FYI I have not read every letter of this thread, nor watched all the posted videos...... so if I'm missing a mark, let me know.
I have a very good friend (in fact he's the friend I've known the longest out of ALL my friends) who dived into this very same stuff. I DO have to admit that there are some things that seem pretty compelling.....until you start to ask more questions...
If anyone wants to get to the truth of the matter, they absolutely MUST examine ALL sides of the story. The pros, the cons, the outliers, etc.... And if I may toss in my two cents, everyone should learn some basic cognitive neuroscience. It's not that hard to understand and it will teach you more of the "whys" that people do the things they do than most religious or philosophical texts will. If you're going to read David Icke, then you'd better read his debunkers/opponents/whatever you want to call them. How else are you going to get to some sort of truth? My friend used the example of a connect-the-dots picture. The more dots you have, the more a picture seems likely. He used this to illustrate why someone like Icke might be right. But the way I see it, that's no different than looking at clouds. One person sees a rabbit, another sees a lizard.... One person sees lizard hybrid aliens controlling everything via the Rockefellers and mass media...etc, and the other person sees the super rich taking advantage of societies too preoccupied with twitter and xbox and religious fundamentalism and who should use what bathroom to realize than their currency is fake and they never agreed to live in this social structure, among a huge list of other things I could bitch about. But the consequences for the average person ARE THE SAME.
Secondly, I gave this stuff a somewhat serious look because my friend and I are very close. But I always came to the same conclusions:
-You can argue back and forth about the points of any given conspiracy theories, but at some point someone has to choose to believe one source over another. This is true of just about anything, too. Why believe one source (like David Icke) over another, like a neuroscientist for example? Why do we have flat earth "theorists" in 2016 when there are overwhelming data showing that it's a sphere (well, almost a sphere, but I'm not here to split hairs

) ?
-The more pertinent conclusion, that we should focus on what is practical at a day to day level and not on a level that we can't influence or change. By this I mean that it's no stretch that the super rich are influencing elections, whether directly, covertly, overtly, or whatever.... This election cycle in the USA has brought that to the forefront more than ever before. But to say that the super rich are actually influenced by hybrid lizard aliens is a stretch that not only is basically un-provable (at least at this point) but is irrelevant to people like us who are just trying to get by. The fact of the matter remains that we still have to learn to rely less on our society (imo) and more upon our skills. The "power elite" are likely going to do whatever the hell they want, whenever they want,
anyways so until the lizards are marching down the street I'll focus on trying to become more self-sufficient. It's far more practical than spending a bunch of time researching stuff that may or may not have a tangible consequence.
-Which leads me to my last point, which is this: What if....
what IF it's all true, and they (the hypothetical lizards) would rather have people confused and searching all these endless rabbit-holes instead of taking actions and revolting or changing things? I mean, there are all these people writing books, blogs, and making videos and giving presentations and doing all this research.... instead of taking tangible actions towards positive changes.
Whether or not the Earth is flat, we still have to live on it, you know?
I know that believers will say something like "knowledge is power!" and to that I would reply "Then learn how to grow food, purify water, and rely less on the machine you live in." That's useful knowledge. Save the Icke research for after you can take care of yourself. Because if he's right, then you'll have no choice but to take care of yourself anyway.
I also was confused whether this was a joke thread.... Either way, I'll still say what I said.