Most of the inconsistencies and oddities I've seen people point to had to do with the media surrounding the landing and there is independently verifiable evidence of the landing, so it's a neat middle ground theory.
Discussion
Yeah, I mean it’s possible. The hardest part to believe about that would be that they made it to the moon — in 1969, no less — and yet they were willing to taint it with fraudulent footage. I mean I get the appeal of televising it live, but why undermine such a seismic achievement with a massive lie? Why lie like that if you actually did the unimaginable deed? Seems a bit farfetched that wouldn’t have leaked, that the astronauts wouldn’t have said later, yeah, the footage was fake so it could be more dramatic live.
Think it’s more likely it happened for real, and for God knows what reason we haven’t ever come close since. Or it was fake.
The version that makes the most sense to me (and I'm not saying it's what I believe to be true) is that they weren't sure if the video and pictures they took would work so they prepared backups ahead of time. There were concerns about whether film would be ruined by the radiation belts.
So, the astronauts really took photos of what they were doing and really were recording video. Whatever of that was usable was used, eventually, but they used the backup stuff too.
A Rogan guest laid it out pretty well a few years ago and it seemed to explain all the incongruities I had ever heard of without requiring the entire program to be fake, or even every to be aware of the fraudulent elements.
It's a fun conspiracy theory space, since it really doesn't matter one way or another.
I mean in one sense it doesn’t matter — affects no one’s life whatsoever — but in another it’s kind of important in that it shows the extent to which the entire population might have been propagandized and deceived. But yeah it’s hilarious when people get upset if you question it.