Exclusively? Really? Like there are no actual crazy or malign conspiracy theories out there? Literally none?
> This qualifer that the goal of a conspiracy has to be nefarious is ridiculous
I very specifically said "generally nefarious" to indicate that nefariousness was non-essential. The essential parts (as you'll find in a dictionary) are "operating together" and "hidden" and you already conceded on those. Your original key claim ("to be a conspiracy theorist...") was clearly ridiculous, and you even seem to have admitted as much. What's the point of quibbling about non-essential and secondary parts?
> conspired to intercept the private communications
Nice red herring you've got there. Be a shame if anyone thought you were avoiding actual productive discourse by resorting to it.
> You can't just use the epithet as a synonym for inferior and outgroup and expect people to treat it as a serious argument.
Never did. Is that a strawman, or attributing motive, or both?
You've dug yourself a nice deep hole of bad faith here. Either start climbing out of it, or at least stop digging.
One hopes you will one day use your powers for good. See you in battle!
This tone is working against you more than you realize.
Don't respond until you can process what they're saying without wrapping it off with such provocative emotionally-charged bait please.
Anyone who makes predictions based on percieved incentives and not official narratives is a conspiracy theorist. You can't just use the epithet as a synonym for inferior and outgroup and expect people to treat it as a serious argument. This qualifer that the goal of a conspiracy has to be nefarious is ridiculous, because that just means it's fine when our side does it becuase no-nefariousness means no-conspiracy.
People who think that way aren't engaged in discourse, they're at war, which is fine, but pretending you're not at war when you in fact are is called perfidy. Calling something a conspiracy theory isn't discourse.
I'm pretty sure we landed on the moon, but I'm also pretty sure that hundreds of thousands of people worked in secrecy over decades and conspired to intercept the private communications of pretty much everyone in the world, while subverting standards bodies, science, academia, and open source projects, as we found out in 2011-2013 thanks to Binney and Snowden. Conspiracies are not exceptional, they're common as muck, ask any regulated professional.
We could probably share an Ig Nobel for comparing virus cells to fecal particulates (farticles?), but even charitably, comparing any transmission reduction effect of masks to the cost of enforcement and the effects of cynical policy response still yields a co-ordinated effort to decieve the public with noble lies "for their own good." There has absolutely been a co-ordinated effort to leverage the crisis to institute radical policies, denying that is so unserious as to be gaslighting.
What we're likely haggling over is the point where facts dissolve into focus and narrative, and where shared ideology becomes conspiracy. My view is that ideology is inextricable from conspiracy, where a more materialist view would be that a conspiracy is just when you've been caught and convicted of it.