I’ll be honest, this is as much a question as it is a vent.
Specifically, how do you deal with people you meet everyday like family, coworkers, etc. who just revel in conspiracy theories?
I have a coworker who is dead certain 5G somehow produces the coronavirus, despite easily verifiable facts in microbiology and physics showing otherwise. He’s a nice guy in general with a degree in electronics, but dear lord, when he starts with this tin-foil hat bullshit it ruins my day.
Only spend time trying to unravel someone like that if they are important to you. My dad tends to end up watching a lot of those videos, and he started talking about how covid was a hoaxs by the US gov, and so I said first, some of these “facts” are just plain false, second who benefits from you thinking that, and if that was true, what’s the gameplan for them?
My dad is an extremely logical person, in that he values logic above all else. So I tend to use logic to help guide him out. My mom on the otherhand is far more trusting, so I use her trust in me to affirm what I say is true and try to use experiences to show her, should she believe in anything like that.
That’s why you should only help those you know well. It’s not a one and done conversation, it’s a continous situation.
Maybe this is the way to go. This is going to sound callous, but my coworker is not that important to me and thus challenging him is a waste of my time and energy. Physics and microbiology are also not something I am well versed in and I really don’t feel like investing an unhealthy amount of energy researching something I’m only vaguely interested in just to prove someone wrong.
Not that’s fair, I also don’t care that much for my coworkers to invest the time. Unless I already know something well, I just ignore really