I recently read a book called Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture and Why People Will Believe Anything by Kelly Weill. It started slow but got rolling after about 70 pages and was an entertaining read. Basically, these nut jobs have been around for centuries, but the internet and social media brought them out from under their rocks to network with each other.
During COVID, I was cleaning out my yard barn back in TN and put some things for sale on Marketplace. A lady from my old Virginia hometown about 45 minutes away wanted most of it, so I met her at the TN welcome center off of I-26. She was 3 years older than me, and I vaguely remembered her from high school, but we knew a lot of the same people and her brother in-law was one of my friends in high school. We were having a really nice conversation, then she started talking about her younger brother, who she said was found dead by a hunter down a rocky embankment up in the mountains. Her brother (probably in his late 30s) was a small time drug dealer, career petty criminal and in general. The cops ruled his death as accidental, but her family thought otherwise because he had no reason to be up there. She said she thought it was a conspiracy. In my mind, I was thinking that realistically, the police didn't pursue it because what most likely happened is that he was partying with some people and overdosed, sending them into a panic and dumping his body up there. Or, maybe he got into an argument over drugs and someone beat him to death and dumped the body. I told her that it's a small town police force and the county has limited resources as well, and since there was no evidence of gunshot or stab wounds, they let it go. The police probably saw him as one less problem for them to deal with, but I wouldn't call it a conspiracy.
Then....she went ALL IN talking about COVID and who was responsible and what the government was trying to do to us, and at that point I told her I needed to get going because I had someone coming to look at some more stuff. I left feeling sad because we were having such a nice conversation before she went off the rails with that.