"Wake up, sheeple!"
— Unofficial motto
Above Top Secret
(ATS) is a rather large site devoted largely to the promotion and debate over various conspiracy theories and contentious subjects such as homeopathic medicine, American politics, and, of course, UFO sightings. It has massively extensive forums, some of which are so utterly bizarre it will leave you stunned. Conversely, not every post is so insane, and the site's members do indeed cover relatively mundane subjects as well. This site is a popular source of material for the website Fundies Say the Darndest Things and its spin-off, CSTDT.
This website provides examples of:
- Ancient Conspiracy: This is a great place to find Real Life examples of people that honestly believe that the Illuminati, Rockefellers, Freemasons, Jews or whatnot control the world. Some of their Ancient Astronauts conspiracies also qualify.
- Arch-Enemy:
- Some of the posters believe that rival huge conspiracy site, Prison Planet, which is run by Alex Jones, is out there to serve as a foil, or at worst is a secret disinfo agency.
- FSTDT is pretty much the Antithesis of ATS, barring instances of He Who Fights Monsters.
- Black Helicopter: One of the few places where black helicopters, used by NATO or the NWO or whatnot, are actually believed to exist and spy on people's bowel movements, or something.
- Conspiracy Kitchen Sink: And how! There is nothing even close to a consensus on ATS. The only thing the posters agree on is that there is a sinister plot behind absolutely everything.
- Conspiracy Theorist: The site is a haven to them, so naturally this describes the majority there. Additionally, they have some favorite examples who are more famous, such as:
- David Icke and his famous theories that the world's elite have been replaced by a Reptilian Conspiracy can be found on ATS in great numbers. His books can even be seen amongst the site's ads sometimes.
- Ron Paul, an astonishingly popular figure to the ATS posters in general. Impressive, considering that they distrust politicians just as much as they distrust the Pod People. It's probably because he's just very anti-government in general, with views sympathetic to those of many conspiracy theorists'.
- Dirty Commies:
- Liberals are often portrayed as such; quite often the Obama administration are labeled as these.
- Back during the Bush administration, things typically ran in the opposite direction, with many accusing Bush of being a crypto-fascist (see below) and invoking common leftist arguments. A general rule is that the overall tone of the site's politics will drift towards the radical end of whichever side is not in power at the time.note The fact that radical left-wing and right-wing conspiracy theorists tend to believe a lot of the same theories, though, means that the actual content remains largely the same more often than not.
- Godwin's Law: Even more so than other forum-based sites. Godwin's Law is just as pervasive, if not more so, than the Dirty Commies accusations.
- Government Conspiracy: These are the usual suspects.
- The Men in Black: Amusingly, people on the site sometimes accuse each other of being government disinfo agents when their conspiracies conflict with one another.
- Over-the-Top Secret: As the site's name should indicate, this is part-and-parcel of its content.
- Reptilian Conspiracy: One of the nuttier theories that can be seen here.
