One of the more far-fetched rumors is that Helene was an engineered storm to allow corporations to mine regional lithium deposits. Others accuse the administration of President Joe Biden of using federal disaster funds to help migrants in the country illegally, or suggest officials are deliberately abandoning bodies in the cleanup.
I feel like getting rid of the R word to describe people who believe in this stuff has made the problem worse. They’ve embraced being stupid, but the danger comes from conspiracies created specifically for them to be used in retarding progress with regards to maintaining a functional society.