Some of the theories online are insane. For example, George Soros is supposedly implicated in “pizzagate.” You see, George Soros has contributed to the American Bridge PAC, which also held pizza parties (I’m guessing fund-raisers or staff parties) at the pizza joint in question. Proof positive that Soros funds pedophilia!
Or one individual who was trying desperately to link Hillary Clinton directly to this latched on to an incident in Haiti, where members of the New Life Children’s Refuge tried to take 33 orphans from Haiti without proper authorization. You see, “33” is a really mystic and powerful number, apparently, and Clinton’s emails discussed this incident, so this is proof that these churchgoers were procuring children for pedophiles and Clinton was directly linked.
Never mind that the only mention of this in Clinton’s emails was because she was the Secretary of State at the time, this was a high-profile, widely-publicized case, and the emails were basically discussing what the Department should do. And never mind that this was the second time the group in question got caught not filling out the proper paperwork, only the previous instance involved 41 children, so apparently the number 33 wasn’t quite as mystic as they thought…
Or that this was all tied up with Satanism in some way because John Podesta has a taste for avant-garde art and may have participated in a “Spirit Cooking” performance art piece with Marina Abramovic. Therefore, he’s a demon and a cannibal or something like that, as well as being a pedophile.
Or the site that found a photo feed (Instagram or Facebook; I’ve forgotten which), which was linked to Comet Pizza and it showed a number of children in the feed. This was proof that the pizza joint was all about pedophilia and these were pictures of the victims. The only problem is that the photo feed was of families and account-holders who had “liked” or visited the pizza place, which is a family place, so now all sorts of innocent families found their pictures all over the Internet with the adults labeled as pedophiles and the children as their victims.
Even a picture of the owner of the place smiling while holding a laughing baby was deemed to be “creepy,” because nobody has ever smiled while holding a laughing baby…
At this point, it’s taken on a life of its own, with more and more businesses involved, more people implicated, more and wilder theories being posited. It’s not hard to figure out why, either. Since there is no actual evidence, there’s a limit to how much they can keep saying the same thing. If they’re a fake news site, they have to keep escalating in order to bring in the eyeballs, clicks, and revenue. And if they’re really invested in this, they can’t back down but have to keep inventing wilder and wilder theories rather than admit that they don’t have anything.
It would be hilarious if the real-world consequences weren’t so potentially dire. Yelp has already had to flag the establishment because of the fake one-star reviews. And they’re not doing a particularly good job at filtering, so at any given time, you can usually find a couple of fake reviews.
