Conspiracy theories can be great fun — when they are well-conceived, follow their inner logic and in general sound plausible enough to make you doubt your convictions. However, some theories only shock you with how insane they are.
Meet Donald Wilson, aka Donny of Daytona, who runs a YouTube channel dedicated to UFOs, atmospheric anomalies and moon observations. In one of his videos, Wilson posited the idea that the moon we see on the sky sometimes is actually an artificial one — launched by the Chinese!
Pointing towards a vaguely-triangular dark patch on the surface of the moon, Wilson claims this is a "triangular monument," constructed by sentient beings. (Spoiler: the patch does not even remotely resemble such a structure.)
Vlog on the moon (cigar ufo) breaking the matrix Donny of Daytona https://t.co/4can3yZpad.Donations https://t.co/KLvVpz8LlI. pic.twitter.com/TEmjoiiamJ
— Janett Wawrzyniak (@wawrzyniak9) 24 февраля 2019 г.
"Out of nowhere, this has come up," he says on the video, before he proceeds to wonder how parts of the lunar surface could change from time to time.
"So, it makes you wonder what's going on. How can parts of the moon's faces be changing a bit, or things are just popping up and being added on?" he says.
"Makes you wonder if sometimes we see China's moon, the one they launched."
Sadly, Wilson does not elaborate on when China launched its version of the moon, what happened to the previous one or why would China ever want to replace the moon in the first place.
The comments under the video make for great reading, too.
"Flat Earth was just proved by NASA by saying our Moon is inside our atmosphere," one commenter said, referring to a recent study saying Earth's outer atmosphere reaches far beyond the natural satellite. "So, for the 1,000,000 dollar question. What happened to gravity? Wouldn't the Moon fall to the Earth? Wouldn't it pull down?"
"I guess the answer would be so far up gravity doesn't exist. I gotta call b******t," the comment says. "I think they discredit anything they've ever said about the Moon and its truly because of people like you. Opening eyes."
Another commenter questioned whether the moon is much closer to Earth than NASA says.
"Personally I think it's a lot closer," the comment says.
The real distance from Earth to the moon is about 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers), which is measured regularly using lasers and special reflectors left on the moon by US astronauts.
