In my country it generally works the same (as writing with fountain pen is enfoced in primary schools), but after "ballpoint" phase during college some people go back to fountain pens, as they are seen as more classy and elegent writing tool.
I think we have different scale in mind. You see closed-minded VC capital (which I personally believe works this way due to focus on sure, short-term gain), I see amygdalin sold in pharmacies. You don't need flat Earth level of conspiracy to have victims, and bad actors can emerge from every background and attack people opened to new ideas as easily as old bad actors will still have their following.
I think it depends on scale. A lot of proven conspiracies are goverment cover-ups about some exact events (like killing certain people or medical tests) or something closed for one industry (like oil companies hiding data about global warming). Conspiracy theories often create much bigger visions, spanning across multiple goverments (often opposing each other) e.x Moon landing hoax, flat/hollow Earth or thousands of unconnected people (chemtrails, some medical theories).
Now I'm really intrested in which ones there are kernels of truth - FEMA death camps, hollow Earth, false-flag Sandy Hook?
The problem I have with "kernel of truth" is that every loosely connected scandal becomes proof of conspiracy theory being "real" when in reality the shady actions are made elsewhere and no one is really intrested, or worse, conspiracy is more intresting than truth. For example, when USA spend milions of dollars during satanic panic trying to prove conspiracy theory true (and ruined innocent people lives), the Catholic church was doing it's thing freely (in my country we have hundreds of people fighting with sex-ed because it's "child abuse and LGBT indoctrination plan", when information about Church officials hiding cases of abuse is just another Monday). We have people scared to death by toothpaste and fluor in water or vaccines (another example of innocent people being in risk of harm due to conspiracies), when opium crisis and dubious antidepresants are basically ignored. I really doubt that looking for children hidden by Hilary Clinton is not going to help with finding another pedophile circle.
There is difference between conspiracies and conspiracy theories - this list shows mostly information about conspiracies, and less information about people and theories that predicted them before official uncovering (this would make them conspiracy theories proven true). I think a lot of conspiracies about which we learned post-factum prove mostly that they are really hard to spot.