The term "conspiracy theory" is a psychological kill shot designed to socially ostracize anyone who questions the mainstream (read: elite) narrative, instilling fear in questioning that narrative.
Yes, there are crazy people who think crazy things. There are also sane people who think "crazy" things might be true, but keep it to themselves out of fear of the social ostracization associated with being called a "conspiracy theorist." As designed.
My person in deity, the American government is currently run by anti-vaxxers, white supremacists and UFO grifters, and was elected by people who believed the weather was controlled by Jewish space lasers, COVID vaccines were full of mind-control chips and the Democratic Party ran a sex cult under a pizzeria. You need to update your priors.
It's become de rigueur to virtue signal how radically untethered one is to consensus reality, to the point that even on Hacker News, which is ostensibly full of rational people, you'll get ostracized far more for believing in the mainstream narrative than for questioning it.
The powers that be keep changing how conspiracy theorists are measured to hide the true rate of conspiracy theorist-flation!!!1!1!1!!
Joking, but also not joking, back in the day a conspiracy theorist was someone who believed that something was explained by a literal conspiracy with literal conspiring going on. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry that thinks a press release isn't telling the whole truth gets to call themselves one. The reason the definition got watered down was for exactly the reason you state, various people found it useful to apply that label much more broadly.
Yes, there are crazy people who think crazy things. There are also sane people who think "crazy" things might be true, but keep it to themselves out of fear of the social ostracization associated with being called a "conspiracy theorist." As designed.