OK, if you feel like hatching a conspiracy theory, by all means, go ahead. They’re fun sometimes, and ever now and then touch on a kernel of truth, no matter how silly or outlandish they seem.

But if you don’t bother providing or even considering the motivation driving the conspiracy you fear, your theory will lack punch.

For example, if you were to say that the government puts chemicals in our food to make us gay — as at least one person unironically has — you must then tell us why: To control the spiraling population.

Although the entire idea is ridiculous, at least you’ve provided a vaguely viable motive. It would probably behoove the government to control the population, even though “the government” as a single unified entity does not really exist, nor, clearly, does it have the wherewithal or organization to enact a scheme so nefarious.

If you were to argue, then, that the media is out to get someone, you must tell us why the media would be out to defame that specific person. Otherwise, it makes no sense. Even if “the media,” like “the government,” were a single agent operating on behalf of a single agenda — even if we’re granting that, though it’s clearly not true — you must define that agenda and explain why it benefits the media.

When I was in high school, I spent a lot of time thinking — maybe fantasizing — that certain teachers “hated me.” This is a common refrain among high school students with disappointing grades: My chemistry teacher hates me; all my teachers hate me. I figured certain segments of the faculty got together over lunch and talked about what a wiseass I was and how they were going to make my life hell.

Then I went back and worked in that very same high school, and realized that it is an extremely rare case when a teacher actually hates a student. The worst teachers are completely indifferent to their students, the best ones want badly for their students to succeed.

For a teacher to hate a student, he would have to be both emotionally invested in his work yet not interested in or actively opposed to one student’s success: contradicting objectives. And on the rare occasion that an insubordinate kid’s name actually does come up at lunch in the faculty, maybe one teacher will shrug and say, “kid’s a pain in the ass,” but it never, ever launches a plan to conspire against that kid.

I realized then that my high-school teachers more likely felt for me some combination of pity, impatience and frustration, or, in many cases, just didn’t really feel anything at all besides, “I must shut this kid up to control the classroom.” They have no strong motive to conspire against their students, so they don’t do it.

So please, if you’re a fledgling conspiracy theorist, take heed: For your conspiracy theory to make sense, you must explain how it benefits the interests of those conspiring.