to be utterly shocked and heartbroken at how many intelligent, lovely friends and acquaintances have totally bought in to the radical global conspiracy theories...

[fuschia2000]

Seeing so much conspiracy stuff on Facebook threads, its totally alarming.... the folks can really make a good argument, with pseudo science, lots of data etc but we are looking at radical q'anon right wing conspiracy theories breaking through into the normal discussion groups and online groups.....

I think people are absolutely terrified and with social media we are all connected in our fear. Fires are extinguished by depriving them of oxygen, but the Internet does the exact opposite.

It’s so depressing; the collapse of good quality newspaper readership combined with the rise of social media and the internet more generally will probably prove one of the great crises of our century.

My FB is awash with nonsense.

Waiting for someone to come along with the "tHey JuSt hAvE a DifFereNt opiNiOn to yOu".

Came off FB after Brexit so mercifully &largely spared the looniness- a subscription to Private Eye has been illuminating too. Not sure how id manage a friend spouting the nonsense - how do you respond OP?

Just delete them.
It’s much better for the soul.

Worse when it is your Mum. It is like having a family member who has joined a cult. It is not just what she believes but that that is all she ever wants to talk about. We feel like we have lost her and there is no advice anywhere on what to do. It is heart-breaking.
And I think people dismiss it as stupidity but you are right OP. Intelligent people are just as susceptible. There was a thread on here about a conspiracy theorist who was a university professor. It is radicalisation basically and that is to do with emotion, not intelligence.

Yanbu. It's just like the doomsday cults - we haven't had one of those in a while, they've all switched over to hating on Bill Gates.

Would you believe me if I said that the government did secret aerial spraying of cadmium over Norfolk? Or more than a million people along the south coast of England, from Torquay to the New Forest, were exposed to bacteria including e.coli and bacillus globigii?

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2002/apr/21/uk.medicalscience

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/how-british-government-subjected-thousands-people-chemical-and-biological-warfare-trials-during-cold-war-10376411.html%3famp

Thanks guys , great to hear your thoughts, vyes I have deleted the fb friends as too upsetting, it isn't simply different opinions, its as though they have fallen down the rabbit hole into a completely different version of reality... maybe Trump was the one who broke the barrier for allowing this to be normalised, but maybe was started by the Tea Party moving to the mainstream, the Brexit movement, continual lies and misrepresentation of truth by our current government, ( just listen to Johnson at PMQs, he simply doesn't answer and isn't requested to) fake media of Murdoch, Russia politics, China politics, all adding to very dangerous destabilising global mix....

Fortunately none of my friends have gone down this route (or if they have, they haven't posted about it on FB!) but I'm not surprised that so many have. Covid has highlighted how little control we have over our lives really, never mind how little control we have over the world around us, and that's before you throw in the uncertainty and anxiety about how things will pan out in the immediate and longer-term future. I guess "being in the know" and "knowing the real truth" (not that I think any of these barmpot theories have any truth to them) gives people a sense of control and understanding that they desperately crave.

@Donoteatthekittens Yes I would. But there are lots of people on here who still think the governments have our best interests at heart, so I'll go and invent a hero to clap for instead of providing more links

@SionnachRua

Yanbu. It's just like the doomsday cults - we haven't had one of those in a while, they've all switched over to hating on Bill Gates.

So do you like him then? Do you not have any issues with his links to Epstein?

[quote AnarchicLemming]@Donoteatthekittens Yes I would. But there are lots of people on here who still think the governments have our best interests at heart, so I'll go and invent a hero to clap for instead of providing more links [/quote]
But the problem is that there are plenty of ways that governments and corporations are actually fucking us over and are not held to account because of all of the fictional stuff. I know there is a grain of truth in some of it but there is no peer review, no limits, no facts. I don't know what the answer is really and I know that the shady behaviour of governments and corporations are the root cause of this but just because we don't trust them doesn't mean we should trust any Tom, Dick and Harry with an outlandish theory

He has apologised for having contact with epstein, many academics and tech folks associated with epstein, epstein surrounded himself with academics and top business folks... this does not equate to bill gates trying to insert microchips in everyone via the vaccine...

[quote Donoteatthekittens]Would you believe me if I said that the government did secret aerial spraying of cadmium over Norfolk? Or more than a million people along the south coast of England, from Torquay to the New Forest, were exposed to bacteria including e.coli and bacillus globigii?

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2002/apr/21/uk.medicalscience

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/how-british-government-subjected-thousands-people-chemical-and-biological-warfare-trials-during-cold-war-10376411.html%3famp[/quote]
Yes, because there is proof.

Would you believe me if I said cancer didn't exist? Or smear tests were actually a means of implanting women with tracking devices?

I had to remove myself from a group of great people a few years ago. I felt pressured to sign a petition that went completely against my principles and just stupid. They kept reminding me that I hadn't signed it yet.

The end result of their stupid petition was they lost very publicly but they still insist they won. I later found out not everyone supported the petition but just went along with it. We are friendly again but it's made me nervous that their views will tar me with the same brush.

I wonder if one of the other root cause is the demise of class consciousness and activism and the political education that came with it

There's a Netflix documentary called The Social Dilemma that explains how everyone kind of lives in their own information bubble based on your individual clicks and likes.
The algorithm sends you videos and 'news' that it thinks you like seeing.
It's so worth a watch! Explains why some people seem to have gone insane.

Actually, when you are confronted with a lot of nice intelligent people who think some of this stuff might be true, I'd be inclined to ask: is this less obvious than I thought? What's really behind their thought process? Am I being too credulous myself or existing in some ind of information bubble? Do they think the same of me?

@HukkaPukka

There's a Netflix documentary called The Social Dilemma that explains how everyone kind of lives in their own information bubble based on your individual clicks and likes. The algorithm sends you videos and 'news' that it thinks you like seeing. It's so worth a watch! Explains why some people seem to have gone insane.

Yes! I loved it when the guy said "if you are laughing at the flat earthers for believing something untrue now just be aware it will be you at some point" (paraphrase)

Out of curiosity what age and social group would you say you are in? I feel lucky that most people I know aren't in to this (thank goodness!)

Chestnutstuffing I know what you mean... however when I read through the articles, the details, watch the videos , I simply cannot understand why or how they ended up there .... it's david icke stuff becoming normalised..... it's trump saying he won the election, I could go on..... but can't bear to repeat the lies....

@HukkaPukka

There's a Netflix documentary called The Social Dilemma that explains how everyone kind of lives in their own information bubble based on your individual clicks and likes. The algorithm sends you videos and 'news' that it thinks you like seeing. It's so worth a watch! Explains why some people seem to have gone insane.

That works both ways though surely.

I met a flat earther afew years ago, he was such a lovely guy, very earnest and believable, with endless documents and facts and evidence and charts to prove his theory......