That week in 2018 when my best friend went full QAnon and I couldn't save him

He called me on a Tuesday night. Said the government was putting microchips in the COVID tests. I laughed at first. Then he sent me a 20 page PDF with 'proof'. I tried to debate him for three days. Showed him sources from the CDC. He told me I was brainwashed. We haven't talked since. Has anyone else lost someone close because of this stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

valc911mo ago

Did you ever find yourself getting suspicious of things you normally wouldn't question? I used to roll my eyes at conspiracy stuff, but a buddy of mine lost his job last year over some wild theories and it really made me stop and think.

viola_lopez301mo ago

Wait, @valc91, isn't it possible your buddy just got caught up in something that actually made sense but was too inconvenient for the people in charge? I used to think conspiracy people were crazy too, but then I started reading about stuff like Operation Northwoods or the Tuskegee syphilis study and realized the government has straight up lied about worse things. Sometimes getting "fired over theories" is just a way to shut someone up when they're getting too close to the truth, you know? I mean, look at all the whistleblowers who got canned for saying things that turned out to be true later on.

jamieb801mo ago

People get confused between healthy skepticism and just believing anything that sounds scary. The government has lied before but that doesn't mean every wild story floating around the internet is true. Your friend picked a PDF over actual science and that's a choice he made. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. Sometimes the kindest thing is to step back and let them hit bottom on their own. It hurts but you did what you could.