Why conspiracies spread faster than ever

I have a vague theory that conspiracies tend to spread faster through societies that have opaque, distant and domineering governments. Poor analytical and critical thinking ability among the population is also partially related, though I would like to nip in the bud the assertion that all alternative narratives are conspiracy theories.

Imagine it's the eve of the Vietnam war, but you don't know that there will be a war yet. There's a lot of posturing by the US, and US warships actively patrolling Vietnamese waters. The Gulf of Tonkin incident happens, and the US is at war-- the official story being the Vietnamese attacked the US patrol boats (in their waters). An alternative narrative (smeared as a conspiracy theory by its detractors) from this era would look like someone saying that the US artificially caused a situation in which they could get into a war with Vietnam.

Years after the fact, we now know that the Gulf of Tonkin was a complete fabrication, and the alternative narrative was correct whereas the official narrative was a lie. With documented wrongdoing in hand, the "conspiracy theories" can really begin... governments leave themselves wide open to refutation of their authority when they blatantly lie and fabricate events to get their way.

> by then we’d be under military control

You're in America - you are. You live in a militarized police state. The police don't consider themselves civilians anymore. They deploy en masse with automatic weapons, green military uniforms, armoured vehicles to steal from and generally terrorize the populace.

> Stories of strings being pulled by hidden hands

They are not all that hidden. Corporate money being used for political campaigns. Some are slightly more hidden. The "free trade" deals being enacted recently.