Have you had a partner or friend go down the right wing misinformation hole?

Burn it all down! Call it out. Deprive head.

Show them the real information before it goes too far. Typically these sources have a looooong record of saying bs things that are easily refuted.

Otherwise, if he doesn't acknowledge it is bullshit, then I'd have to rethink what you think is 'smart'.

Scary. I ended my last good friendship when Biden won the election and the whole authoritarian 'the election was stolen and Trump should be president even though he didn't win the votes democratically' thing started. My friend acted as if what he was doing was fine. I blew the fuck up, I couldn't take it, I couldn't be friends with someone too stupid to understand what he was doing. My friend supposedly has a PhD in history. And yet still so dense, so stupid.

I have no regrets.

Sign him up for a subscription to other news sources outside of the murdstone network and oan

I had Republican friends in law school in 2016. We would go out drinking during the primaries and I'd ask, "You wouldn't vote for Trump, would you?" They all said no at the time. Guess what happened next.

To agree to be Republican today, you have to accept that it’s not a problem to pressure foreign officials to act against your domestic political opponent, to incite violence, to pay off a porn star with campaign funds, to not pay your vendors, to encourage foreign misinformation campaigns, and to have your followers shit in the Capitol. This is before you get to any of their political positions.

If you knew this about someone, would you want to associate with them?

Only a fellow employee, and that's bad enough.

Time to secretly give that bitch some shrooms!

I have a friend I've known since 1991 and over the past few years she's slowly been drinking the crazy juice. She's not a Trumper, but everything is a conspiracy theory to her now, no one can be trusted, etc. It really started to manifest itself during the pandemic and she became very anti-vax. She's yet to get any vaccines for Covid. We live across the country from one another, but I am in NYC frequently on business. A couple years back I was there for 2 months and never made any plans to see her because I couldn't deal with her bullshit. She read me the riot act about it. We now speak on the phone maybe once every couple months and I dread it because all she does is spout insane theories she knows I don't ascribe to, but we've been friends for so long (and I don't have a plethora of them) so I am reluctant to cut her out.

I had a very good friend about a decade ago who was radicalized by Coast to Coast with George Nory. Aliens and Illuminati led him to Alex Joes and Prison Planet. Once Obama-built concentration camps and 20 dead first graders being crisis actors started being regular topics of conversation I cut him off. I did tell him that he could believe whatever he wanted but not to talk to his clients about it, he was a hairdresser. He didn’t take my advice and his business slowly dwindled to nothing and he had to close his shop. I don’t know where he is now.

Another friend, more recently, has started listening to Peterson, Rogan, etc. He’s not spouting too much of their nonsense, but they appeal to a natural inclination he has to play devil’s advocate. No one is going to tell him what to think or believe and he’s never met a contrarian argument he didn’t like. I doubt he’ll completely go off the deep end but I can help but think some of it has to stick just by repetition.

I have an acquaintance like this, OP. She was someone at work who had been very kind to me at a low point in my life two years ago, after my mom died.

However! The more I got to know this woman, the more stressed I’d feel after socializing. As other posters say, these people seem to enjoy playing devil’s advocate, seem to thrive on contrarian views and chaos, are often hyper religious, and oh I could go on.

I had to distance myself from this person because she was causing me great anxiety and I just felt our values were way too different to forge anything beyond a very casual acquaintanceship.

Haven’t seen her for months, and my life is so peaceful.

Yup. One of my best friends. I just love this guy. But he moved WAY right after 2020/Covid. He's mean and aggressive now in his hatred of "lefties". He blames the left for everything. Says the left is homophobic (like ,what?), anti pot (huh?) and pro child porn (uh...ok?).

It's been a bizarre fall. He was always slightly right (though quite progressive on social issues) I really have no issue with someone who is conservative. I flatly disagree of course, but we're all allowed to see the world through different lenses.

But he's gone full Q.

This never happened.

My brother- they got him, poor thing

My sister. I had to cut off contact.

My friend. When we go to dinner, she's constantly talking about Hunter Biden and how he's a liability for President Biden. She was also really convinced that Gavin Newsome would be recalled when we had that election here in CA. I kept telling her he was really popular and that most Californians love him, but because she listens to right wing podcasts, she was insisting he would be recalled.

Cut to the election and Newsome is not recalled by a HUGE margin and she was PISSED. You would think that would have been her wake up call to maybe not believe what she hears on these shows, but nope. Last week she said that the reason there is a new strain of Covid going around is because Pzfiers stock is falling and they needed a boost so they are making it up that we need a booster.

I haven't stopped being friends with her because she isn't a total right winger and I enjoy political debates with her because she's always wrong.

My mother and stepfather never got vaccinated for covid because "it changes your DNA." They had a long planned vacation to Vegas and had to spend two days in their hotel room because they got covid.

Some have gone down the right wing misinformation hole, others have gone down the left wing misinformation hole.

Yes. A smart, coherent gay man who studied computer science, taught students, you name it. A very erudite man.

Now he thinks the covid virus was all a fraud, exported by the Chinese, vaccines don't work, etc.

I am amazed at my self-restraint for not shunning him during the pandemic. Our phone calls are still great, just not so much when he has been spending too much time on god knows what kind of website, polluting his once wonderful mind with all sorts of nonsense and conspiracies.

Yes, it happened to me with my best friend from high school - over 50 years of friendship. I'm able to communicate with him by email by just replying to the parts of his emails that are non-conspiracy or political, i.e., how are you doing, how was your cruise, did you survive the heat wave, etc.

Because it's happening to so many in my age group - seniors and eldergays - that I'm suspecting that there is some physical cause that alters the brain, like early dementia. Or addiction to social media and misinformation has an actual physical effect on the capacity of the brain to think logically. I can't explain it otherwise,

I think the people who fell for it had paranoid tendencies to begin with, maybe genetically inherited maybe developed after years of listening to fantasies like UFO's and the Lord Jesus Christ. They have a need for specialness as in, "I know better than the lot of you."

I had a friend go down the Covid conspiracy theory rabbit hole and is hooked on misinformation websites….I somehow got subscribed to the e-mail list of Epoch Times and every day they seem to send out a sensational headline…there was one the other day that started with THE AWFUL TRUTH FOR THE VACCINATED….and I decided to read the article which was recycled myocarditis risk from MRNA vaccines. it neglected the part that statisically you have a greater chance of being killed in a car accident in the USA than having myocarditis sympoms from a MRNA vaccine…and I don’t see anyone on the right wing crazy media telling people to stop driving!!!!! It is all lunacy but unfortunately, a large group of people buy into the fear….

I had a friend (a woman) who cut my hair for 30 years. She never did it in front of me, but others were telling me about her deranged Facebook rants about how wonderful Donald Trump was and how awful Democrats and Biden were. This was a woman who desperately needed knee surgery but couldn't get it until Obamacare started and she was able to buy affordable health insurance.

I now have a new barber and one less friend in my life.

[quote] My friend supposedly has a PhD in history. And yet still so dense, so stupid.

I bet his PhD is in American history-- those guys are dumb as dirt.

[quote] Some have gone down the right wing misinformation hole, others have gone down the left wing misinformation hole.

Yawn. You're a bore.

R16 how could you possibly enjoy political debates with such a person? Are you a masochist?

Three of my brothers, two of my best friends. We've agreed to avoid politics in conversation. I'm better at living up to that than they are.

My sister is well and truly suckered by conspiracy theories, and is a rabid antivaxxer who hadn’t let her two year old son have a single vaccination. She’s constantly sending my mother shit she sees on Facebook and YouTube and my mum has fallen for a lot of it too. The antivaxx stuff makes my blood boil. Of course, they don’t see it as conspiracy theories, but they know not to bring up such topics in front of me, because they know I won’t respond well.

It drives me mad but I’ve had to learn to separate the person from the stupid beliefs.

No, never anything like this from anyone remotely a friend.