Comment on How to I prove to someone that the U.S. moon landing wasn't staged?
jaennaet@sopuli.xyz 1 week agoThis’d be my answer. A friend (former at this point) of mine fell down a conspiracist rabbit hole, and at one point started insisting the moon landings were faked. Now, I happen to know a lot (or more than most, anyhow) about the Apollo program, and absolutely nothing I could say helped. Either they pivoted to some new bullshit argument they’d heard on some YouTube video, or just dismissed things as lies when convenient.
You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
cynar@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I lost a good friend a similar way. He insisted there was a global conspiracy to suppress “free energy” (over unity generators), among other things.
My background allowed me to personally prove some of his arguments wrong from almost first principles. He then accused me of personally being part of the conspiracy. At that point I concluded he was a lost cause and parted ways.
Most of his “evidence” was in YouTube videos. I went through a couple. It mostly had the build-up, explanation, consequences, and conclusions. It missed any actual evidence. It’s amazing how someone can fill 2 hours with nothing of substance.
jaennaet@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
At least my friend didn’t accuse me of personally being in on any conspiracy, but every time I saw them it turned into them trying to “gotcha” me with their latest conspiracy. Eventually they went off the deep end into flat Earther bullshit and at that point I just gave up and we lost touch because I haven’t had any interest in hanging out.
cynar@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It perplexed me quite a lot. I think it was the only way he could mentally maintain his worldview.
Dealing with that mindset is exhausting. I try and keep an open mind. Unfortunately it’s possible to have it so open your brain falls out.
jaennaet@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
“Exhausting” is exactly how I would describe it.
But yeah, I try to keep an open mind too, and I didn’t mind (har har) my former friend’s previous witchcraft woo woo at all because it was harmless, but once they (and their partner, gah) started getting into conspiracy stuff they got weirdly belligerent about it, and it just got worse and worse the deeper they went. The last time I saw both of them, I was grilled for 2h about basic fucking geometry (turns out flat Earthers don’t understand perspective at all) and after that I just decided that I’ve had enough