Of course conspiracies are real. @revisesociology just wrote about them. What we tend to see these days are people building a conspiracy theory around dodgy evidence, e.g. pizzagate, Bill Gates, the Jews (long history of that). Anyone can post their theory on-line, possibly with a fancy video and are likely to find people willing to believe it. There seems to be a ready audience for incredible ideas.

So I won't say I don't believe in conspiracies, but many of those you see on-line are likely to be bogus. Meanwhile politicians conspire with their business backers, governments conspire with other countries against common enemies, bloggers conspire with vloggers to spread whatever message they want to get out. Facts of life.

It just seems that the term 'conspiracy theory' is taken to mean something unlikely, whilst a literal interpretation is of something that may be valid.