10 Goofy Conspiracy Theories About Mind Control

Sometimes, we want other people to do things, but those people don’t want to do those things. In many cases, people have tried to solve this problem with violence or other forms of direct coercion, but some craftier people have looked into the idea of mind control. Science has found little evidence that such techniques work, although conspiracy theorists would tell you that those scientists are in on the plot. Whether it is the Illuminati, the mysterious powers that be, or your nation’s government, there is someone out there with incredible, malevolent power working to control your every move, theorists claim, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

10Facebook Is A Mind Control Plot

To many people, Facebook is just an annoying—if somewhat necessary—social tool, but some are convinced that it is far, far more than that. They believe that sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Digg came to prominence a little too easily. As such, they must have had backing from powerful media moguls like Rupert Murdoch as well as faceless government benefactors. In turn, the media promotes these sites to encourage the masses to publicly post about their lives, making it easier to spy on them. This theory also claims that part of the point of social media is to brainwash you into silence, so you will slowly conform to what those lurking in the shadows would prefer you to be.

Some people even think that the Facebook plot goes beyond simple social engineering. The Weekly World News claims that they talked to some “anonymous men” from the CIA, who divulged details of an operation planned for 2012. These nameless sources claim that data gathered from Facebook was being used to create mind-controlling applications that would compel users to do the CIA’s bidding, leading to total enslavement of the world’s population.

9Brainwashing During The Korean War

During the Korean War, many US soldiers were captured and kept as prisoners of war by the North Koreans. The North Koreans were known for being incredibly cruel to their prisoners, either killing them or simply letting them die from neglect. After the Chinese took over the prison camps, they maintained an iron grip on their prisoners but halted the unnecessary killing. Instead, they attempted to undermine prisoners’ beliefs in democracy and capitalism, often holding sessions with prisoners for the purpose of indoctrination.

After the war, many people were concerned about defectors, and the specter of Chinese brainwashing was raised. However, researchers found that the number of defectors was greatly exaggerated. Very few people collaborated with the Chinese in any meaningful way, and most of those who did were already sympathetic to their cause. In fact, experts believe that these so-called “brainwashing” techniques were merely a strategy for keeping prisoners busy, preventing them from organizing. Once the Chinese got their hands on the prison camp, no one escaped.

Despite this explanation, the conspiracies theories that the Chinese were experimenting with turning prisoners against their own country for dark and sinister purposes have persisted to this day. It could be argued that this conspiracy was the inspiration for many future theories about supposedly compromised former soldiers and spies.

8Jonestown Was A CIA Experiment

You already know that the Jonestown cult ended with an incredibly tragic mass suicide. Shortly before the events (which were caught on tape) that created the expression “don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” a congressman named Leo Ryan had arrived to investigate the cult but was gunned down shortly after disembarking his plane. Official sources claim that the attack was perpetrated by cultists from Jim Jones’s group, who chose their own destruction under his enigmatic influence, but some theorists are convinced that something far more shocking occurred.

The theorists claim that there were signs that the body count was initially inaccurate, leading them to believe that some tried to run away. Others claim that many of the cultists were murdered by cyanide poisoning, citing injection marks on the bodies that couldn’t have been reached without help. Along with the likelihood that the CIA had infiltrated the group for the purpose of investigation, this evidence has led to some very strange theories, such as the claim that the entire Jonestown cult was a camp set up by the CIA to test mind-controlling techniques. The theorists claim that the congressman was actually gunned down by the CIA, after which the camp was quickly cleansed so that the truth of their gruesome experiments didn’t get out.

It might seem odd to believe that the CIA was present after the recording of the massacre came to light, but some theorists think the audio tape was heavily edited. One theorist claims that the lack of proof is itself evidence of a conspiracy, explaining that the rumors about the CIA’s involvement in Jonestown are so crazy and unbelievable that the CIA must have planted them so you wouldn’t know the actual truth about what they did.

7Fluoride In Water Turns You Into Lobotomized Zombie

If you’ve ever watched Dr. Strangelove, you’ve heard the conspiracy theory that fluoride in the water is designed to sap and pollute all of your precious bodily fluids. Many people insist that fluoride is an attempt to poison the water, but the origins of these myths are stranger then you might think. The conspiracy theorists claim that the plot began in Nazi Germany, where Hitler and his top cabinet were looking for a strategy to control minds on a massive scale. They decided that fluoride would be great because, according to the theorists, it erodes your mental function and free-will as it slowly builds up in your body. Over time, you become a pawn for the powers that be.

Of course, as fluoridation spread, conspiracy theories and myths spread along with it. This has culminated in many conspiracy theorists pushing two theories that seem totally incompatible with each other. For instance, one theorist explains his theory of subtle mind control, going on to explain that fluoride quickly poisons your body as well. It seems like zombies aren’t very useful if they’re dead.

6The Illuminati Get Into Your Head With Bad Music Videos

Among those who believe the world is being subtly controlled by the Illuminati is a faction that thinks they are using “Monarch Mind Control” (MMC) to create slaves and then parade them on television with symbols that give away their entire master plan. The MMC method supposedly entails traumatizing someone until they dissociate from reality, creating a fractured sense of self and multiple identities. The person performing the mind control can then use cues to make their slave do whatever they want.

Apart from the lack of evidence of this nefarious program, researchers are torn as to whether real alternate personalities can actually exist within a person, but this hasn’t stopped the theorists from seeing the Illuminati literally everywhere. For example, one theorist enjoys poring over music videos to point out evidence of the Illuminati-controlled world. He has analyzed every last frame of music videos by K-pop sensations like A-Jax and Ladies’ Code, interpreting deer heads on the wall as representations of Baphomet and explaining every single scene as a symbol of the MMC program.

The first video he analyzes takes place in a mental institution, and instead of accepting its trippy images as the delusions of a crazy person, he explains it as the enslavement process of MMC. He proceeds to analyze a music video with marionettes and lyrics about a girl breaking up with her boyfriend, explaining how every frame clearly shows that it’s all about the Illuminati forcing this poor pop idol to sing, dance, and spread their secret message to the world. Of course, if the Illuminati wanted to keep things secret, they probably wouldn’t go out of their way to introduce clues to their plot in their music videos.

5Haiti’s Zombie Slaves

Long before the zombie genre was popular and the universe became glutted with thousands of movies based on the concept, zombies were already well known in the mythos of the Haitian people. Haitians believed that when you are murdered or otherwise die horrifically, your soul cannot immediately enter the afterlife. This belief led to a legend that a bokor (a Haitian sorcerer) could use these souls to control their now-dead bodies, turning them into zombie slaves. The fear that grew from this legend was that an evil sorcerer would kill someone solely for the purpose of taking advantage of their vulnerable state and turning them into a mindless drone.

This strange theory reemerged with the discovery of a supposed “zombie powder” that can turn anyone into the walking dead. This powder, which was found by an ethnobotanist named Wade Davis while he was in Haiti, supposedly contained a powerful neurotoxin that shuts down a person’s body and turns them into an obedient, unthinking drone. The problem was that the powder used by the sorcerers varied wildly and usually contained multiple neurotoxic ingredients.

Even so, the claims of the powder’s effects have no basis in fact. The scientific community found multiple problems with the work Davis performed on his alleged powder and little evidence of his claims. Other scientists claimed that Davis was unable to reproduce the results that he claimed to achieve in the lab, couldn’t prove the significant amount of neurotoxins he claimed to find, and even participated in or at least observed gravedigging. The subjects Davis interviewed who were thought to be zombies turned out to be either frauds or mentally ill. However, since getting a good sample was difficult and very little study has been done on the matter, many theorists feel that the case is far from closed.

4Rogue Government Agents Are Playing Alien

One conspiracy website claims that alien abductions are actually performed by government agents in disguise. These rogue agents supposedly also work for a shadowy group called the Cabal that has nefarious motives of world domination. Theorists claim that they use powerful holographic manipulators to show what looks like a real alien to their chosen victim before breaking into their house, kidnapping them, and whisking them away to a secure location where they will be tortured.

Apart from simply being sadistic, their goal is to convince their victim that aliens are evil. Along with the holographic images, these men also allegedly have psychotronic machines that can make victims associate the alien with an evil presence or emotion. After being tortured, the unsuspecting victim is reprogrammed to be certain that their ordeal was caused by aliens and set free. The theorized purpose of this is to ensure that the general populace thinks of aliens as malignant beings, coming to abduct and experiment on us.

3Subliminal Advertising

The theory that advertisers have been using subliminal messaging to make us buy their products started when a researcher claimed to have tested subliminal images of Coke and popcorn at a movie theater, causing a huge spike in sales. However, attempts at replicating his experiments found zero positive results, and some have questioned whether the experiment happened at all.

The belief that companies were secretly making us buy things spread quickly through the world, and before long, people insisted that we needed to find a solution to this nonexistent problem. Bills were proposed to ban subliminal advertising without any proof that the practice was effective or even used. Some people believe the FCC banned the practice, but they only issued a statement against it in the 1970s. Of course, the theorists would tell you that the practice was never banned because of corporate influence, and we are still being subtly controlled with subliminal advertising on a regular basis.

While subliminal messages may not be used or effective, the advertisement industry has a long history of manipulative techniques. Advertisers have always used emotional appeals in their adverts to connect with us on a more instinctual level, and the catchy tunes that you hear in commercials—known as “earworms”—are designed to get stuck in your head. Facebook has recently taken invasive advertising to the next level by turning statuses written by a user’s friends that mention a company into “sponsored” stories.

2Sports Are Designed To Divide And Control Us

One theory claims that organized sports were designed by a secret shadow government. According to the theory, indoctrination starts young with school and community sports, employing coaches for the express purpose of acclimating children to obeying an authority figure other than their parents so they will be more pliable for the government later. Children are taught that dominance and competition are all that matter, with the hope that they will abandon intellectual pursuits and remain good little drones for the people who are truly controlling the world.

Later on in life, these sports traditions are meant to serve an even more insidious purpose. In colleges, they sap money meant for real education and keep people focused on aggression. For women, cheerleading pigeonholes them into roles as obedient breeders for the males in society. These elite places of learning are not just tools to turn young people into pawns in the overarching sports conspiracy—they are also designed to brainwash them in general and teach them immoral values like sexual promiscuity.

The secret government then uses professional sports on the regional and city level to divide people by polarizing them over team loyalty. This shadowy organization of elite leaders doesn’t mind the occasional riot because it means people are being kept focused on the wrong things.

1Predictive Programming

To accomplish some nebulous group’s ultimate goal of world domination, some theorists think we are being programmed by popular culture to be prepared for future subjugation. These theorists claim that science-fiction movies depicting dystopian societies and dangerous apocalyptic scenarios are designed to subconsciously soften us so that we’ll be easier to manage when our shadowy masters enact their secret plans.

One alleged example is the movie I, Robot, a sci-fi thriller starring Will Smith based on a novel by Isaac Asimov. In the movie, the robots decide that humans need to be protected from themselves, which supposedly teaches us to obey authority for our own protection. Another movie the theorists bring up is Equilibrium, in which everyone takes drugs to suppress their emotions. Those who refuse the drugs are known as “sense offenders” and incinerated. While the movie portrays such practices in a negative light, predictive programming theorists believe it was designed to prepare us to accept drugs that control our behavior while our leaders remain level-headed and control our every move.

Gregory is avoiding social media this time around so the powers that be will stay out of his head.