculation of course.)
#71
Tom Cruise is a great actor that seems like a decent person despite being a scientologist.
So the obvious conclusion is that he’s using his acting skills to go undercover and attempting to dismantle scientology from the inside.