Showerthought: I believed the moon landing was faked until my grandpa showed me his old radio log from 1969
My grandpa worked at a radio station in Ohio and kept a daily log of every broadcast, including the exact time and frequency they picked up the Apollo 11 transmissions. I spent 2 hours comparing his handwritten notes to NASA's published schedule and they matched down to the minute, which killed my whole 'it was filmed in a studio' thing. What got me was seeing the signal strength notes he wrote in pen, like 'weak but clear' at 3:47am on July 20th, because nobody fakes that kind of boring detail. Now I wonder how many other conspiracies I hold onto just because I never looked at the receipts. Has anyone else had a family member's random paperwork blow up a theory they believed for years?
The part about the signal strength notes really got me, like "weak but clear" at 3:47am is such a small thing that nobody would bother making up. That's the whole deal with fake stuff, it always has this clean, perfect look to it, but real life is messy and full of boring little details that don't matter to anyone except the person writing them down. Your grandpa's log has all that junk in it, the time, the frequency, the little weather notes probably, and that's exactly why it feels true. Faking a conspiracy would mean faking a thousand tiny things like that, and someone would slip up somewhere. So the more I think about it, the more it seems like the boring paperwork is the best proof there is, way better than any documentary. It kind of makes you want to go dig through old boxes in your own family's attic and see what falls out.