My dad is a massive conspiracy theorist and it's so frustrating

[patrilla]

Can anyone relate and how do you not make it drive you insane ??

He's visiting at the moment and it's just all doom and gloom constantly.

He's so extremely negative about literally everything and everything is proof that we are controlled by this elite group of people who just want to make sure we are controlled and destroyed.

Everything is a rip off and we have no liberties. We are all just sheep being ripped off and we are all really dumb apparently.

Say we need to pay for parking or we need to be careful not to drive in yellow boxes, as we can get fined- he takes all of it as a sign of control. If a place doesn't take cash, it's also a control thing and we are so dumb for going along with it all.

It's literally every little thing. Everything is so shit now and the world is ending. Don't even get me started on a nuclear war being absolutely imminent.

It's exhausting to be around.

Does anyone else know someone like this ? How do you deal with it ?

Don't even get me started on Covid. It's just everything. Everything is questioned, everyone is corrupt. Apart from the people spouting this stuff. They're the only ones telling the truth.

I had a friend who got swept into conspiracy theories during the lockdowns. She was adamant that I was going to drop dead on 12th February 2022 due to being vaccinated.

She messaged me on the 13th asking if I was still alive, and if I was still alive she “would bet everything she owns and loves” that I have a plethora of serious health issues. I responded and told her I was alive & healthy and she said “you must be one of the lucky ones that they injected with saline.” 🙄

Although, she was thrilled when I actually caught Covid as that is PROOF that the vaccine doesn’t work. I said “I thought I was injected with saline?” and she told me that I had obviously received a “watered down” version of the vaccine, designed to kill me slowly… I should be dead by 2025 apparently.
My only symptoms were a slightly sore throat & a perfectly manageable headache. She told me the headache was the start of an incurable brain disease as a result of the vaccinations I’d received throughout my life & the sore throat was because of air pollution due to the diseases the government are releasing into the atmosphere.

Safe to say we don’t talk anymore!

My guess is he’s lonely, got too much time on his hands, so he’s fixating on poor TV/video/social media choices, and cherry picking the bad things that fit his agenda. I find it really strange that often very intelligent, quite rational people often get mixed up in all this bunkum. Does he have any non tech hobbies, creativity likes at all? Can he get out and go for a walk?
All you can do is change the subject, keep away from certain subjects, keep him busy in other ways.

I can see how the world becoming a bit more complicated and a bit less kind and forgiving of people's struggles can be very bad for mental health I guess in the extreme it's yet more proof that someone is out to control us, if you're that way inclined.

I think the thing with people like this is to acknowledge the genuine parts of their concerns.

In a sense, he's not wrong that we are controlled by a bunch of rich, powerful people but it's not remotely a secret, that's capitalism, particularly now that more and more wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer people, which disenfranchises everyone else to some extent.

It's disturbing that your dad is reaching to antisemitism @patrilla - does he know anyone Jewish or live anywhere there are Jewish people. I am Jewish and because we are smaller minority than most people expect and hence a lot of people don't know any of us, we are all too easy to dehumanise. And 'I don't mean all Jews, just the Rothschilds' or whatever doesn't cut it.

The real problems of control seem to me to be:

• Money, with its influence on media and governments pushes the line that We All Need The Super-Rich and it's not fair for anyone to go after their money (even if they'd barely notice) and we should all be grateful to them
• Ditto the line that any system except Milton-Friedmanesque free market capitalism is utterly unthinkable and has to be communism
• There are powerful and vested interests in fossil fuels to whom it is obviously advantageous to push the line that there is something impossible about renewable energy and sinister about getting people to act more sustainably

I think if one can talk to them about the real things maybe that could help? Acknowledge their concerns and point out what is literally in front of us. Because generally conspiracy theorists are the ones being duped by 'The Elite' into blaming Jews, climate scientists, immigrants, feminists, LGBTQ+ etc - ie, anyone except the actual 'Elite'

I also heard a very good point about the 'Mainstream Media' recently which is, of course it's not perfect and it has biases, but often only large media has the resources to have someone on the ground where things are happening, it has researchers, it has resources to mount months-long investigations before going to press. Which 'Bob's X-Files' YouTube channel does not have.

They view you, the same way you view them. Its like two parallel universes. I am a bit of a conspiracy theorist but I don't discuss it with anyone anymore. I just try find common ground and discuss normal everyday things. I keep my mouth shut about everything for my own peace. We all have the right to make our own personal decisions and to believe what we believe. It's just when opinions are shoved down another's throat that it's irritating. And that goes for both sides.

The way we handle it with FiL is literally ignore anything he says on these subjects and continue our own conversations. If he persists or starts ranting, my DH will tell him quite bluntly to give it a rest.

Don't whatever you do go down the line of saying ' the government is too stupid/ apathetic to control us'

'Ah but thats what they want you to think, it's part of the conspiracy!'

People are entitled to their opinions and noone is all right or all wrong.

But my take is that I don't care if we will all be blown to buggery this time next week, I still don't want to hear about it.

My lovely SIL is the same. It's such a shame because we know when we see her she will dominate the conversation with anything to do with conspiracies. I change the subject as much as I can.

I did say to her she had so much more to talk about and she 'had a life' before all of this so why can't she get back to that? She said she just can't help it now it's all she thinks about. I believe she won't stop drilling it into us until we give in and 'wake up'.

Lockdown has ruined her, she spent it all down Facebook rabbit holes.

How can he be pro-immigration and pro-'immigrants are eating cats and dogs' Trump?

Being pro Palestine is 'woke' so how can he also be anti woke?

That's some massive cognitive dissonance right there.

Echobelly · Today 11:55

It's disturbing that your dad is reaching to antisemitism - does he know anyone Jewish or live anywhere there are Jewish people. I am Jewish and because we are smaller minority than most people expect and hence a lot of people don't know any of us, we are all too easy to dehumanise. And 'I don't mean all Jews, just the Rothschilds' or whatever doesn't cut it.

I did Amazon deliveries for a while, during lockdown. I used to get Bensham in Gateshead quite regularly, which is a sizeable Jewish enclave. You could tell that a lot of them weren't really well off. I really, really don't get the whole, "They control the world, the banks, the press, Bilderberg... wibble..." schtick at all.

My dad also believes in satanic cults that Hillary Clinton and the royal family obduct children to drink their blood as the fountain of youth or something like that. I don't really listen properly. It's absolutely wild and a lot of it comes from the US republicans.

Very good point!

thepariscrimefiles · Today 12:18

How can he be pro-immigration and pro-'immigrants are eating cats and dogs' Trump?

I know, it's ... incongruous, isn't it?

Well we are controlled by capitalism and corporations. But I don't think it's orchestrated by a group of people....it's just the nature of uncontrolled capitalism. There are a lot of corrupt people who will do anything to make money but they're not in cahoots with each other.

They have brought in new laws to stop protests though and some protesters have been given ridiculously harsh sentences.

But we can never really know. In my opinion, a lot of conspiracy theorists are bonkers and a bit thick and then anyone who expresses any sort of similar opinion is dismissed. You're naive if you don't think there are a lot of shady deals going on behind the scenes. We know that's true because they occasionally come to light.

BIldeberg ! He was telling me about all that yesterday.

He also believes all conventional medicine is bullshit too and that all the doctors and med schools are controlled by the elite who just want to kill us for population control. They think there are too many people on earth.

He also ultimately believes in the anti Christ and that he's currently on earth and that good will win over evil.

Everything is questioned, everyone is corrupt. Apart from the people spouting this stuff. They're the only ones telling the truth
This made me laugh. So true. I knew a full on conspiracy theorist really well. It was so this. Any counter evidence was ' I don't believe that source'. But she did her mate who had a blog about Putin.

I really feel for you. I now would not befriend a conspiracy theorist. They bring ever conversation back to it, and the further they get into it, the more pernicious they become until they are anti-semitic, Holocaust denying fans of Hitler, Putin and any other dictator the 'MSM' do not report favourably about.

The odd thing about conspiracy theories is that they do not seem to make the people who believe them happy. In fact they make them very unhappy, as you describe. At least people who get sucked into evangelical Christianity are happy, or at least the ones I have known. They'd be better off if the Christians had got to them before the Conspiracy theorists did!

My only advice would be to tell your Dad you don't want to hear it anymore. And walk away each time he starts. Don't engage. You'll get nowhere.

Our understanding of the world is always a partial truth surely?

The people in question do have hold of a grain of truth, namely that there is often more to things than meets the eye. But they are often worried about entirely the wrong things.

For example, the dominant economic model of neoliberalism has hugely changed the landscape of our public services over the past 40 years. Ideas have cascaded down from organisations such as the World Bank, IMF via Thatcher and even Tony Blair, to affect the health and education services in your own neighbourhood. A local authority today legally cannot open up a new school even where it is desperately needed, because of a political idea that a market-led provider (i.e. an academy trust) will always be more effective than a state-led mechanism. Health services are constantly in a state of flux due to being ‘recommissioned’. Care homes, children’s homes and nurseries are all run for profit. Private equity involvement is endemic. Is any of this right? It is too big, too embedded to debate or question.

At a national level, there is a lot that happens that doesn’t get publicised, but then again isn’t exactly secret either. It just flies slightly under the radar. Perhaps reports are published on the Gov website, amongst the thousands of others. People know about it, talk about it, but somehow it never gets discussed openly in the mainstream media. The UK government funding arms in certain Middle East countries has been happening for decades. But does it ever really get discussed?

I also think that far more manipulation happens on social media than people like to believe, with some obvious bad actors. A couple of years ago I noticed lots of very cute videos of pandas, popping up on my feed, but the author was the Chinese government. I didn’t click, ignored them and no longer see them now, but now I wonder if that was a data-harvesting exercise?

patrilla · Today 12:27

BIldeberg ! He was telling me about all that yesterday.

Oh God, poor you!

It's disturbing that your dad is reaching to antisemitism - does he know anyone Jewish or live anywhere there are Jewish people. I am Jewish and because we are smaller minority than most people expect and hence a lot of people don't know any of us, we are all too easy to dehumanise. And 'I don't mean all Jews, just the Rothschilds' or whatever doesn't cut it.

My experience of conspiracy theorists too. Once people get into it, they get into all the conspiracy theories and this leads them into appalling levels of anti-semitism. By the end the woman I knew was saying ' the Jews' in air quotes with a contemptuous sneer on her face. She wasn't like this before conspiracy theories took hold of her entire personality.

There are conspiracy theorists who, after the recent race riots, believe that Tommy Robinson was being paid by Israel to stoke up hatred against Muslims and sow division. These people are not just a bit thick and utterly bonkers, they have really vile racist beliefs against Jewish people.

Oh yes I love the Why Files! I started watching it after seeing it mentioned on here

Yes I know someone like this. Lockdown trashed her mental health. She used to have a responsible job once. She isn’t forced into work because her DH still earns well, but honestly, I wish she would get another job. She has too much time on her hands and it is unhealthy. She spends hours on YouTube.

There is nothing funny about the rampant anti-semitism infusing the conspiracy theory world., and that they suck people who fall down this rabbit hole into.

Just like there was nothing funny about the Klu Klux Klan's beliefs.

Basically, oil companies- chief among them Texaco and Exxon- Mobil- were doing their own research into carbon emissions as early as the 1970s, discovered how much damage they were causing and deliberately buried it, funded misinformation campaigns etc.

There was a good BBC series on it called "Big Oil versus the World" recently- I watched two episodes, could swear there were more, and then it disappeared from iPlayer. Clear evidence of conspiracy!!! 😱 or its time on iPlayer had just ended Might be on YouTube though.

Always call it the jibby jab too
Forever commenting under FB articles "vaccinated?!"
Then when you actually open the FB article it turns out they died because they were hit by a bus or something