My friend is a conspiracy nut

[HappyMumsie]

AIBU not to agree with any just to keep the peace? She is always going on about one conspiracy or another. Vaccines, covid19, the Government etc etc. Did man land on the moon? Did the men in grey kill Diana?

Does anybody else have a conspiracy theory we can put to bed??

I love a good conspiracy theory. I don't believe them but find them and the reactions fascinating.
Mrsfezziwig Denver airport is something to do with Nazi rooms in tunnels if my memory serves me right. The illuminati may be involved too

I have a friend who is in a very large, Christian choir and they recently done one of those stay at home style videos with about 40 of them singing a song about how God has never failed them yet.

When she sent me the video and asked what I thought, I told her it was beautiful and agreed with her that it was so uplifting.

I screamed in my head about the irony, the whole world is in lockdown and people are dying in their tens of thousands because of this pandemic but she still thinks God has never failed her.

We all have different views and beliefs.

You read a broadsheet (historical term though it is) if you want to read in-depth news. It means you’re only exposing yourself to certain newspapers if you think that it’s just celebrity gossip.

Well the newspapers are mainly owned by people invested in the current government. And yes what she said is true. Perhaps you could try not to follow the crowd so much and make informed decisions rather than labelling everything as a conspiracy theory.

@Mimishimi

Yes but the real conspiracies are a lot more mundane than the ones that exercise Facebook.

The problem is that the more you fall down the rabbit hole and read about something online, the more credible it seems.

I read conspiracy theories all the time because my mum often talks about them, and although I don't believe in them, I do see how people could be convinced by them. The more you read about something, the less 'out there' it seems.

Some like the Flat Earthers can be amusing, but it's not really funny and they are causing damage. They are the ones encouraging sabotage of phone masts. Telling people vaccines are poison leads to more disease spread and so on. They tell people not to take cancer meds/antibiotics and instead to drink colloidal silver and wear crystals. To paint the nursery with lead paint to keep out the mind control beams. That staring at the sun for long periods is good for you and that it doesn't damage your eyes.

They spread their own ignorance by telling people that only information from social media is true. They are corrupting children to make more like themselves.

The right thing to do is call them out on it every single time.

Not every opinion is equal. The true believers amongst them are idiots and the others are parasites using it for profit.

id2020.org/

There you go.. it really is a ‘thing’. Not some made up nonsense. You do know they can change the weather too? There are a LOT of things we don’t know about .. it doesn’t make them not true.

Right, it’s pure coincidence that reading, say, the Guardian’s Long Read on 2018 concentration camps, stockpiling or the mind of Dominic Cummings, or an article in The Atlantic, Libération, or the LRB, by actual journalists, whose track record, credibility and political biases you can research, takes a lot more effort and concentration than hitting ‘like’ on a Youtube video from Frothing At the Mouth Steve who lives off-grid somewhere in Arkansas, emerging only to froth about the Illuminati, and Bill Gates creating Covid-19 so he can microchip the world’s population. And — wey hey! — you’re not like the rest of the sheeple, right?

A PP said something about respecting other people's opinions.
I don't think you have to at all.

You can respect their right to hold opinions but how can you respect actual opinions that you think are nonsense?

What's the problem with id2020?

My boss believes Hitler didn’t commit suicide but escaped and lived in South America for many years. Along with a few other Nazi leaders. He watched a documentary on it and the evidence was apparently very compelling.

I wanted to watch the documentary but couldn’t find it.

Does that qualify as a conspiracy theory?

I half believe that about Hitler..

But Stalin started that story!

One of my family members believes that Coronavirus doesn't exist; it has been fabricated by the world's governments to see how we would cope in the case of a disaster. Such as World War 3.

Strange that I've had suspiciously like COVID-19 symptoms for several weeks, which I'm taking a long time to recover from. Funny that, isn't it, if it's an imaginary virus??

My boss believes Hitler didn’t commit suicide but escaped and lived in South America for many years. Along with a few other Nazi leaders. He watched a documentary on it and the evidence was apparently very compelling

Like in the TV series Hunters?

I have fb friends (who I do actually know in RL) who are urrebtlt posting some amazing religious based conspiracy stories.

I showed DH last night as he doesn't do SM and he was astounded. It was regarding the Covid 19 Vax and the tattooed ID implant.. The Mark of The Beast. Apparently.

But hey, maybe they're right?

I have very little time for people who believe in conspiracy theories. Stuff like Paul
McCartney being dead and Elvis being alive I’m not too bothered about - it’s the people rattling on about 9/11, and harassing the parents of Sandy Hook victims that I believe to be genuinely dangerous. They always seem to be right wing MRA types.

Mittens030869

One of my family members believes that Coronavirus doesn't exist; it has been fabricated by the world's governments to see how we would cope in the case of a disaster. Such as World War 3.

Strange that I've had suspiciously like COVID-19 symptoms for several weeks, which I'm taking a long time to recover from. Funny that, isn't it, if it's an imaginary virus?? hmm

No, no, Mittens, that just means you're gullible enough to produce phantom symptoms

(Seriously, hope you're feeling better soon)

I know no-one who's a conspiracy theorist. My life is obviously lacking.

@LaMarschallin thank you.

Seriously, though, there's a funny side where someone like me who is ill and recovering is concerned. For bereaved relatives of someone who has died not so funny, though. What are the victims of COVID-19 supposedly dying of, I wonder?

My late uncle was a conspiracy theorist actually. He was very knowledgeable, though, as a former well placed UN official so I couldn't dismiss everything he said as bunkum.

He used to claim that 09/11 was a CIA conspiracy and also that there was an FBI conspiracy behind the assassination of JFK.

Why do you believe the news and the government?? I think people who believe that are stupid idiots

the thing is people who arent conspiracy theorists DONT just believe the news and the govt. they are aware there are horrendous cover-ups and cock-ups and secrets. they look at evidence, they look at plausibility, they look at time-lines,

conspiracy theorists are ime people who left school v young, have trouble with critical thinking, have never met someone who works in govt, media or law, have probably never left their home town and have a cross between a victim mentality and a superiority complex.

if i said toilets were invented to spy on bottoms- they would think its true. if i said prince charles wants to wipe out the uk with jam theyd believe it. if i said its all the fault of the jews theyd believe it.

these are the people who burnt down masts thinking they were 5g masts. or attacked paediatricians because they thought they were paedos.

it is going to be a huge problem that society has so many gullible (and often racist) people.

To be honest I took the whole Corona virus as a Chinese mistake/malicious rather dubiously until it came out in those diplomatic cables that there is a virus lab in Wuhan and they have been messing about with coronavirus' for years. All of a sudden it doesn't seem to be conspiracy kook... Like the Russians saying bojo was in ITU- disregarded it because who believes a damn thing the Russians say? Only people less reliable than them are the Chinese- turns out they were right...

I mean, you could just quietly believe something but keep it to yourself and just get on with your life, right? I’ve never met a conspiracy theorist who does this.

But how would you know. You could have met loads of conspiracy theorists that just don't mention it. Secondly most people believe at least one, and some turn out to be true, false flag attacks, operation paperclip, mk ultra, elite pedophile rings.