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.

Think the other problem is social
media content algorithms. Start reading one conspiracy theory and then suddenly ALLLLL you’re seeing are more and more conspiracy theories until it’s a full on spiral and people are searching for hidden meaning in everything.

As all good researchers know, use a variety of sources to avoid bias. Is the BBC biased - yes. Are some of these conspiracy theorists biased and with their own agenda - every bit as much!

I have had their face inches from mine, screaming at me, I had to be firm in telling them to back away. That was probably rock bottom, now we are both more mindful of our boundaries and agree to disagree. It's not been an easy journey though.

I think the £250k was mainly money they were given to plough into the protest movements themselves/funding demos/hiring the car to get them all there (and driving, because hippies don't have cars or drive!)/general backstory expenses.

Here's a few things he got up to
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/10/mark-kennedy-undercover-cop-activist

I’d challenge your point about the BBC being biased. It’s one of the most impartial sources of news out here.

That doesn’t mean it infallible- it’s an organisation of human beings full of their own biases - conscious and unconscious. Of course, it will inevitably make mistakes. And sometimes be influenced to take a certain line by good PR people/spin doctors/ other media.

but it’s pretty rare in that it isn’t run by a wealthy individual with a set agenda. It means it’s actually a very reliable source of news.

obviously £250k per copper not in total! Imagine!!

Fascists (let's not mince words) call the BBC 'woke'. If only!

That was meant for @teabycandlelight

That's a thought! 'Thrill-seekers' / 'adrenaline junkies' are driven to keep doing dangerous stuff to keep getting that rush. Could conspiracy theorists be just a variant of that?

I'm sure I've read somewhere that adrenaline junkies 'accommodate' to the adrenaline rush, meaning that like every other type of junkie they need to keep upping their dose to get the same effect. Do conspiracy theorists start stressing on the normal stuff, start to accommodate the stress hormones (cortisol) and get to the point that normal life just isn't stressful enough and so they invent shit to worry about?

Yes, that sounds mad. Almost as mad as some of the conspiracy theories.

https://www.wanttoknow.info/summaries

I’m well aware of the merits of the BBC and listen to a huge amount of their content, but to say it’s not inherently biased is not true and I’m far from a conspiracy theorist. All content is, and it’s a broad spectrum, you seem to be missing the point being made.

@Hawkins0001 that website looks dodgy as fuck. If people are looking at that and thinking it is a genuine and reliable source of information I despair! Click on the so called BBC resources they cite and they're not even genuine. Like my friend though, you'll have an answer so I don't know why I'm really engaging with you. Out of pure frustration I think!

@Hawkins0001

Do you consider anything on here proof or evidence of some kind?

We lost a friend to this. Every time we met up he’d want to talk about the danger of vaccines, how there was zero evidence and Covid itself was a hoax.
The subject ended up dominating conversations, it got unpleasant. There was no point trying to reason with him, he could always find some article online to support his view point.

Why do they try to dominate so much of the conversation around it. Why not just have a view like we all do on many things and live life.

That website is a classic example of what I discovered when I looked into this shit.

A group of people, all with impressive sounding titles- Dr of (made up qualification/ qualification in a totally different field), working together to give traction to a theory. One would cite another's "research" as fact, others would share this as the best thing since sliced bread. The same people/ institution would appear in the "research", giving a veneer of respectability.

If you click into the about us page on that link, it makes the people contributing sound amazing.

They are all published authorsof this bull shit, researchers of this crap or using old jobs in completely different fields to give a sense of gravitas.

It is easy to get pulled into the echo chamber without using critical thinking skills and websites like that link are preying on the vulnerable, notice the most prominent thing on the page is the bit asking for money.

@Hawkins0001 I would be wary of believing everything you read on there. Don't take what they say as fact, if you are open minded to alternative theories then start with one aspect that you are interested in, look for those original papers they cite (it may take some digging, they are usually hard to find to the point of being nonexistent), and look for where and who has peer reviewed them.

@MillicentBystander2022 got this from a quick google search. It wasn't Kellogg, it wasn't the US government and it wasn't about eugenics.

In the late 1940s, two major brands, Quaker Oats and Cream of Wheat, were competing for cereal market share. At the same time, cereals in general were under a bit of nutritional scrutiny: a series of experiments had revealed that plant-based grains contained naturally high levels of phytate, an acid that inhibited the absorption of iron and calcium.
When MIT decided to look into how the human body absorbs essential minerals and vitamins, Quaker jumped at the opportunity to fund the study, largely out of a desire to “give them an advantage over Cream of Wheat.”
After securing additional grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Atomic Energy Commission, MIT formulated a plan: they’d “recruit” 40 children from the Fernald State School, an institution for the developmentally disabled, and feed them cereal with radioactive tracers (which, even today, are used to trace processes in the human body).

There's the grain of truth though, the government experimented on dc. That's what's been twisted and bent to fit the narrative.

First thing you read on that page:

"WantToKnow.info is an educational website which provides reliable, verifiable information from respected sources on major cover-ups and corruption occurring in our world today."

"major cover-ups and corruption" is enough to tell me that all the info they present will support their position, and they will disregard all information that disagrees.

Nah, no thanks.

The AIDs pandemic was caused by the polio vaccine? That's one I haven't heard before.

I clicked on that link and feel grubby. 1990s style. Wtf even is that shit.

That's the sort of shit that's using language to pull people in.
People come across a theory, follow the trail and end up on sites like this sharing the secrets that governments don't want you to know. You aren't like other people, you now know stuff they don't, that makes you feel special.

The people that write this crap know what they're doing.

Oddly enough practically everyone I know had the polio vaccine. But I've only known two people who had Aids. They were both haemophiliacs .

Can it be that they were both haemophiliacs and had some allergy to the vaccine? I can't help feeling that is rather unlikely. No doubt this means I am a dupe of Big Pharma though.

The true proof is in the various intelligence services files, read all, trust nothing Mr Mulder.

@Wallaw
So to speak

I've got 2 long term freinds practically crowing that my illness is due to the vax & not that I already had it & Covid sent it off the scale, because Covid doesn't exist, it's just flu (Oh-kayyy🙄) in fact, according to them, viruses don't exist & all illnesses are from all the vaccines we've had since babyhood. The annoying thing is they're unvaxxed (of course) & neither of them have had Covid to date but that's probably due to them being hermits. We stay in touch but they're hard work, a lot agreeing to disagree. Another vociferous Covid denying freind of my partner got it so badly he's on steroids & oxygen after being hospitalized for a year. He's now a rabid pro vaxxer.