In my pursuit of the truth I've been reading a lot of conspiracy theory literature. Actually, it's my go to for daily information, but I am not so naive as to believe it to be all true. Far from it. You've got to be a very cautious and discriminating reader. Never accept a statement as fact without checking the sources. And this goes for the experts too, who are definitely not above getting it wrong.
Depending on your source, particularly if you're looking at some reddit conspiracy forum, where anybody can post, or a place like rense.com, where the links are all over the place, you will find that conspiracy theories are often a mixture of truth and fiction.
You've got blatant sensationalism, completely made up or misleading stories generated solely for their click bait shock value, aimed at maximizing ad revenue and very little else. In other words, it's all about the money. Some people make a good living off of it, they don't care if it's true, all they care about is if it sells.
Then you've got the garden variety trolls, people who think it's funny to make up some completely crazy, outlandish story, and to get as many people as possible to believe it, so that they can have a good old hearty laugh at their expense. In other words, it's all about the Lulz.
Then you've got legitimately mentally ill people, paranoid schizophrenics, who live in a world of angels and demons and feelings of persecution and internal delusion, who publish their conspiratorial fantasy as fact, as if their own personal horror story is mass projected onto the whole world, where they are no longer alone, but the whole world is now in on it.
Then you've got pure speculation, creative people of sound mind brainstorming conspiratorial possibilities, as a sort of science fiction thought experiment, that is kind of fun to think about, and to talk about with others, and it may or may not be true, but nobody is claiming anything definitively.
Then you've got disinformation agents who for whatever reason infiltrate conspiracy theory channels (but also do the same for mainstream media as well in the form of press releases and Reuters news feeds) and drop false leads, maybe for reasons of national security, or for corporate espionage, such as attacking the competition, or downplaying negatives (such as cigarettes causing cancer or vaccines causing injuries), or for manufacturing consent (as in selling an unpopular war, product, service), who have a vested interest in misleading, misdirecting, and manipulating reality for reasons of power and profit at the highest levels of corporate and governmental interest.
Then at the bottom of the conspiracy theory hierarchy, you've got the true whistleblowers. Regular people who have identified a great verifiable evil being committed by a powerful entity, a great cover up of blatant greed, corruption and lies, who have absolutely nothing to gain from disclosing this information, neither in the sphere of power or profit, other than in that doing so benefits the greater good. For instance, if they have evidence that a product is killing people without their knowledge or consent, it may be in the public good to let everybody know about it. And maybe the mainstream media won't give them the time of day, because the mainstream media is funded by the entity they wish to expose, and the only place that will broadcast their message is the world of conspiracy theory.
So, that's pretty much the full range of information you can expect to encounter while perusing conspiracy theory literature. It's difficult to navigate, for sure, but it's important to look at, simply because sometimes there's nowhere else to look. You will find, at least in regards to certain subjects, that the world of conspiracy theory is the last bastion where underground knowledge has the freedom to circulate.
You've just got to know how to look, where to look, and if you look the right way, in the world of conspiracy theory, it is possible to find truth in a forum of lies, and only a fool would completely dismiss it without even looking at it and verifying the facts for themselves.