My dad is a massive conspiracy theorist and it's so frustrating

Don't be daft, it's not a conspiracy. It's global politics and the actions is a dictator.

He has a right to his opinions however unlikely they are. Let it wash over you and ignore them.
You will never convince him he is wrong, however cogent your argument.

This is interesting. The conspiracy theorists I know are heavily into new age thinking and various wellness philosophies. All well and good until they were endorsing "survival of the fittest" and aggressively pushing home remedies over vaccination. I listened to a Maintenance Phase podcast ep about the Wellness to Qanon pipeline, apparently it's a well known phenomenon.

It is exhausting to deal with conspiracy theorists in day to day life. I'm sure it gives people a sense of power in situations where we are individually powerless, but that doesn't excuse the nastiness of it all.

I do think a big part of it is that there are actual conspiracies that in the heads of these people morph into something Hollywood might produce. For example Saville was abusing for years and it didn't get revealed until after his death (I think a lot of people probably knew) but this morphs into something more fantastical as if the existing truth isn't sinister enough. As someone said Epstein and the island is very disturbing but this then morphs into something even bigger and more sinister. I am sure a psychologist might be able to explain why this happens. Fear as someone said it boredom or something more primitive?

There is a lot wrong on this planet without the need for exaggeration.

I have a friend who is very smart, well educated, who has gone down this rabbit hole. Believes the Earth is flat, I did laugh out loud at this and asked why the moon and other planets weren't flat; (no answer) believes the Hilary Clinton pizza-paedo coverup and that Wayfair were smuggling children to paedos in their furniture (this later on turned out to be a glitch on the website where prices on certain items shot up, to conspiracy theorists that meant of course it was paedos, not a simple pricing glitch.
She also firmly believes a satanic cult is ruling the world. I did note this change started after a very close bereavement, seemed to me her anchor to sanity had been cut.
I came across my first truly full on conspiracy theorist about 20 years ago, it was in a talk about alternative medicine but quickly veered into tinfoil hat territory. What got me is he had no evidence and kept telling his audience that if they researched his ideas they would find his truth and those that didn't were sheeple. Bollocks to that: I do all the work for you and I won't be a sheeple? He could FOTTFSOFOTFOSM.
Have had a very cool opinion of conspiracy theorists since then.

@SinnerBoy

I agree there are high levels of anti-semitism generally. The events since October 7th have shown me that in appalling clarity.

Unfortunately I think it’s terribly hard to change someone once they get like this. Especially when they grow older. My sister used to be a bit of a vaccine conspiracy theorist, but she got over it relatively quickly.

I think a lot of this is based on fear!
So people would rather believe that COVID was a hoax than believe that a new virus that initially no one knew how to treat was running wild!
They would rather believe that the US Gove blew up the Twin Towers than believe that a random terrorist group could literally fly a plan into a building at any moment!

They would rather believe that someone 'they' are controlling everything rather than believe that bad stuff can happen randomly to a lot of people!

Two of my old friends who I haven't seen for many years used to be sane and have become conspiracy theorists. I used to challenge some of their batshit posts on Facebook and they have both unfriended me.

One of them was vehemently anti vax, pro life, pro Trump, (she is American), pro animal rights; the other used to post ill-informed 'facts' and advice that were nearly always internet memes and often very sexist and usually took some number from
Some piece of research out of context.

My dad is exactly the same. All caught up in theories about control, vaccines, cashless society, 15 minute cities, world economic forum, weather engineering.

He spends hours watching this stuff on YouTube and it is so unhealthy to live in a state of worry, but there’s not a lot I can do about that.

He has started changing his diet to avoid all the ‘stuff’ that is put into food. I don’t mind that as he is choosing to cook fresh, good food. However he’s also making decisions about his money and his future based on these beliefs.

Feel free to PM me if you’d like to talk strategies to break through to them! I’m really worried about him.

gladrefrain · Today 12:34

My experience of conspiracy theorists too. Once people get into it, they get into all the conspiracy theories and this leads them into appalling levels of anti-semitism.

I think there's a large undercurrent of anti-Semitism in general. People who wouldn't want to see the horror of the Holocaust again, but who blame Jews for loads of things. A conversation I couldn't help overhearing a few years ago, walking behind two women when I was going to collect my daughter from school.

One was complaining that she couldn't get her car insurance down, despite using comparison sites. The other said, (these are not my words and I abhor them, I'm just reporting what I heard) :

"Yeah well, it all comes back to one old Jew, who owns the fucking lot."

I was pretty shocked.

This is what happens when you give stupid people too much information.

Whilst I think everyone is entitled to their views, I do sympathise with you because SIL's and BIL's sole topic of conversation these days is some conspiracy theorist they watch on YouTube. They go on and on about him and it always ends with BIL having a racist rant. It really gets me down. I know it causes huge rows between them and their eldest dc. We try not to see them often these days.

I find it really strange that often very intelligent, quite rational people often get mixed up in all this bunkum

There is a lot of research showing that intelligent people are more likely to believe unbelievable things. They use their intelligence to argue themselves into these beliefs.

Always call it the jibby jab too
Forever commenting under FB articles "vaccinated?!"
Then when you actually open the FB article it turns out they died because they were hit by a bus or something

Basically, oil companies- chief among them Texaco and Exxon- Mobil- were doing their own research into carbon emissions as early as the 1970s, discovered how much damage they were causing and deliberately buried it, funded misinformation campaigns etc.

There was a good BBC series on it called "Big Oil versus the World" recently- I watched two episodes, could swear there were more, and then it disappeared from iPlayer. Clear evidence of conspiracy!!! 😱 or its time on iPlayer had just ended Might be on YouTube though.

There is nothing funny about the rampant anti-semitism infusing the conspiracy theory world., and that they suck people who fall down this rabbit hole into.

Just like there was nothing funny about the Klu Klux Klan's beliefs.

Yes I know someone like this. Lockdown trashed her mental health. She used to have a responsible job once. She isn’t forced into work because her DH still earns well, but honestly, I wish she would get another job. She has too much time on her hands and it is unhealthy. She spends hours on YouTube.

Oh yes I love the Why Files! I started watching it after seeing it mentioned on here

It's disturbing that your dad is reaching to antisemitism - does he know anyone Jewish or live anywhere there are Jewish people. I am Jewish and because we are smaller minority than most people expect and hence a lot of people don't know any of us, we are all too easy to dehumanise. And 'I don't mean all Jews, just the Rothschilds' or whatever doesn't cut it.

My experience of conspiracy theorists too. Once people get into it, they get into all the conspiracy theories and this leads them into appalling levels of anti-semitism. By the end the woman I knew was saying ' the Jews' in air quotes with a contemptuous sneer on her face. She wasn't like this before conspiracy theories took hold of her entire personality.

There are conspiracy theorists who, after the recent race riots, believe that Tommy Robinson was being paid by Israel to stoke up hatred against Muslims and sow division. These people are not just a bit thick and utterly bonkers, they have really vile racist beliefs against Jewish people.

patrilla · Today 12:27

BIldeberg ! He was telling me about all that yesterday.

Oh God, poor you!

Our understanding of the world is always a partial truth surely?

The people in question do have hold of a grain of truth, namely that there is often more to things than meets the eye. But they are often worried about entirely the wrong things.

For example, the dominant economic model of neoliberalism has hugely changed the landscape of our public services over the past 40 years. Ideas have cascaded down from organisations such as the World Bank, IMF via Thatcher and even Tony Blair, to affect the health and education services in your own neighbourhood. A local authority today legally cannot open up a new school even where it is desperately needed, because of a political idea that a market-led provider (i.e. an academy trust) will always be more effective than a state-led mechanism. Health services are constantly in a state of flux due to being ‘recommissioned’. Care homes, children’s homes and nurseries are all run for profit. Private equity involvement is endemic. Is any of this right? It is too big, too embedded to debate or question.

At a national level, there is a lot that happens that doesn’t get publicised, but then again isn’t exactly secret either. It just flies slightly under the radar. Perhaps reports are published on the Gov website, amongst the thousands of others. People know about it, talk about it, but somehow it never gets discussed openly in the mainstream media. The UK government funding arms in certain Middle East countries has been happening for decades. But does it ever really get discussed?

I also think that far more manipulation happens on social media than people like to believe, with some obvious bad actors. A couple of years ago I noticed lots of very cute videos of pandas, popping up on my feed, but the author was the Chinese government. I didn’t click, ignored them and no longer see them now, but now I wonder if that was a data-harvesting exercise?

Everything is questioned, everyone is corrupt. Apart from the people spouting this stuff. They're the only ones telling the truth
This made me laugh. So true. I knew a full on conspiracy theorist really well. It was so this. Any counter evidence was ' I don't believe that source'. But she did her mate who had a blog about Putin.

I really feel for you. I now would not befriend a conspiracy theorist. They bring ever conversation back to it, and the further they get into it, the more pernicious they become until they are anti-semitic, Holocaust denying fans of Hitler, Putin and any other dictator the 'MSM' do not report favourably about.

The odd thing about conspiracy theories is that they do not seem to make the people who believe them happy. In fact they make them very unhappy, as you describe. At least people who get sucked into evangelical Christianity are happy, or at least the ones I have known. They'd be better off if the Christians had got to them before the Conspiracy theorists did!

My only advice would be to tell your Dad you don't want to hear it anymore. And walk away each time he starts. Don't engage. You'll get nowhere.

Well we are controlled by capitalism and corporations. But I don't think it's orchestrated by a group of people....it's just the nature of uncontrolled capitalism. There are a lot of corrupt people who will do anything to make money but they're not in cahoots with each other.

They have brought in new laws to stop protests though and some protesters have been given ridiculously harsh sentences.

But we can never really know. In my opinion, a lot of conspiracy theorists are bonkers and a bit thick and then anyone who expresses any sort of similar opinion is dismissed. You're naive if you don't think there are a lot of shady deals going on behind the scenes. We know that's true because they occasionally come to light.