Conspiracy theorists don't think that way. They want things that validate their paranoia, so they look for symbols that are obvious to
them, but discarded by others because they're too obvious and stupid. They want buildings that look like Hollywood evil lairs. They want barcodes and IC cards that spell out 666[0] if you squint at them funny. They see Linux error screens with the words "kill process or sacrifice child" in them and think their Fire Stick is extracting adrenochrome at the basement of Comet Ping-Pong[1].
They aren't entirely insane, they are onto something. But, ironically, they have been programmed by business interests to ignore their own malfeasance. So the story can't just be "the government suspended monopoly laws and let everyone buy everyone and that's why everything sucks now, join a union". After all, a lot of these people were born and raised to oppose regulation and unions. So they instead have to construct a new framework for opposing business to get rid of that cognitive dissonance, and it invariably becomes this over-dramatized nonsense.
[0] A codeword referring to Nero, a politically unpopular Roman emperor that has been dead for over a thousand years
[1] A pizza place that does not have a basement, but that hasn't stopped conspiracy theorists from shooting them up and holding them hostage anyway
They aren't entirely insane, they are onto something. But, ironically, they have been programmed by business interests to ignore their own malfeasance. So the story can't just be "the government suspended monopoly laws and let everyone buy everyone and that's why everything sucks now, join a union". After all, a lot of these people were born and raised to oppose regulation and unions. So they instead have to construct a new framework for opposing business to get rid of that cognitive dissonance, and it invariably becomes this over-dramatized nonsense.
[0] A codeword referring to Nero, a politically unpopular Roman emperor that has been dead for over a thousand years
[1] A pizza place that does not have a basement, but that hasn't stopped conspiracy theorists from shooting them up and holding them hostage anyway