Same with the modern "The earth is flat" bullshit. It started as a 4chan troll in the early '00s.
All are a weird corollary of Poe's Law:
without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views.
Pons_Aelius's Corollary to Poe's Law
If you post a joke conspiracy theory, some idiot will believe it.
Yep now both are real conspiracys. I literally met people who believe birds aren’t real. When try explain it was prank they double down. Same for flat earthers.
Turns out you can’t make a joke so absurd that a dozen trolls won’t pretend to believe on it, some 3 or 4 journalists won’t take it seriously for the clickbait headlines, and 1 crazy idiot won’t actually believe is true.
“Have you also downloaded the classified instruction manual for this tank from Vladimir Putin’s website the War Thunder forums, took a correspondence course in Russian, translated the manual, memorized it, and eaten it? Have you Hank? Putin?”
