The Science of Conspiracy Theories

Oscars Conspiracy

Oscars Conspiracy

Okay, what the heck happened at the Oscars? I thought that the Steve Harvey screw up at the Miss Universe Pageant in 2015 would have made this mistake impossible. But, that's not what happened.

Let's face it. The Oscar committee pays a very prominent and dependable accounting firm to prepare the Oscar winners list. In this case it's PriceWatterhouseCoopers, certainly one of the best. This should never have happened, but it did
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People immediately blamed Warren Beatty, but all he did was look at the card in the envelope they gave him. He handed it to Faye Dunaway to actually announce the winner for best picture. As you already know, she named the winner as 'La La Land' when the actual winner was 'Moonlight'. The official excuse for this ridiculous mistake was that a backstage handler, Brian Culliran, handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty. I hope Brian can find a new job.

The conspiracies theorists immediately manufactured a bunch of theories as to how this mistake happened.

The first theory is that Leonardo DiCaprio wanted revenge against the Academy for making him wait until 2016 for his Oscar. The theory goes that he was the presenter who announced that Emma Stone had won best actress for her La La Land performance and he left this envelope backstage for Warren Beatty to inadvertently pick it up.

As a possible twist to this theory, people blame Emma Stone for the mistake by leaving the envelope backstage. She wanted La La Land to win best picture.

Another theory is that there was bad blood between Beatty and Dunaway, and he deliberately gave her the wrong card to make her look bad. This is based on the fact that he didn't announce the winner. He left her do it. Beatty clams that he gave it to her to read as planned.

The craziest theory is that it was Ben Affleck's fault. Supposedly, he wanted revenge for the Academy ignoring his 2016 movie "The Accountant'.

Then there is the envelope designer's theory. They changed the design of the envelopes and cards from gold cards with white labels to red cards with gold letters, which were harder to read.

The Oscars TV ratings have been falling for years, so the Academy deliberately organized the mistake to build ratings.

Last but not least, we could blame this on President Trump, who wanted to get revenge for celebrates making fun of him or creating 'false news' about him.

Then there is the Russians. La La Land's production company Summit Entertainment could have a deal with a Russian filmmakers Central Partnership and the Russian hackers did it.

There is not one shred of evidence to back up any of these theories.

I did not make these up. These ideas are straight from the Internet. I could never make up anything as crazy as this.

Thanks for reading.