Conspiracy
Technically a conspiracy is a plan made by a group of individuals to achieve some goal in secret, more likely than not this goal is somewhat nefarious in nature. For our purposes, it also refers to a set of fiction and modern mythology based around various alleged conspiracies and fiction which is derived there-of. From Area 51 and the Philadelphia Experiment to Nazi Moon bases and reptilians from the hollow earth.
Get your cork boards, string, trench coats and tin foil hats because we got codes to crack and mysteries to expose.
The Mindset of Conspiracy Theorists
First of all, there is a spectrum of interest in conspiracies and similar. This ranges from interest in the mythology and legitimate investigation of shady events by journalists and similar to full blown wack-a-doodles who end up stockpiling meat, ammo and gold and are set off by pizza parlors.
Conspiracy theorists are well known for coming up with totally batshit ideas, taking a few random points of data ranging from symbols on dollar bills to the price of cheese to Backstreet Boys lyrics and linking them together to get people to believe that a 300 year old English gentleman's club is plotting to retake the 13 colonies for the British Empire to facilitate the ambitions of the squid people of Tau-Ceti (or something else equally absurd). Sometimes you get people which end up falling down the rabbit hole into a dream world of aliens, real magic, torture and shadowy cabals. Outsiders who are critical are either mindless sheep or to some degree working for THEM. A group of these guys can end up reinforcing their shared delusion.
Most obviously, conspiracy theorists (at least the hardcore ones) are often paranoid and some are even schizophrenic. There's also an element of wonder to it; the same thing that made people imagine fairies living in the forest in the middle ages. If aliens actually were sending ships to earth to monitor people, that would be kind of cool. But a big factor about it is simplification. We live in a world with a vast web of people, groups, organizations and interests constantly trying to make their way and achieve their goals around various human and non-human factors, often against each other. A mess of monkeys fumbling for meaning and working at cross purposes is inevitably a mess and often highly inefficient, confusing, frustrating and a hazard to those caught up in it. To some people, the notion that the current state of the world can be deciphered and in the end the mess that the world is in can be traced to a single group with an written agenda is appealing.
This is not to say that there are not people in power which try to pull shady shit in the shadows. It does happen, but (among other things) they have a distinct diseconomy of scale. The larger the conspiracy the more points of failure and the greater the risk of exposure. Your typical conspiracy is not a secret society with a thousand year plan to dominate the earth, but more to the effect of some corporate types and their 'fixers', some government agency or some other body with money and influence doing something to make off with money, eliminate a rival or to achieve some other specific immediate goal.
Ironically enough, one thing that groups in power can use to get their way is capitalizing on conspiracy theorists and their ideas. In the 19th century the absolutist monarchy of the Russian Empire found itself under pressure by various groups of reformers and revolutionaries. To counter this, the Tsar's secret police directed ire away from the Romanovs (the ruling family) and the nobility and towards the Jewish minority and, later, other ethnic groups such as the Japanese.
Media with a Conspiracy Elements in it
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X-Files: Perhaps the quintessential conspiracy theory show with much of the focus being on extraterrestrial aliens and the organization in charge of hiding said aliens from prying eyes. That said, it also touches on a lot of other ideas such as wish magics, invisible thought demons, and numerous cryptids.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The big twist of this infamous anime series is that ultimately the conflict is rooted in the struggle between two different conspiracies who each want to literally remake the world according to their own desires.