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

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!"

Uyghur concentration camp country so there's some consistency to his cretinous racism. I'm sure he'd also have a grand old time in Orbán's Hungary.

The Chinese are a lot better tha Europeans at preserving their own culture you see.

Where is Paolo? I think we need an update!

I think there's a substantial difference between "bad and unreachable people on the internet" of which there are a relatively high number, and "friends, family, and people we know, that are exhibiting brainworm symptoms". I think the former is just best off left completely alone, it's not hard to find such things. The latter is the more complex

I suspect a lot of em don’t really how much they’re embarrassing themselves by doing their speakers corner thing

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

Gonnae go out on a limb and say I can name this guy's favourite football team in one

I don't know, he's an arty West End type from the time before football was hip. However my sister knows a lot of ageing mods and a wearying number of them are Tory voting Unionists who happen to support a particular football club.

Hi. I've been chatting with my pal quite a lot recently but haven't brought up the vaccine thing because I'm just not sure how to go about it. She's not a bad and unreachable person - it's not like she's posting a whole bunch of anti-vaxx shit on Facebook and going on about 5G or anything like that.

There's a really good article at The Atlantic about QAnon, and how people get brainworms.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Thursday, 14 May 2020 19:29 (three days ago)

This is good. I can't get enough articles from the likes of The Atlantic and The NYT and The Guardian about right-wing conspiracy theories and what's really motivating Trump supporters and how crazy it all is. I find the subject horrifying and fascinating at the same time.

It's like when I was a kid I was scared of ghosts but I loved reading ghost stories. Or now I'm scared of snakes and I'm also fascinated by those slithery motherfuckers.

FAO Americans - are there really more people getting into conspiracy theories since Trump got elected?

because I'm just not sure how to go about it.

Can't you just ask her opinion? 'Hey what do you think about all this covid stuff?' , 'Or do you think we should open up or not?'. Without necessarily thinking about how you're going to respond/counter/refute etc, but just getting her opinion because she's your friend and you're interested in her opinion?

I think we can too easily fall into the trap of thinking about what we're going to say, which means we're not focusing on listening. Then when we do respond its too easy to end up responding to something when actuality they said something slightly different

Even perhaps telling yourself you might not even say anything definitive at all

Doctors get paid to say people died of coronavirus in private care homes even if they died for other reasons. Apparently.

I won't ask who pays them, I don't want to know.