AIBU To feel like I'm losing my sister to conspiracy theories?

[Thestreets]

My sister is a very intelligent, funny, interesting woman but recently , probably since lockdown she has been spending more and more time online and reading into conspiracy theories about the Hollywood elite and politicians and child sacrifices and all kinds of ludicrous claims.

This has utterly consumed her, you cannot have a conversation with the her that she does not turn to her trying to show some you tube video as "evidence". I'm so worried but do not know what to do as everything I say is met with "well that's what they want you to think".

The pretence that the deaths are massively over-counted is the propaganda with the agenda of making people think covid is not so serious or UK government hasn’t royally fucked it up after all.

It’s as bad as trump with his we did lots of tests so we have lots of cases bs.

Over 55,000 additional deaths compared to the same period of the last five years average. Yet people want to trivialise and pretend it’s number fudging

Did you hear about all these celebs allegedly arrested and executed?

My mum's the same, thinks covid is fake, says the masks are muzzels to shut us up, she loves Donald Trump.
She believes 5G is the devil. She believes Bill Gates is creating this vaccine so we'll all be mocrochipped and it will stop women from becoming pregnant
When she asked me if I'd be giving my kids the vaccine (as she doesn't belive in them either) I said possibly if they required it...she shouted 'child abuse' at me, that was the final straw so I told her to keep her mouth shut about any of this because I don't want to know.
She says people who refuse to listen are scared of the truth...nope, it's because I done want to listen to the bile coming out of her mouth.

Oh and a few weeks ago, she was on about this celebrity paedophile thing and showed me a list of about 60, 70 celebrities who apparently are in jail and what we see on the TV and media are clones 🤣🤣

@ByeGermsByeWorries my mum ridicules people who wear masks too, she laughs about it and says they're not even on the bus yet, why are they wearing the mask. Most of these are elderly people who may be frightened and just want to protect themselves as much as possible.
It's a shame because she wonders why me and my sister don't stay for long.

Tried that doc, Out the Shadows but it was utter pants.

@DoctorYang

Tried that doc, Out the Shadows but it was utter pants.

It was. The stuff about the secret meaning of the word "Hollywood" was quite entertaining though. And "television".

@CatsArePeopleToo

Did you hear about all these celebs allegedly arrested and executed?

No! Do tell!

apple.news/Atb48NmF2RDOnsISLueUJZQ

Just when you thought the Earth was flat so how could you find love. 🥰

I would LOVE to know the twisted reasoning behind having to imprison celebrities and yet still allow them to remain high profile and to earn money through the use of clones...

The people who spout that have zero idea how cloning works for a start. But as soon as you point out the illogicality of one thing, they pop up with another crackpot 'truth'.

Its like they already know their theory is bullshit themselves, so cover it up with the clones bit.

Serious question: why is there such a big overlap between conspiracy theorists and Trump supporters?

A lot of conspiracy theorists are also very, very anti-Semitic. Soros, blood libel, Zionist cabals etc.

Because he literally built his whole campaign and messaging around right wing conspiracy theorists and paranoias. Literally

Explains a lot. I mean, he was one of the people who claimed Obama wasn't born in the USA, to the point where his birth certificates had to be published to prove it.

There's a lot of overlap between conspiracy theorists, trump supporters and racists. Hard of thinking is one common denominator.

Not read the whole thread yet, but wanted to say if you are looking for some rebuttals to this sort of thinking there is a great podcast called Knowledge Fight, you could check out. They listen to the Alex Jones radio show (he's one of the main peddlers of these theories) and then fact check them/discuss why he is wrong. It's also really funny, so gets you familiar with right wing talking points without being a drag.

Wasn’t it Alex Jones who believed that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged so that Obama could bring in tighter gun laws, and as a result the grieving parents were targeted and attacked by his followers and had their children’s graves desecrated?

Such lovely, kind-hearted people, these conspiraloons.

Yes, it was. And his followers have been harassing the victims' families for years. Imagine losing your child and then being told it was fake. It's exactly the same shit Jews have had to put up with. You'd think 6 million dead Jews would be a good thing for Holocaust deniers but no, they go out of their way to minimise it. I really hope none of the conspiracy theorists in this thread are Holocaust deniers. I've encountered them in the wild and they make me physically sick. Being a convert, I didn't lose family myself but I know people who have, I've been to Dachau, and there is no way something like that could be faked. Holocaust deniers are trying to fuck with Jews' heads (I don't know if they go after Slavs or Roma).

Also, as @TheHoneyBadger says, it's not news at all that rapists get off lightly. Look at Rotherham, look at Yewtree, look at Barry Bennell and how long he got away with it even though some of his victims' families knew what was going on and Crewe had a reputation as the 'paedophile club'. People knew and did nothing. The police in Rotherham knew girls were being groomed and did nothing, just wrote them off as slags and even arrested some of them for soliciting. You're not telling us anything we don't know. Instead of posting inane videos off Youtube, why don't you get out there and volunteer for an anti-trafficking charity or something? Plenty of trafficking victims are out there as it is. One even posted on Twitter that they'd been trafficked in plain sight but when they told their story, QAnon types laughed at them. They didn't give a shit, they were just enjoying the feeling of being right.

@AuntMasha yes that was Alex Jones, sadly that's the tip of the iceberg in terms of his awfulness!!

There's a lot of overlap between conspiracy theorists, trump supporters and racists.

I agree. They're everywhere now though, I think they're really dangerous, these people vote. I had some work done in my house recently, two of the tradesmen said they wouldn't be having a covid vaccine because they don't trust Bill Gates.

I just don't know how you get through to them, pp are right, it's a cult. Has anyone see the Netflix documentary about flat earthers, Behind the Curve? The flat earthers do their own experiments, spending thousands of dollars on equipment, to prove the earth is flat. Their experiments all prove the earth is round and the exact degree of curvature we are told it is. These experiments do absolutely nothing to shake their beliefs, they come away still convinced the earth is flat.

Actually the only conspiracy theory I believe has some truth in it is that Russia is behind a lot of them. Putin is playing us like puppets.

Well, I think it certainly benefits the interests of Putin that people believe in Q and other fantasies of the alt-right because Putin’s aim is to dismantle Liberal democracies in Europe, Canada, Australia and the USA.

Many of the Q believers think of themselves as patriots, but at the same time these folk have an abysmal knowledge of their own history, not to mention the fact that their patriotism is highly dubious seeing as they are doing Putin’s work for him.

None of it stands up to scrutiny.

Also, QAnoners’ levels of hatred, anger and rage are off the scale, so that characteristic on its own would be enough to inform most level-headed, reasonable people.

Yes I’d say watching Info Wars was the prime research for trumps campaign. Watching Donald call all media outlets fake news may look crazy to most but to his fan base it’s bang on point.

I realised at one point years ago that I was pretty brainwashed into the left = good, kind, equality la la la and right = evil, bad, elitist rhetoric. I deliberately started watching right wing stuff and going down their conspiracy rabbit holes to counter the dogma I’d swallowed.

I’ve ended up politically homeless and thinking the political class is the political class regardless of which side of a faux spectrum they claim to be on.

A load of privileged narcissistic blokes who’ve got each other’s backs. Sure there’s conspiracy and it’s largely founded on sex, class and power and we’ve known that since forever. Conspiracy theories are maybe the latest opium of the masses? And people think they’re revolting or fighting the system by sharing stuff on Facebook and thinking they’re doing something 🤦‍♀️

Rich powerful men do whatever the fuck they want and get away with it because anyone with enough power to challenge them is part of the same club? No shit Sherlock! Now what?

Yes, I’m left-leaning too, but not affiliated to any political party. I’ve seen incompetence over the years in both left and right-wing governments. And you’re right, we do need a perspective from those who think differently to us, to ignore different viewpoints leads to complacency and descent into the inevitable echo chamber. I do listen to a more conservative podcast, just to get that different perspective. But the views expressed are reasoned and based on well-honed argument and debate, which is sadly lacking in the likes of Q or ISIS believers. It’s all shouting, rage, spittle and hatred - I can’t respond to that approach.