I am in my 40s, separated a year ago. Recently I started using OLD (online dating) again, because I miss having someone around, and am also trying to get a FWB whom I got too close to out of my mind (see previous thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/4080749-Friend-with-mind-blowingly-good-benefits-and-feelings?msgid=101799753 here).
I discovered the apps Bumble and Hinge, which give women all the control, as guys cannot contact us unless we specifically match their profile or "swipe right" on them, and I have been enjoying some chats and in face to face dates with 4 guys so far, all of which have been lovely.
One of the dates is a cute foreign guy with a sexy accent which I have seen 5 times so far, and I had started to consider taking the dates to the next stage. There is only one (big) problem which has slowly been creeping in as we chat about worldly events. Bear with me.
One of the things I loved about seeing this guy is that we talked for hours about al kind of interesting subjects, from our jobs to science, to religion, to economy to politics. And herein lies the problem too. Soon he started mentioning that the pandemic "is not all it looks to be". That Trump "was not as bad as 'they' made him look". That he and his family will never be taking the COVID vaccine because "Big Pharma's interests are in making us all a bit sick so we keep buying frugs from them, and the components of the vaccine is not what 'they' say they are". "They", apparently, are "The Media", who he believes are telling lies in order - I kid you not - to protect a higher elite of people who have a massive pedophile ring set together and that include satanic rituals with babies.
I swear it to you, Mumsnet, originally he sounded like a completely sane, intelligent, normal guy with 4 children, 3 of them adults, a good job and great hobbies he was starting to share with me.
Now he sends me links to Twitter messages from people who look for conspiracy theory clies everywhere. One shows a short video of a hospital with someone setting a camera ("this is a hospital in Israel, 'they' are setting the stage to fake that they have a lot of COVID patients"), a caption of the French president Macron being vaccinated where apparently the syringe needle did not retract ("this proves he did not REALLY take the vaccine", a link to an interpretation of the front cover of a 2018 The Economist saying that there are predictions on that cover that prove the existence of the 'fake' pandemic, the pedophile ring, etc etc.
It is exhausting. He does not seem to register that, once you become convinced that there's a conspiracy theory everywhere, your brain will interpret anything as a "clue" or a "pattern" to confirm what you already believe. That I work in a hospital, and sometimes we have cameras there... the news have come to talk about a case, or professionals to film a procedure... That I work with the same syringes that the guy in the macron video uses... half of the time they do not retract due to a faulty design... That when someone actively chooses to believe the most unlikely reason why something happens, therein lies madness, and they may as well end up in a mental institution with paranoia, looking for hidden patterns in the list of ingredients of cereal boxes.
But the fact is, I now find myself unable to take him seriously and my interest in him has evaporated. On top of being exhausted and fed up of feeling I need to disprove any utterly incongruent link, video or twit he chooses to believe.
Another of the guys I was chatting was similarly interesting at the beginning, but now that I checked his Facebook profile, it is full of similar conspiracies about the Coronavirus being a hoax, and the Government of New Zealand being in on a communist plan to enslave the population... every time there is a couple of community cases and a small lockdown ensues, he goes haywire posting about "government control of freedom", Jacinda Ardern "being in on it" about population mind control and all sorts of wacko posts with lots of exclamation marks in the end.
Are there really so many people (or is it mainly guys?) obsessed with these new conspiracy theories to the point of almost paranoia? It really is putting me off. And really making me concerned to the future of our species, if from now on anything that happens is going to be disbelieved and ignored as "fake news" and "a master plan from the evil Media".
Last night there were a series of massive earthquakes North East of New Zealand and there is a tsunami warning for most of the coastal areas. Well, some facebook posts have started to appear also saying this is fake news, and another trick from "The Elite" to keep the sheeple under control. Many of these people are ignoring the tsunami warnings. FFS, most of New Zealand could actually FEEL the shakes! Do they really think this was fake too?
Can be really turning THAT stupid as a species?