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?

There must be a psychological reason why people think politicians they've been trained to hate are doing child abuse in the basement of a pizza parlour with no basement.

And why every time the prophecies fail to come true or the rumours are debunked they just believe the new lie.

How come the flat earthers don't fly a plane to the edge? Where is the edge anyway?

The modern conspiracy theory is "healthy scepticism", "independent thought" and "critical thinking" for people who lack those qualities entirely. It's the total absence of critical thinking, independent thought and healthy scepticism.

Used to also be loads of conspiracy theories about the benefits of smoking run by tobacco companies, despite them knowing the serious health issues.

That wasn't 'conspiracy theory' - that was just plain fucking lying. Propaganda.

@TheSandman
Uh, yeah, that's called free speech. I have a right to say what I believe.
Or no, only you do, because your opinion is the correct opinion?
I second what Gerty stated upthread, this whole thread is ridiculous. You all would love North Korea,

It only takes one disordered thinker to spoil things for everyone else.

I'd say some conspiracy theories have at least a degree of plausibility, it worries me more when grown adults still believe in gods.

@TheSandman
Oh I know that, but at the time those who were saying hang on a minute it can cause... were shouted down as being conspiracy theorists. Think there was still called this after the court cases.

Sorry I should have been clearer.

Believing that the earth is flat or 5g causes covid or qanon, isn't the same as standing up to Nazis ffs.

Also anti-vac and flat Earthers! I think these people are overwhelmed by the amount of information in the modern world, cannot keep up preferring to simplify things.

The other irrational nonsense I really worry about is when someone says

"Well no you see, we already know that won't work because of XYZ reality and facts"

then someone else says

"You don't KNOW that! You haven't got a crystal ball. None of us know what's going to happen.

Then later on the thing doesn't work precisely because of the XYZ reality and facts and the same person says "

"Oh anyone can have HINDSIGHT! "

I have observed it in otherwise sane and intelligent humans and I find it disturbing and unsettling.

If we ever go back to a superstitious time of not being able to predict the logical and inevitable consequences of our actions and take up burning as witches the poor souls who who retain this skill - THIS will be where it started.

People believe what they want to believe, and for the most part leave the rest of society alone.

Unfortunately we cannot police what other people belief in, and to an extent their words.

If we could then we wouldn't have to hear about us all going to the eternal fires of damnation by some who stand on busy high streets, shouting it to passer bys in the hope of convincing them to join their group.

Constitutional point for uk law, there is no freedom of speech clause in any law. This gets confused with the USA constitution rights, means fuck all here and was based there on the idea of freedom from religious interference. Puritan bullshit.
We even have laws against libel. Ct people mainly need sectioning, yes.

@Userzzz

'Free Speech'. There never has been such a thing in the UK.

...and just saw PurpleTrilby explained it a lot better than I could.

You can say what you want but there will be consequences. You may well be asked to pay a price if you say.

Pizzagate came from the wiki leaks that were released before the last election, some of them between the Podesta brothers and Hillary Clinton are clearly coded, otherwise they just wouldn't make any sense. Podesta was Hilary Clinton's campaign manager for her last run in the 2016 election.

Oh and the Podesta's artwork is EXTREMELY questionable. Google with care.

There is usually a grain of truth in conspiracy theories, Hillary is going to court in September, I wonder if anything will come out then?

And yes Chrissy Teagan has had to delete 26000 tweets some of which were screen shotted and were very strange/distasteful regarding small children, this is fact.

The wayfair conspiracy came about because instead of wayfair just saying oh these were incorrectly labelled and priced they actually said that the cabinets, pillows Ect priced for $11000 were industrial grade which is why they were so expensive whilst having the exact same cabinet with no name attached to it on the next page for $300 instead of $11000.

Whilst I think it's doubtful that they are trafficking children I think it's entirely plausible that there is some kind of money laundering going on by their 3rd party sellers ( Wayfair is like amazon but for home goods).

I don't believe everything I read but it does help to question things sometimes I think.

There's no "grain of truth" in pizzagate.

Chrissy Teigen has never tweeted anything alarming involving children.

Decades ago there were conspiracy theories going around such as mk ultra etc. People would say oh that's a load of rubbish, don't be silly nothing like that would ever really happen etc. In more recent years mk ultra and many other conspiracy theories from the past have been proven to be true because The fbi declassified an awful lot stuff. So how does anyone know that these things are not real. I personally would not say they were all real but the ideas around some are fairly if not very plausible. I think some people who believe and investigate conspiracies have mental health issues and some do not the same as everything else!

I have a close relation who, whilst not being a conspiracy theorist as such, rejects pretty much all mainstream thinking. For him, it’s an element of his narcissism. He is (to his thinking) special and different and knows much better than the rest of us ordinary muppets!

Rinoachicken: You said your husband detains people under the MH act. Who makes the decision that someone needs to be detained?

I work in MH and CV hasn't increased the conspiracy theorists from what I can see, it's just a 'big' news story and they always attract a lot of attention. There have always been a hell of a lot of people believing odd things, you just wouldn't know unless you spoke to them about the subject. So when pretty much everyone is speaking about CV, you encounter it more.

There have always been plenty on MN. I've seen people post very odd theories about 9/11, the Boston bombings, vaccinations, the Sandy Hook shootings etc. Some of it is just lack of critical thinking and analysis.

When Carl Beech was imprisoned for fabricating the high-profile paedophile ring, there were threads insisting it was all true and wanting to campaign for his release. Same with the high profile 'satanic abuse' cases last few years. Even when the parents were found to have fabricated it and be abusing their own children, some MNetters insisted it was a cover up.

@chavvysexpond you don't think?

At the very best these are extremely distasteful ...

And...

Pizzagate emails ARE odd, would it be too much to believe that there is a high ranking peodophile ring in government? I don't think so nor do a lot of credible people.

Leon Britton and Cyril Smith liked little boys so why not in the upper echelons if the US government?

Like it or not, peodophiles do exist, it's not just some guy in a dirty Mac in a children's playground you know.

I have a lovely friend who I have known since I was a baby, we are late 20s. In uni she turned to taking drugs most nights out and smokes weed a fair amount. Now all of a sudden she is an anti vaxxer and believes all the covid stuff is a way for the government to control us. She is entitled to her opinion but I personally just don't understand it at all. I sometimes feel like she is on another world. She has suffered from her mental health in the past.

I was in a really bad place throughout the lockdown, i live alone and my family are in Wales. She knew I was in a bad place and she said 'why are you feeling so bad, just go and see your parents' well I couldn't because A. We weren't allowed to drive anywhere, let alone a 2 hour drive. And B. I would never have forgivven myself if I had passed something on. But it was like she was on another planet where covid wasn't here?!

I think it is about trust or lack thereof and a dash of imagination. Think about the conspiracy of silence around Jimmy Savile. Think about the tendency to believe the Sun headlines. Watching the documentary on Murdoch recently and most of the stories there read like conspiracies.

On COVID conspiracy I met a couple recently in the park both highly educated. One said I don't know anyone who has had it and I realised he thought it was nonsense. I didn't feel I could tell him my mother died of COVID and hospital docs thinks my family have had it although we have not been tested. I didn't want to embarrass him. It made me ask a few people if they knew anyone who had COVID (other than my mother) and most people didn't. I think that might fuel the conspiracy theories. No direct experience and a complete lack of trust in government etc ...

Funny how the pizzagate and qanon bullshit is gaining steam again just as trump is up for re-election.