I was reminded of that craziness this week, after The Washington Times retracted and apologized for a column about Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staff member whose unsolved killing in 2016 sparked conspiracy theories. Though the police believe Mr. Rich may have been killed in a botched robbery effort, many figures on the right — including Sean Hannity — have connected the death to the leak of D.N.C. emails.

These days, removed from the din of a presidential election, it does seem as though we’re hearing less about those kinds of theories. But they certainly haven’t gone away (see: QAnon).

To find out what’s circulating right now on the dark corners of the internet, we reached out to the technology columnist Kevin Roose, our resident conspiracy theory expert and one of the people working on The Times’s effort to identify political disinformation.

Here’s what he told us:

Two high-profile progressive insurgents — Beto O’Rourke in Texas and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York — have both been on the receiving end of what I call the “4chan background check,” which is an attempt, led by amateur sleuths on 4chan, 8chan, Reddit and other questionable internet forums, to dig up damning information on a candidate, no matter how inaccurate. One particularly dumb conspiracy theory involving Mr. O’Rourke is that he changed his name from Robert to “Beto” in order to ingratiate himself with Latino voters. In fact, he has gone by Beto since long before he entered politics, as he showed by tweeting a photo of himself as a young child with “BETO” stitched on his sweater. Still, the conspiracy persists. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has had a flurry of misinformation thrown at her, too, including claims made by conservative writers that she grew up in a fancy suburban home despite her story of working-class roots in the Bronx. The tweet that accompanied many of these accusations showed a small, modest house in nearby Yorktown Heights — not some sprawling McMansion. (The guy who dug up that photo also falsely claimed that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had attended Brown University. She went to Boston University. So close!) But my personal favorite midterms conspiracy theory, even though technically it’s more of a midterms-adjacent conspiracy theory, is that the woman who testified in front of the Senate last week wasn’t actually Christine Blasey Ford. According to some on Twitter, it was actually the actress Amy Schumer, wearing makeup and glasses. It’s wild out there, folks!

If you spot a piece of political disinformation online, let us know.

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Democrats pushing in swing states

The billionaire investor and Democratic activist Tom Steyer is directing his political operation to get involved in five additional House races in Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

All five districts — Florida’s 15th, Florida’s 16th, Florida’s 25th, Pennsylvania’s 16th and Wisconsin’s Sixth — are considered Republican-leaning. Mr. Steyer’s investment is a sign that Democrats see opportunities to tilt those districts.