To worry there is a serious mental health crisis amongst conspiracy theorists?

[BlooperReel]

Maybe it's because I've been online more now due to lockdown, but conspiracy theories seem to have really ramped up, people I know are now peddling some of this nonsense. Adrenochrome, pizzagate, 5G etc all seem to have sucked in people I'd assumed were rational people, and they are almost rabid about it and wil not hear any other viewpoint.

A bbc documentary called Viral - the 5g conspiracy theory interviewed some individuals who quite clearly need help.

I've seen the likes of Bill Gates, Chrissy teigen, Ellen DeGeneres and others get so much appalling abuse on social media over these theories and I can only think that the people who wholeheartedly believe this stuff must have psychological issues, the levels of paranoia are truly astounding. Is this an emerging mental health crisis?

The Chinese DID develop a virus and unleash it upon the world.

Well no, the virus (which has likely existed for many years among wild animals) made the leap from wild animals to humans in China because China has a huge and dense population, and wild animal wet markets are popular. You make it sound like someone deliberately engineered it and releases it on purpose, which is of course nonsense to anyone with decent virology training.

Unless you meant something else and not COVID. I’m sure everyone knows that many countries including our own have biological weapons departments.

The Bad Backs of Brexit by Arron 'Sciatica' Banks is available at a bookshop near you

Seems to be a split in opinion, which may be reflective of the truth, there are likely people with mental health disorder who suffer from paranoia and so are drawn to conspiracy theories, I think the weed smoking is an interesting one, 2 of the people I know and are heavily into CT were/are definitely weed smokers, the third I'm not too sure about.

Hi @blurpityblurp I am not saying that the Chinese did it on purpose.

@BlooperReel you're not letting this "mentally ill" thing of yours drop are you?

I find some conspiracy theories interesting and ALMOST believable - better cart myself off to the nearest loony bin then!!

@Beetlewing I bet my dp has spoken to your dp at some point he believes the same thing about the whole new world order and levelling of the currencies (has spent £200 on vietnemese
Dong and is adamant he will be a millionaire by the end of august).

He takes all this shit as absolute fact, there’s no discussion to be had and yet he’s got a successful career, is fantastic with our children and you wouldn’t believe there was any of this going on he’s such a lovely guy.

I Think it has a lot to do with being scared of the current situation and these theories tie everything up nicely, plus he’s got a great network of like minded ‘friends’ on the internet to talk to night and day from around the world so he’s got his own little community. So I do get offended when people role out the ‘tin foil hat’ comeback, it’s a genuine problem and families are having to live with it.

I don’t know how long I let it go on for though, will probably wait until after the us election when all the rumours will have been unfulfilled and it will hopefully disappear (wishful thinking perhaps).

Weed is definitely a factor.

I know this dreadful woman who smokes strong weed non stop then posts stuff on fb saying shit like ' Wake up sheeple!'.

She told me that the reason you can see the curve in the earth from a plane window is because of the convex glass. ...

Then a lot of quite offensive stuff about Sandy Hook and how M Obama and V Williams are really men...

You wouldn't mind but she also presents herself as intellectually superior!

Anyway she blocked me when I asked her why she was so interested in big black women who she really would like to be men....

Thank fuck because God knows what arrant shit she is posting these'days. ..such scope. ...

There's a problem with people becoming obsessed about a particular issue which borders on a mental health problem. I've seen it on both sides of the Trans debate, for example, where people are pathological about it.

Conspiracy nuts are usually crazy anyway.

@BlooperReel

I don't think it's insulting to wonder whether people displaying extreme paranoia, based on clearly falsified 'evidence' and doing things like refusing to seek medical care because 'the NHS are murderers' (guy in the bbc documentary) for example, may need mental health assistance, I think that behaviour and belief goes beyond a differing opinion.

But how far does that go Like I've been called anti vax, yet dd is vaxxed up to date on the aus childhood schedule and will continue to be. I'm not, none since I was 10 due to phobia of needles. I just question anything rushed through, not through thought of they wanna chip us or whatever but when rushed humans make mistakes, no fault or evil intent but pure accident, so to me it's wise to not rush into getting say a corona vax, even the cervical cancer one I was iffy on at first, now it's fine to me after enough years of use here. What's missed, what's the long term affect on something rushed?. Yet saying that supposedly makes me anti vax. If it's proven long term to be safe, id have no issue getting it for dd. I also have mental illness, anxiety but think the bill gates, 5g, microchip stuff is utter shit. Think true anti vaxxers are morons, am disgusted at things said about Chrissy tegan (sp?)

It not only makes the stigma of mental illness worse for the truly mentally ill, like now every opinion we may hold is also crazy but also would allow some truly crazy people to hide away under mental illness when no, they just have shit opinions.
I get you may mean it in extreme cases but some would jump on it for pretty basic difference in opinion so to me it's a dangerous tie to make.

Prime example of the kind of.dismissive attitudes that we have been engineered into having.
Totally prime.

In answer to 'conspiracy nuts are usually crazy anyway'.
Can we just stop using such language . If you mean MHP say so.

Hi @blurpityblurp I am not saying that the Chinese did it on purpose.

Then what are you saying?

Tobacco companies didn't do a very good job of covering it up though did they - seeing as we all know cigarettes are dangerous.

Very different to things that are logically impossible, haven't got a shred of evidence and yet that is somehow more evidence that it's true, because it's being covered up, like all of those other things that got covered up, except we know about those...

Weed as an addictive substance is all part of drug abuse which in many has a psychological root cause...can you guess what causes it? Poverty/poor education/poor environment leading to lack of control! Correlation does not equal causation but there are increased likelyhoods.

Most of them don't seem diagnosably mentally ill to me, not in terms of illnesses that re in DSM V and could get you detained under the MHA anyway.

I remember thinking about this a bit in my dissertation- hearing voices and believing you are controlled by an unseen being for which there is no evidence can be seen as symptomatic of a mental disorder in one context; in another it can be accepted as a profound religious experience, communion with the divine. For most of us, the conspiracy theories are absolutely bonkers and we think the people who believe them are, for want of a better word, mad- but what is the major difference between their beliefs and religious beliefs? Neither are universally accepted or backed up by evidence, so if you are going to class them as mentally ill, why not extremely religious people? And if classing the latter as unwell is offensive and wrong, why is that not the case for the former?

It's all very interesting.

@Pukkatea I thought they were promoted as healthy in the 50/60s? I'd say it took quite a while for the danger to come out wouldn't you?

And yes not all conspiracy are equal but there's no denying that some have been proved true & all of them have taken time to come out.

@JeSuisPoulet - you know one person, don’t spout such rubbish about others with long term pain based on one person. Nerve damage isn’t visible on scans but can cause pain following injury because the nerve and brain are miss firing, and the muscles tense up and don’t release. It’s the same as phantom limb pain, are all phantom limb pain sufferers also more likely to be conspiracy nuts? My mum suffers full on psychosomatic pain and has schizophrenia. She has weird views on her illness but not on the world - she voted remain and thinks trump and Boris are arseholes.

The only likely common factor is trauma, although childhood trauma is extremely common. Plus needing a sense of purpose and identity. If people don’t have religion and don’t have a strong sense of identity or life purpose they are more likely to construct one. A sense of belonging too. Humans evolved living in smaller groups. This globalised world isn’t our natural habitat and people can become isolated. Add in the internet and it’s a scary mix. I’d suspect “incels” are highly correlated to conspiracy theories.

@poppydull yes but that wasn't a cover up - it was companies marketing their products at a time when the science against them wasn't as concrete (proving cigarettes caused cancer was actually very difficult to do)

I'd call it the equivalent of the marketing and lobbying done now by the fossil fuels companies. Trying to muddy the science and win public opinion, but not a conspiracy, just bog standard capitalism.

so tobacco companies didn't know their products were dangerous?

Trying to muddy the science and win public opinion, but not a conspiracy, just bog standard capitalism.

But surely those who said cigarettes were dangerous would have been labelled as theorists?

There was a serious article about how the virus could have come from a virus lab in Wuhan on the BBC recently, so it seems rational to have a view that that may have been the case. rather than the food market.

...which could lead to the idea that that had happened on purpose. It said most of the original cases were not linked to the market either.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/ewsu2giezk/city-of-silence-china-wuhan

Unpopular opinion here so prepared for everyone to tell me I'm a nutjob

Conspiracy definition: a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful

Epstein and Maxwell's sustained abuse and trafficking of underage girls, FBI and major media outlets aware years ago but no action taken. Many celebrities/powerful people, including ex CEO of Reddit, have made statements claiming to have known about Epstein/Maxwell abuse for years. Epstein previously charged with sex offences, but due to money/power/connections secured a sweetheart deal, and continued the abuse in plain sight. Good friends with Prince Andrew.

Jimmy Saville, abused women/children in plain sight for decades. BBC were aware, and were completely negligent in stopping abuse. Reports made to police throughout his career, but were consistently buried. So many have spoken out since stating it was well known he was a paedophile/abuser. Very close friends with Prince Charles.

Paedophilia within Catholic church, child abuse in care homes covered up to protect reputations and important figures. These are all examples of real life conspiracies, which are accepted as true and out in the open.

I don't believe in pizzagate. I don't believe covid is caused by 5g. I don't believe every Facebook video doing the rounds claiming the new world order is upon us.

But I do believe another conspiracy, is to label anyone questioning the mainstream narrative a crazy mental conspiracy theorist. I don't find it hard to believe that there are some evil people at the top, just like there are evil people at the bottom and in all walks of life. Difference is, the evil people at the top have more resources, agency, connections and obviously money, to cover up their evil deeds and evade justice.