OK. Here's my hypothesis: Some really dumb conspiracy theories are basically "Gateway theories" designed to suck in the vulnerable into deeper stuff. Let me explain....

Take, for example, the recent conspiracy claim that, somehow, the photos of Joe Biden in the Oval Office, are faked because you can see 1 or more cars out the window.

This is a truly stupid "theory" because it is easily proven that there is a driveway outside of the Oval Office. The layout of the White House grounds and photographs are easily found, and do not need special effort to find them.

Nor is it particularly difficult to find a photo of Trump with some sort of vehicle out the window.

Nor does it take a huge amount of skill to use Google earth to measure the approx 87 foot distance between the Oval Office window and the nearest bit of the driveway.

So, my hypothesis is that conspiracy theories this easily refuted are designed to pre-select for the lazy and the stupid. The target audience for this stuff is people who will not ever google the basic facts to see for themselves.

If you are dragged into believing something that is so easily refuted by very elementary research, whether it is due to laziness or simple lack of skills, then you have identified yourself as a vulnerable mark for other things.

An analogy are the now venerable "419" advance fee scams that originated in Nigeria. Often, these are plagued with obvious spelling errors, grammatical errors, and other flaws.

Such things are sent out in bulk and, not to put too fine a point on it, smart people are not the intended audience. The errors are a feature, not a bug. They want to winnow down their target audience to bottom percentile in intellect.

Such tactics act as a pre-concentrator, helping to select the gullible, the lazy, and the dim.

The people spreading this stuff on purpose don't like it when some guy like me upends their apple cart with basic verifiable facts and stuff. I'm not the target. I waste their time and effort (oh sh*t, I just gave up one of my tactics)

They don't want to argue with people who fight back hard and smart. The game here seems to be to identify people who are vulnerable. But to what end?

Also, one correspondent points out that some of this stuff is basically elaborate confirmation bias. Some of these people REALLY want to believe that Trump is not out of office and are desperate to believe the Biden isn't president.

If that's the case, then people are starting to concoct the various things that would have to be true in order to confirm their incorrect belief. But the same principles apply... these theories spread farthest among the stupid and lazy.

But once you are stuck on believing a few bits of mistruth, then you are easy prey for others. This is a target demographic for fraud (cf Alex Jone's brain pills) and radicalization (cf shooting up a pizza place, storming the Capitol)