I'd add recruitment, under false pretenses, to that list.

iirc, she settled at some point with an accuser too...

anyways, i am impressed by how much conspiracy the whole story has garnered so far. even hn does not seem immune to this one.

this is just weird!

HN has been oddly eager about conspiracy theories over the last year. That Navy UFO story (and various other articles from The Drive) got more play than I would have expected. More recently, the TikTok "reveal" from a reddit comment.

Does HN post monthly user numbers anywhere? I wonder if there was a demographic change, or if I'm just imagining it. Of course, it could just be the world changing; the world (or perhaps just the US) does seem to be more engaged with conspiracy theories and inflammatory agenda sharing these days.

Urban legends and conspiracy stories have always been popular in hacker and Internet-centric culture. There is nothing new under the sun.

This is a geek forum, is it that surprising that when conspiracy with some credible people (UFO stuff), or coincidences so big that it everyone accepts it as reality (Epstein), than people would want to discuss it.

UFO stuff is just fun to talk about or entertain. Epstein is revolting look into what really happens with powerful people. He was just a tip of an iceberg, killed to keep the lid on. You'd be a fool to think he was the mastermind pedophile rapist holding half of elites by throat all by his own.

dang: "It's more like 150M visits a month. Edit: 147M in September. Edit 2: I'm talking about page views, plus ajax requests like collapsing subthreads." (2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21201120

It's beyond dispute that intelligence agencies are real, therefore it seems beyond dispute that sometimes somethings really are 'conspiracies.'

(I really hate that term. It used to have meaning, before the assassinations of JFK and Oswald.)

It's not unreasonable to believe in conspiracy theories based around 3-letter agencies. The kind of conspiracy theories that one shouldn't give time of day to are the ones that involve an unprecedented level of cooperation between multiple groups of people not known to have the discipline to keep things secret.

If your conspiracy theory involves "most scientists" or "a large number of non-aligned nation states" then it's probably crazy talk. If however it just involves security agencies and small groups of powerful people then it's might be worth considering.

Also in some case where there is high chance of actual conspiracy like JFK or Epstein case it gets hijacked by crazies making the theories wild.

hijacked by a mix of crazies - and 3-letter agencies - making the theories wild, and hence 'nothing to see here, move on'