And yet when people tried to point this out earlier, they were called conspiracy theorists. There are false conspiracy theories and true conspiracy theories. That's just how theories work. The ones that espouse true theories are then denigrated for seeing things faster than you.

This is why labeling something a conspiracy theory is not a useful way to dismiss an idea. The dismissal is only right half the time. And the other half you are missing something important, or refusing to believe something without looking into it. Instead, more correct is to critically assess what is true and false and not what is a conspiracy theory and not a conspiracy theory. It's more work but it's also more correct.

Who prefers the term "conspiracy theory" to be a shortcut for claiming an idea is false? A: People involved in actual conspiracies.

Also, people who use that pattern to claim something is false just generally struggle with English. Conspiracy != Conspiracy theory != False. But a common trope of a useful idiot is to claim something is false because it's just a conspiracy. And a shocking number of people take that argument seriously. Despite the fact that this person can hardly differencial aspects in the English language, much less develop useful anticipation of how the powerful will strategize, or worse, comprehensively determine without evidence what is not possible there.

If you discuss an idea of what powerful people will do, you are technically engaging with conspiracy theory. And we can't be having any of that!