Not sure I got sucked into anything like conspiracy theories, but as far as "I swear this is my life now" I have quite a few. I have ADHD and with it comes the usual fleeting obsession with hobbies. It gets expensive and I always end up abandoning it for something else. Then I feel sad because I spent a ton of money that ultimately didn't result in anything permanent.

When I was going hard with ham radio I dug a huge trench in my backyard and installed a grounding system connected to the house ground, now I barely use my radios. Same with the KX3 I bought. It's an eye-wateringly expensive portable radio. My excuse was it was a reward for passing a difficult certification exam and I would use it all the time in the park near my house. That turned out not to be the case.

I used to believe in god about 45 years ago, does that count?

In college I fell pretty deep into the nopoo conspiracy, that shampoo manufacturers get you addicted to the cycle of stripping off your hair's natural sebum and replacing it with conditioner that attracts dirt... literally rinse, repeat.

I think I was frustrated that I couldn't figure out how to take care of my scalp and hair, and here was this social group with an explanation and a scapegoat.

I still think that shampooing every day is probably too much for me, and embraced mechanical cleaning, but I've relaxed the conspiracy thinking.

Antitheism and egalitarianism (read anti-feminsm). I was an ubsufferable cunt. Not to excuse my cuntness, I was raised Mormon: condescending hatred of all those not like me was all I knew.

Ancient Aliens.

It was about 2002. I was 20.

Yes the internet existed back then but it just wasn't so pervasive. As in I didn't own a computer and that wasn't uncommon.

I bought a second hand book called Ancient Astronauts (?) by a guy called Erik Von Daniken. He's absolutely the 80s / 90s version of Graham Hancock. All the same pseudoscience strategies to popularise a bullshit theory.

I think I could best be described as a troubled young man. I drank heavily, smoked weed every day, party drugs on the weekend. When I was 18 I had left my home and a deeply religious background. I guess I was looking for some kind of secret arcane understanding of the world that wasn't religion.

I honestly don't know what I would have said if someone had have asked me directly - do you really believe that extra terrestrial beings have visited the earth in it's distant history. Like I don't know if I really truly believed it. I sure loved thinking about it though.

I changed my position over a decade or so. I went to uni, got a degree, started my career in accounting. Completely un-related to science or history or anthropology but, I certainly realised that people who have spent a lifetime studying to become experts in their field really know what they're talking about. Like it's just stupid to suggest that "every real archaologist in the world is stupid and only I can explain earth's real history".

I still am a weird guy but I don't believe in weird stuff like that anymore.