Friend Infected With Right Wing Brain Worms - What to Do?

lol I do the "mic drop post then turn off notifications" all of the time. no reason to see the follow-up posts for the reasons you stated.

The trouble with that is that people will then cite utterly nonsensical 'research' they've read about on Facebook, that you can only disprove by spending far too much of your time reading about it yourself. People are always going to cherry-pick evidence to support an existing belief (we probably all do it to some extent), and if those beliefs are a bulwark against the random horror of the universe then they're not going to want to challenge them. Not sure where that leaves anyone tbh.

― all things must pasteurize (Matt #2), Saturday, May 2, 2020 7:37 AM bookmarkflaglink

yeah seriously, i"ve had more Washington Times Moonie crap dropped in response to any legit tries to debunk. one of my friends was shocked to hear about the origins of that paper.

I feel like there are different levels here, and Paolo's friend isn't TooFarGone (though only he can clarify!)

Agree that attempting to debunk crap in real time is far from effective (especially when you're likely to run into an unintentional gish gallop), but going into a conversation with the mindset of debunking is confrontational anyway - it means you're prepared for what they're going to say before they say it, which means you've already decided what they're going to say and aren't listening. This never works

If you're serious about this, you have to drop "I'm right, you're wrong" because that focuses on the end result, not the starting point, you have to go to where they are, the starting point, and work from there

my friend with right wing brain worms who I quarreled with over his pc-gone-mad type comments about (lol) UK rap star Dave's appearance at the Brit awards a couple of months back hasn't talked to me since. I'm so glad tbh he was phoning me every week and talking to him was exhausting and he's such a self-righteous tedious bore that now that he has key-worker status (his job involves coordinating shopping deliveries for Asda) I could imagine his expanded sense of self-worth combining with the right-wing brain worms in new even more awful than previously ways.

I was reminded of this thread when talking to my dad today. I don't think my cousin, who I have seen a handful of times in the last couple decades, has right wing brainworms per se, but definitely the obstinate reaction to information she doesn't like

my uncle (her father) called my dad asking if he could help move some dirt, because-- and this is where the illogical part comes in -- she didn't like that tree roots were above the ground below a tree and that grass would not grow there

my dad explained, yeah, you could haul in dirt and spread it over there, but that type of tree will push roots above the new dirt, and it's not like grass is going to grow there because it's a combination of the roots and shade. apparently he's answered questions for my cousin before and it's been a back-and-forth where if she doesn't like the answer, she just asks variations of the same question! like these are basic realities of the physical world and she thinks badgering her father and uncle will change the answer

I told him, just say the same explanation and then ignore whatever she says next if you really have to get involved, because sheesh

grass is such bullshit

Didn't even follow my own advice when talking to a dummy who thought Fauci ran the CDC and tried to pin decades of failure on him.

Spent twenty minutes explaining the diff between the two when i coulda just dropped a link and then eaten a cheeseburger

Fb post from a tangential acquaintance who was relatively sane until some current “researching” -

“DON'T let mainstream social propaganda put you on a leash...
Think and learn for yourself what is actually TRUE!”

I’m debating.. laugh react or... ?

"think and learn for yourself", they said as they c/ped something from someone else's meme

I did not understand where all this Bill Gates wants to kill us with mandatory vaccines shit came from until I read a thing where he was saying that amongst other good outcomes, widespread vaccination might result in negative or stabilized population growth, because, having your kids not die as often means ppl feel less need to have an over abundance of them. Suddenly it makes sense. All these people took away from that was “Bill Gates ADMITTED he wants depopulation via mass vaccination! omg the vaccines are killing us.” Like, no.

in twenty years, our textbooks will say "How AIDS Came from Socialism" on the cover

Gates is also saying that about people in developing nations, ie mostly the non-white people these dipshits are worried about doing a white genocide.

Fb post from a tangential acquaintance who was relatively sane until some current “researching” -

If you do want to down this rabbithole, I'd go with "hmm this feels a little like controlled opposition to me, something don't sit right about this guy either. Seems to be doing very well for himself"

There's a mixture of understandable mistrust coupled with desire for trust in a competing reality. The problem is probably more to do with creduluousness of the latter rather than lack of trust in the former

I have answered every crackpot WhatsApp/Messenger circular about CV-19 (mostly from extended family) with "load of shite mate" and left it at that.

The most effective approach of all if you don't want to get involved! Which strand were you getting, the 5G crew or the Gates + vaccines platoon?

Yeah, mildly shaming people might be a good tactic actually! I'll try it out if I get the chance (luckily I don't know many people vulnerable to crackpot-ism).

I got lots of 5G nonsense plus several people shared a huge screed about this being a coordinated attack by the Chinese and the Russians

I have answered every crackpot WhatsApp/Messenger circular about CV-19 (mostly from extended family) with "load of shite mate" and left it at that.

Preceded by "Ye whit?"

... missed out the italics tags there btw.

I did have one "fuck sake no you as well?" to a friend I thought would know better

i also like "bit of a moron, are we?"

I did have one "fuck sake no you as well?" to a friend I thought would know better

Aw naw, no' you noo an' aw

"if you had an original thought in your brain, it'd probably die of loneliness"

Aw naw, no' you noo an' aw

My favourite version of that is the apocryphal story of one Celtic fan's response to the enigmatic but deeply flawed Enrico Annoni being substituted into a game against Rangers:

aw naw no' Annoni on an' aw no

Where did you think I got the idea from!

one of my closest friends—the only person I knew while growing up in Mississippi who openly identified as a “liberal” and who is now a pastor at an progressive Presbyterian church In Philadelphia—keeps sharing articles from Thomas Friedman and the NY Post and some Stanford guy who’s also a “Hoover Institute” fellow about how we should ‘just open everything up already bc some people are just going to die lol but we simply can’t let our precious stock market die 😞’ to our group chat and I just want to fuckin scream

maybe this is more centrist brain worms but goddamn wtf is wrong with his brain

tbf he probably thinks the dying people go to heaven

Oh man, my cousin... I'm not real close to him, but he's my age, good dude, excellent guitar player, never very active on Facebook, and we've never discussed politics at all, just started posting COVID conspiracy shit from One America News.

HALLELUJA THANK GOD TRUTH IS COMING OUT! Soros, Clinton, Gates suspected of Beijing WHO coverup to seize Covid cure, undo US constitution.

Man, that's some headline...

I fear this pandemic is creating brain worms at an alarming rate. Lots of otherwise apolitical ppl seduced by the idea that actually no, it's fine for them to ignore this.

There's a lot of uncertainty, and people who don't necessarily follow the news particularly aren't able to avoid whats going on, which may mean a hugely increased intake of news due to very real direct changes to life. If no filtering of events is ever happening but there's a general sense of distrust but with no markers or waypoints, its not that surprising stuff like this is taking off.

I don't really think of this as brainworms as such, I think its something different. People are suddenly faced with a load of stuff and no practice or ability at processing it

or filtering it

Just saw an old family friend railing on Facebook against the "tyranny" of present restrictions write "I value my freedom above my own life" which is...yeah.

I appreciate your epistemological rigour anvil but when the end result is still "SOROS 5G SLAVERY MARTIAL LAW" it does look a lot like brain worms to me.

fans of this thread may (or may not) like this pretty wild story of a guy who got brain-wormed by youtube in a number of different ways over time

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/podcasts/rabbit-hole-internet-youtube-virus.html

The amount of Mandela Effect shit that’s going to be floating around in the wake of all this is going to be mind-boggling

"Obama did nothing about COVID-19!"

fans of this thread may (or may not) like this pretty wild story of a guy who got brain-wormed by youtube in a number of different ways over time

Is this that Caleb guy again?

was there already a piece about him?

He did the rounds last year, there was a bunch on him. At one point I thought it might be a grift

Don’t know whether to laugh or cry. pic.twitter.com/s77zR4eg5e

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) May 12, 2020

Not that it makes it any better, but that poll screenshot was from back in early April. Not sure why it's being spread around again this week.

I really don’t get Twitter. Am I supposed to know who that person is?

is that the kind of enlightening Twitter content that filters is way down through the murk?

it's irrelevant who posted it, grandpa

There's a really good article at The Atlantic about QAnon, and how people get brainworms.

it's irrelevant who posted it, grandpa

The medium is the message, yo.

I've been having relative success with my RW cousin. He has actually asked my opinion a couple of times (and not ascribing an opinion to me and saying "so you think this?", but actual questions). Some of the combativeness and defensiveness has dissipated.

I think not refuting anything has played a big part. There are smarter ways around it

Not a friend of mine but a guy my sister used to know years ago in Glasgow, a photographer I think, anyway very closely associated with the Glasgow music scene in the early 80s. My sister, being a the sort of person she is friended him on Facebook a while back and he's an absolute horror. There's so many times i've been tempted to wade into him but he's and old friend of my sister's and I don't know him at all.

Anyway he was fanatically pro-Brexit for all the usual reasons but he's particularly exercised on immigration and preserving European culture from Islam. He's also a gungho Unionist and British nationalist with a virulent hatred for the SNP, Scottish nationalism and Nicola Sturgeon, he thinks Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf are planning to flood Scotland with Muslim immigrants as part of Yousaf's plans for the Islamization of Scotland. On COVID-19, he thinks Nicola Sturgeon has got it wrong and Boris Johnson has got it right - and that Scotland will end up bankrupt and with skyhigh unemployment. Oh and the reason that the death toll in England is much higher is because there's 'more blacks in England and they're more likely to die from it'. Not that he thinks COVID-19 is actually killing that many people anyway, they're dying because of pre-existing health issues, of course. As usual with these guys, he has no shortage of bullshit stats and anecdotes to back all this up. He non-ironically used the word 'sheeple'. Oh and more thing: THE CUNT LIVES IN CHINA! And has done for years. Anyway, my sister eventually blocked him with the classic kiss off line, "... and don't come back to Scotland... please!"