What is it with men and conspiracy theories 🙄

[Titicacacandle]

Online dating and it seems the only men I seem to be attracted to seem to have so many issues that come up after a few chats!

Latest one, and not uncommon by a long shot, has told me that he doesn't pay his water bill because water is free from the sky and the water companies are poisoning us (but doesn't have a distiller so drinks out of plastic bottles and that can cause cancer if all your drinks are from plastic), doesn't pay council tax, doesn't work because he's awake and it's part of the matrix, 5g is going to fuck us all up and our cows are now being injected by another Bill Gates vaccine. I asked him what he did with his day if he doesn't work and he spends his days researching on what is going wrong in the world in the fight against good and evil.. oh and the huge American pedophile rings and social workers trafficking kids. I am a bloody SW, no we don't want your kids, caseloads are overwhelmed enough as it is thanks.

I just think it's sad that his life has become this. I told him we aren't compatible as we don't believe in the same stuff. I feel bad for him and did like the look of him but these conspiracy theories are mental illness. It's almost like they are the new religion with the fevered zelous that the newly converts preach.. even when you tell them you're not interested in conspiracy theories they still bang them down your throat!

Huge numbers of the population have undiagnosed personality disorders, are paranoid and have anger management issues.

The internet, isolation and WFH left many with no 'sane' interactions and there are scary numbers of flat earthers and Ronnie Pickerings now more than willing to voice their 'concerns' and leave us wondering what's happening to society....

My exh was like that 🙄 he started buying axes, water purifier tablets and survival kits during covid thinking that the end of the world was here and it was all a massive hoax. Half the reason why he's now an exh!

Yup!

@Titicacacandle oh don't get me started on the water purifying 😆 if only I was able to divorce my mother... I'm glad you managed to escape the insanity

I've read that, it's not a conspiracy theory

I’ve never put much thought into what happened around the world. But there’s not a doubt in my mind that the people in charge of managing the pandemic in the UK carefully curated a message of fear. “Stay Alert, Control the Virus, Save Lives” puts the responsibility of the death count on the shoulders of the British people. And those little slogans that came out are Boris in a nutshell. He’s openly talked about copying Winston Churchill’s tactic of using Anglo Saxon words to deliver persuasive messages… I believe he calls them “zingers”.

I’m not saying they did it for nefarious reasons; I offer you no motive outside of an overarching need to get people to comply, which I assume is probably not the end of the story.

Tbh I don’t really care to change anyones mind, it’s neither here nor there, it’s just news to me that it’s not an accepted fact. I suppose no one wants to believe they’ve been manipulated without realising.

Birds aren't real???

I had family who worked in ICU, it wasn't made up. Covid killed so many people and we did need to isolate as much as possible to help the NHS cope with the world wide pandemic. At the time world leaders decided that isolation would be better then letting it run rampant.

Do I think the government handles it correctly? No. They kept the borders open, they put covid positive patients in elderly care homes, they made rules that didn't help as much as they could. However I also see it would have been a massive balancing act between health, polling, education and balancing the countries economically.

Do I think they created fear on purpose to manipulate us? No I don't. It could be twisted to say so but overall I don't believe that. I couldn't be in a relationship with someone who believes the government created a panic to manipulate us (for some unknown reason as it certainly didn't help the economy, probably some rubbish about the world order and a cashless society). Those people aren't my people and anything about conspiracy theories to do with covid, child trafficking rings, water poisoning makes me want to scream.

I agree that lockdown messed up a lot of people. I have some work colleagues who went full on QAnon even.

I know studies say both genders fall into this but almost everyone I know personally is a man. That said there are certainly loads of conspiracy nuts here on MN these days.

Birds aren't real???

I am traumatised by this revelation. I will have to break it to my cat that he is bringing in invisible non-existent prey. If even my cat thinks they are real...well this is just devastating. 😱

Oh and chem trails. The lines that you see in skies from aeroplanes that are poisoning us. Those people can bugger off too.

They are surveillance drones. The pandemic was all set up as the batteries in the birds needed changing. Or something along those lines. It is all very, erm, cuckoo!

How is any different to the gullible women who believe in them?

I think it's fair to say the government didn't avoid scaring people but then that is normal in public health, e.g. all the ads and publicity around smoking and lung cancer. At the time it was absolutely vital to reduce public interaction to control the spread of Covid, I don't see why the government should have sugar coated reality. Lots of people were dying horrible deaths, that needed to be openly shared and if it scared people into reducing contacts, that was not unhelpful.

That is very different to Covid conspiracy theories saying the government had some other convoluted and nefarious reason to manipulate people. Those are generally really dumb.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/14/the-lunacy-is-getting-more-intense-how-birds-arent-real-took-on-the-conspiracy-theorists

They're not matching me on OLD so I wouldn't know about them! I only have one female friend who believes in this sort of stuff but we don't talk politics or religion so we get on just fine. She doesn't ram her beliefs down my throat and I don't bring up how idiotic I think conspiracy theories are.

I did say upthread that I didn't know it was a fairly equal split. Maybe women keep their beliefs more to themselves.

I wonder if conspiracy theorists are equally weighted but the issue is that it's more prevalent in middle-aged single people than it is in the wider population.

Plenty of 40/50 year olds sitting about with too much time on their hands and also feeling a bit bitter about life (and I don't mean all single people - I would have been in this bracket for years until recently but there does seem to be a lot of bitter and twisted people of this age!).

Would explain why op is coming across a surprising number online. Also, if the stats are to be believed and there is a similar number of female conspiracists they may find that it's common ground and easy to strike up conversation

Read through several studies that men by a large magnitude believe conspiracy theories. I was more shocked at the age group which was 18 to 25.

It did mention wanting to have a scapegoat and learned helplessness as factors for it

doesn't work because he's awake and it's part of the matrix

Is the benefits system that everyone else pays taxes through the nose into part of the matrix too ... No, how very fucking conveniently for him.

The ones in my garden eat & shit an awful lot for being mechanical fake flying objects.

I am not on online dating, but have quite a few good friends who post about this sort of stuff on socialmedia, only two f whom are female. Its weird. The covid stuff realy got to me, particularly as I work for local authority and we were trying to make sense of the emerging rules, support our communities. Cintact trace, deal with factory outbreaks when wevstill.had very litgle knowledge of the virus, and do our day job. But according to some we were 'just making it all up!'.

I am a bloody SW, no we don't want your kids, caseloads are overwhelmed enough as it is thanks.

Lol

He sounds a right laugh!

Look, the crazies are more likely to be single so they'll be on there.

And theyre even more likely to be on old because they problem is they spend too much time online instead of getting out and living a real life.

I understand. It's the social workers are traffickers for me for similar reasons.