A google video is proof

Conspiracy theorists love to spew nonsense in Skypeland. I went into a room with a couple of conspiracy theorists who believe that the US government is secretly implanting its citizens with microchips to control their brains, that AIDS is fake (or at least the news we know about it is wrong) and believe that ALL terrorist attacks attributed to Muslims are created secretly by the US government; the 1993 World Trade Center attacks, the 9/11 attacks, the 7/7 London Subway bombings, the Madrid subway attacks, the Aquilo Lauro attack, the Khobar Towers attack, the Lebanese Marine Corps Barrack attacks, and so on. They claimed that Bin Laden was a US plant. They claimed the fatwahs issued against the US and against the Danish and Swedish cartoonists and against Salman Rushdie were all fake and created as false information issued by the US. They claimed that all the attacks between Shia and Sunni were faked. They claimed that all the Islamists were secretly working for the US. They claimed all the newspaper and radio interviews with the students and staff at the madrassas here in Maryland were faked and all of them were faked, and everyone bought off by the goverment.

I said this could be true. However, it would entail a huge conspiracy with hundreds of thousands of people and no leaks. They claimed there were leaks. I noted that I personally know that the man who read the seismic record of the tower collapses on 9/11 and did not believe he had been bought off. This seemed to irritate them a lot. They talked over me and bullied me, repeatedly. This did not make me happy.

I asked for evidence for their crazy claims about AIDS and about the 9/11 conspiracies and they said they would give me google videos. I said I wanted peer-reviewed publications and they said that peer review is meaningless since it can all be faked. They said a video is far more reliable than peer-reviewed publications. (???) I asked for evidence supporting their views about 20 times, and they said they were sending it to me, but of course they never did.

Then they told me that they had proof that the "seismographer" had been threatened with loss of his job unless he agreed with the government line. Since I know this person personally, I asked if we should call him right at that moment and ask him. And I will admit I became somewhat agitated. I could not believe they would make this claim. And they wanted to lecture me for being agitated. So I just left.