Has anyone lost a friend to conspiracy theories?

[MerryPerry88]

....and what was the outcome? The covid pandemic really did a number on a close friend of mine....and anxiety fulled paranoia has meant that they have gone down a rabbit warren of conspiracy theories. It started off with the Great Reset stuff, but now has gone full blown into Chem trails, Flat Earth, Royal Family are lizards...you name it. They have pushed everyone away with how aggressively they air their views, and cannot be reasoned with at all. They are still holding down a responsible job, but colleagues have been making comments, as they air their views forcibly at work. My partner does not want to see this friend anymore, as their views have also gone into right wing US republican territory. I'm also good friends with this friends partner, and our children are all friends. It's such a sad situation as our friendship has gone down the pan. I'm still meeting up with friends partner and the kids, but it feels awkward. The partner to some extent is pandering to a lot of these views. I don't know how to put it nicely but they are a bit of a push over and have put up with a lot in the past from this friend. Sorry there's probably a lot of background stuff I've missed out....I guess I'm interested to hear from people that have experienced the same, and whether friendships have ever recovered. I'm struggling to see how we can repair things unless they have a massive reality check, but I'm not sure how that is going to come about so feeling a bit hopeless.

“The wellness to q anon pipeline” episode of Maintenance Phase podcast is a great explanation of how seemingly normal people can get sucked into batshit conspiracies.

One friend went nuts over the vaccine. I’ve cut down the time I spend with her cos the snide comments about me being vaccinated piss me off and there is no arguing with people like that.

I also have an intelligent and well-educated friend who believes in aliens and all the theories about the US government covering stuff up 🤣🤣

Yep, covid is a hoax, covid tests don't actually pick up covid they're pre-set to have a certain result to keep people thinking it's real, vaccines make you ill, vaccines kill, vaccines make you autistic, baby formula causes allergies to keep you buying free-from products for life, chemtrails (which can be cleared by hanging a tea towel soaked in vinegar over your washing line!)

I don't have time for that shite.

Yes, about 15 years ago, a family member - 9/11, NWO, moon landings, chem trails etc. Was very worrying for a time, and we endured a lot of 'wake up sheeple' type comments. It seemed to be partly a result of a violent trauma they had endured, closely followed by a bad RTA - to me they needed to make sense of it and feel there was a reason for what happened to them. Also a confidence thing where they needed to feel like they knew more than the rest of us poor sheeple. Would be worse nowdays as so much internet crap around.
It disappeared almost as quickly as it came when he met his wife to be and I think he realised what an idiot he sounded. Some of it is still there under the surface such as refusing to vaccinate the children for measles (their choice but bought into a lot of the anti vax stuff) and some of the covid/trump stuff and some paranoia/being a victim but mostly the all consuming struggles of day to day life/kids/work mean they don't have time to dwell on it much. I worry it will resurface from time to time but mostly they keep a lid on it and we stay off the subject.
It is exhausting to listen to and impossible to reason with however.

To be fair, during covid, John Campbell was pro vaccines, if I remember correctly. I remember watching his videos during lockdown in 2020 and he had a lot of videos explaining how the vaccines worked and certainly wasn't saying anything contra the general consus. He got vaccinated himself.

Yes there are actual conspiracies , surveillance, psyops , whatever. But the lesson of history is these things very rarely work. And ' intelligence' just isn't very.

CIA and MI6 had no idea the Soviet Union would collapse. MI5 was caught on the hop by the IRA ceasefire and Peace Process - which seemed to annoy them in fact. The ' spooks' are as barmy as the tinfoils imo.

There used to be a character in Viz - Grassy Knollington : Conspiracy Nut. Feels like he's running the world now 😂

He veered off course. From wiki: "He has been criticised for suggesting COVID-19 deaths have been over-counted, repeating false claims about the use of ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment, and providing misleading commentary about the safety of Covid-19 vaccines."

He has spouted significant and damaging nonsense about vaccines since 2021, to many millions of gullible people who place their misguided trust in him.

John Campbell (YouTuber) - Wikipedia

What is so annoying is that she's actually a critical thinker, she just seems to have stopped laughing at all this nonsense since she's gone down the Twitter rabbit hole. I came off it months ago for that reason. I'm just going to tell her we're having a nice day out and I'd rather not hear it.

I wonder if people became very scared at the start of covid and then got kind of addicted to the thrill/energy of that and now seek out new things to worry about in order to keep the buzz/high going?

My friend who has previously had breast implants and botox refused the vaccine as she didn't want to, 'mess with her gut biome'. Now she even refuses to give her dog his annual vaccine and everytime a helicopter goes over she says, 'I wonder if that's the army coming to force people to have vaccines?'

I'm vaccinated and she makes it clear that a) she looks down on me for it and b) that it's going to 'catch up' with me in years to come and I will develop serious illnesses as a result.

These kind of threads always end up attracting conspiracy theorists. I see that this one is no different.

That is all true. I also watched his vaccines in 2020 and 21. He used to collate reports about the virus from different countries. I found him very sensible and helpful.

Then he seems to have misread the stats about Ivermectin and concluded it was a cure for Covid - which vaccine manufacturers don't want you to know about. His viewing figures increased dramatically.

He also used to have guests from different countries , one of them being the Australian microbiologist Dr Susan Oliver. She contacted him repeatedly and privately about his Ivermectin blooper but got no reply. So now she has gone public on her YouTube channel Back to the Science.

Trouble is only about 4000 ppl watch it. Whereas Campbell gets up to 2.5m - last time I looked. The truth is not exciting enough I guess. I don't know how monetization works but apparently JC could be making £ 50k per month. And since he makes a video every day he can only skim through abstracts of studies. I look for to Naomi Klein's forthcoming book on this strange period.

So .....they've got to you too 😭

( joke)

Aargh...watched his videos * not his vaccines ...

have a look at Steven Hassan, he was in a cult and has a lot of resources about conspiracy theorists, how to help people enmeshed in them etc etc. He has youtube videos, instagram etc. Interesting content.

Yes I did! Almost 40 year friendship. We were like sisters and she went cold on me because I didn't want to watch her ranty videos. I made a thread or two on here about it. She last sent me a ranting voice message about how she hadn't fallen out with me but couldn't be interested in my life when I wasn't interested in things that were important to her. I was interested in her life, her dd, other things I just didn't understand her videos and couldn't process them. The last straw was when she ignored my DD's birthday and I unfriended her on Facebook. It broke my heart and I still think about it

That's awful @teaandtoastwithmarmite . I suppose it's what happens when ideas become more important than flesh and blood human beings.

A workmate who told me that he'd turned off his phone so it wouldn't get the Emergency Test message because receiving it would mean 'they' had got inside your phone and could access your banking and private messages.

To be honest, he's not very bright and was probably just parroting something he'd read somewhere. I always try the 'laugh and ask how the hell that's meant to work' (did similar with the 'microchipping and monitoring of everyone' with Covid vaccine). Because he's not hugely bright, he's got absolutely no idea how these things work, how much they would cost and the sheer impracticality of it. Besides, if 'they' wanted access to my bank and private messages, they've probably already got it.

But it is disconcerting, when it suddenly comes from someone you previously considered fairly normal and sensible-headed.

I lost a friendship of 20 years due to conspiracy theories.. my friend started when covid hit .. then ranting about how the royals are lizards( she seen their tongue on tv ) earth is flat and the government is poisoning us from the sky ( chem trails) she used give me an headache sprouting such rubbish.. she used call me a sheep and that I need to wake up .. she felt she was more superior than me due to knowing information I wasn't aware of .. I hardly speak to her anymore and we was so close .. she's very delusional

Tell me about it. I think it started because of some other theories she had and she thought I was too weak to argue. Then she struggled financially and we continued working as normal. We then arranged a wedding after being engaged 10 years. She was meant to be moh but started ghosting me and tried to get out of my hen do which wasn't anything expensive or difficult just a meal and drinks. She then agreed to put it behind her but started up again. It took me a long time to accept it wasn't my fault and my mental health really suffered. I still feel worried it was me.

Oh and then she said Putin 'wasn't that bad and Ukraine had done stuff that the bbc had hidden' and I knew it was over then

I have also had conversations with a very good friend about all this. Her son, who is neurodivergent, spends hours on YouTube and is wildly into all conspiracy theories, practically of any kind.

We agree that it is a control issue. He feels that his life is completely out of his control (he is an adult living with his mum and needing a reasonable degree of care), so he finds that believing there is a world order in charge of everything that happens, who control and manipulate events, to be comforting in a strange way.

It's as though he cannot comprehend that 'shit happens'. There HAS to be a reason for it. And I wonder if this is the case for many conspiracy theorists. It's the old addage 'better a drunk pilot than no pilot at all.' Many people find it hard to believe that most things are random and, as I said, 'shit happens'. It's easier to believe that SOMEONE is in control, somewhere.

Paranoid and contemptuous, great outlook you got there.

Yes. Started the same as @MerryPerry88 friend. I have spent many hours debunking stuff, but everytime I get through to them on one subject, another raises it's head. It doesn't help that when you drill down, there is usually a tiny fact that's been twisted, bent, and built on to fit the agenda.

Lately we're are on to the WHO being given full authority by countries to make the rules in the event of another pandemic, that there is one planned for 2024, and that its all part of a ploy to get us into debt and on the chinese credit system. Loyalty cards are the first step. It's all been arranged by davros and it doesn't matter who is running the country, they are all in it together.
Bill Gates is the devil incarnate, along with the Clinton's, who eat babies.
Chemtrails are also a thing.
They are also caught up with Trumps hard right.
It's soul destroying and little you can do to get through to them. I find gentle steers, looking up what and who they tell me they are following, and finding where the truth is and how it's been changed is helpful, but it's exhausting. We agree to disagree a lot. I love them deals though, and I'm not letting them go without a fight.

Pretty spot on in terms of Kennedy and his comrades tbh.

Graham Hancock is a intriguing author with different articles, books ect
Absolutely everything he has posited has been debunked. For years.

Mine started same as @mayhemrulesok and I also tried my best to keep it going and trying to help understand but in the end I couldn't do it.