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

the emotional manipulation & disrespect for privacy part of it would be dodgy enough even if it wasn't about the nazi stuff

Exactly.

Should I just block him without telling him what's going on and move on?

Totally, and not to criticise because god bless yr patience and good intent but that was the way from email #1 tbh

I would maaaaybe have given him some benefit of the doubt to continue to conversation at some point - before he published the email. That's clearly just hurtful game-playing for his own amusement/drama/troll ego. You've done what you can; fuck him off.

Should I try to reason with him?

There seems a good chance that any message you send him will be published to his Instagram followers too, conceivably with personal details attached into the bargain. Option 3 seems the best idea, at least for the time being.

I know that "block and move on" is the sensible and popular choice, but it's so hard to do when you actually have something invested in a relationship. In your shoes I would probably say a parting word about the publishing of private communications as breaking your trust, before trying to move on. But I can't say that doing so is a better idea than silence, I really don't know.

i was going to say you could respond but limit it to like three sentences, but the posting the thing to instagram is crossing the line, a sign he is too irrational and possibly grandiose to make that worth it. he already has your previous emails to look at and understand your position if he ever snaps out of it.

Thanks for the advice, all, and also for confirming that my instincts were correct—

Because of his background and because of how long we've known each other, I perhaps gave this friend the benefit of the doubt for longer than I needed to. He was once one of my best friends, many years ago. So it's just a bit more disappointing than it would be with another friend.

Can't see this one going anywhere. The hope is to nip the brainworms in the bud before they get to this level, but from here it looks rough going.

Sounds like he's aiming to provoke, gain a reaction, do something for unclear reasons, self-destructive

Unless you just don't partake, say "never heard of it" and don't play the game. But it sounds like the game is the point

Emily is right ofc that it *can* be difficult to drop a relationship in which you are invested but short of finally leaving a horrible job there's also very few experiences like it for looking back on a while after and thinking "what the fuck did i hesitate for *there*"

Usual qualifiers that each circ is different and thats only ime etc

ghost that narzi fuck

New development is that I sent him an email that mentioned the Instagram posts that he made, and he contacted our mutuals who saw the posts and could have told me, accusing them of sharing something on his public Instagram profile with me, and hinting at some sort of imagined future action I might take. (He wrote "I don't know what his blocking and unfriending portends.")

He's clearly unwell, but I made the right choice. I'm just sad that he's making a spectacle of this.

This sucks but if nothing else you should rest assured that you shouldnt be second guessing yrself at all

This is the best explanation of the mechanics and appeal of QAnon I've read.

The only part I didn't find convincing is the part where he asserts that there must be some kind coordinated propaganda campaign behind Q (without providing any actual evidence). That sounds a bit like he is succumbing to apophenia himself!

^ THAT is an excellent piece, with explanations that actually explain QAnon's known observable actions very thoroughly and persuasively, as opposed to so many b.s. thinkpieces. whether Q's output is generated by one person or a group, it is most definitely designed to alienate people from all other sources of authority aside from Q or Q's chosen authority figure(s).

How do U.S. intel agencies still not have any idea who Q is

I mean they must right?

i thought it was that 8chan creep who lived in the phillippines

xp you mean what are us intel sources using q for?

Great Twitter thread for ideas on trying to handle this problem

I've received several DMs from friends asking what do to about parents/family members who believe misinformation regarding the election, vaccines and COVID. Here's a research-based thread to help explain the roots of these beliefs and how to (and how *not* to) address them. 1/

— Dr. Danna Young🇺🇸✌🏻 (@dannagal) January 8, 2021

they are up to mainly bad stuff but no I can't imagine how this mess wld be helpful xp

(xp not table's problem specifically, though I sympathize deeply)

Definitely agree in that thread where it says about how being neutral, curious, dumb, open-hearted goes a long way (and, for the most part, aren't these kind of good approaches anyway?)

I think the key part is listening. Its easy to get fixated on being right, but being right is largely irrelevant. I posted earlier about my cousin thinking something about 'socialism', and the instinct is to roll eyes at the ludicrousness, that he has the definition wrong. But does he? Instead of disputing his understanding of the term, why not just roll with it instead?

I've come to see a lot of this way of thinking as metaphorical, and a literalist or tangible mindset doesn't really work.

Their guard is up because they feel we're going to tell not ask, we're going to act like we're smart and they're dumb. We're not interested in what they have to say, we're only interested in telling them what we think.

I know people have mixed feelings on the socratic method or whatever but when it doesn't work I think its more because people don't do it right, you do actually have to be genuine for it to stand any chance

To follow on from that, in thinking about my cousin but also another brainwormed person I know, the metaphorical thing. They're not really hearing the words but more like, the tone?

They have a combative, oppositional mindset, and you have to kind of sit outside that, otherwise you're just the foil. The minute you're fulfilling that role you're reinforcing everything regardless of what you say.

I see this often with covid. Someone will say something about covid, lockdowns, Bill Gates and the other person will say "actually Bill Gates isn't an evil microchip man stupid", and then proceed to do unpaid PR for Bill Gates, and further reinforce everything at the same time. Or what a terrible job people do on TV when put up against people by immediately setting themselves up as an opponent and scurrying around to refute every point like pavlovs dog without thinking about the bigger picture, immediately signalling to people to shut them out

TLDR because I find getting this right quite tricky but it feels like we fall into this trap

Brainworm Person: Necessity is the mother of invention
Logical Big Brain: You know, 'necessity' is a word not a lifeform its not actually capable of having children, not sure if you knew that. Also English is a gender neutral language, so thats also not true

Good posts

yeah

anvil, I do wonder what this approach ends up doing tho. I understand it allows you to keep cordial relations with the brainwormed and to report back your findings here, but has it helped assuage the brainworms in any way?

I'm shaking a bit here. An old schoolfriend, someone I've kept in touch with for a very long time and was always into hippyish alternative healing type stuff has just gone on a big rant about how Boris Johnson has turned the UK into a Communist state; how while she thinks Covid is a real thing the evidence points to fewer rather than more deaths; and has now announced she's quitting Facebook to go on Gab. I know this kind of thing happens all the time and has become a bit of a cliche, but to see it happen to someone I know personally and really had a bit more respect for (healing crystals and magic potions aside), it's shaken me up.

Friends don't let friends be devoured by rightwing brainworms believe in healing crystals
j/k both are unavoidable

There are people I've known in the past who I wonder whether they've gone the crazed hippy route nowadays. Seems to be something that happens with age sometimes - decades of weird reality denial to fit their absurd ideas around reality leads to a lurch over the cliff edge into full Piers Corbynism.

Crazy belief systems are a spectrum tbf

Reality is unbearable for the most part and epistemological contrition hard to achieve.

An acquaintance from progressive organizing circles went askew last summer and started posting that social distancing and stay-at-home policies were evil and would kill our souls like our overlords wanted, and no one could stop her from hugging people, etc. Definitely came out of the blue. I hope it was a reaction to reality and she eventually found other ways to cope.

I keep blathering about this, but my FIL very much fits that profile and now he's augmented his newfound worldview with ranting and raving about chemtrails. No 'official' source is worth taking seriously anymore and being cast out and/or called a quack by nearly all of your professional peers is the sole reliable sign that your 'whistleblowing' is the real deal. I asked him why he doesn't buy into climate change deniers then, but it's not the same thing, he says, because climate change is just so obviously, blindingly real. I think the most important thing for him is to believe that there are a) no coincidences and no creases in our totalitarian universe and b) shady men and women (mostly men) who hold a power so absolute they are essentially indistinguishable from living gods. It's a theological worldview in many ways, and it feeds off of paranoia and loneliness, both of which he has always suffered from to varying degrees.

anvil, I do wonder what this approach ends up doing tho. I understand it allows you to keep cordial relations with the brainwormed and to report back your findings here, but has it helped assuage the brainworms in any way?

Each person is different, and once someone is brainwormed probably not (or more accurately, once they think of you as an opponent in some way its most likely too late). Some parallels with cults, the in/out group, the oppositional way of thinking "well you would say that wouldn't you?". In my case my approach changed, but I imagine too late

Lot of talk here about changes coming out of the blue, but maybe its less out of the blue than it might appear

The absence of a controlling church has imo been a fertile ground for whatever else scutter someone will sell to you to shut yr head up

Speaking as a Romanian… let's just say that there are plenty of counter-examples.

Hopefully treating people with some level of respect, even when they're spouting complete bollocks, gives them the opportunity to feel they have something to go back to if they do start becoming disillusioned with their beliefs.

That's basically all you can do, yeah. And it's not enough by any yardstick.

Why do yall do this to yourselves? Brain wormed people don’t care about you. They’re not your friends, and blood isn’t thicker than water. Go find people who aren’t Nazis to associate with.

That's the spirit.

Like, I suspect my dad harbors some conservative beliefs, but he has the good sense to keep them to himself. And he’s damn right to do so, because if he ever “came out” as a trumper he’d never hear from me again.

Just making sure everyone's seen this and knows about it. I know it's Reddit but this is strictly-moderarated and full of much good sane, calm, rational, sensible advice. Some from people who have succesfully de-programmed people and such. Plus, goes without saying, a lot of 'WTF do i do i'm worried right now' stuff.

https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/

I have successfully managed to avoid finding out what 'QAnon' is (idk how you even say it?). I assumed it was something to do with the paedo pizza basement shite that wasn't even worth expending any brain cells on. Should I google 'what is qanon'? Will I see the light?

I don't know what it is either! I reckon it's the stuff that you used to see in USA tabloids, like lizard men & bat boys & probably celebrities involved in death cults. & probably Christians against rock & roll stuff, like in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vylqX6sevqo

The article that DJI linked yesterday is long, but goes into pretty good detail about what qanon is and how it functions.

That subreddit is full of really harrowing posts—people descending into obsession, alienating their wives, their kids. It seems like people are desperate to lose themselves in a fantasy world.

wait so basically thousands of people believed shitposts on 4chan?

yes but hundreds of thousands of mostly old people