Yep. My mother refuses to take the vaccine because she thinks she'll die after she takes it. It frustrates me to no end. I worry about her so much. Sigh.
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My aging mother is in deep with conspiracy theories
- Thread starter vrcsix
- Start date
Yep. My mother refuses to take the vaccine because she thinks she'll die after she takes it. It frustrates me to no end. I worry about her so much. Sigh.
Bingo. My conspiracy obsessed mom has recently learned that the flu shot she got years ago (literally in like 2007) is going to kick in any day now and kill her. If you were to get the COVID vaccine and then tell a conspiracy person about it, they'll be like "well sure, you're not dead YET, but any day now...!" There is no statue of limitations for this stuff.
I'm really sorry, op. If you can I think it may be worth blocking these sites if you can. This can only get worse.
OP
OP
My mother is saying 2-8 years until we all die.
I've decided I need to step away from this. My siblings will have to deal with it as they see fit. I've told them to mind that she at least doesn't give money to these people. I don't think I can handle it. My own life is enough of a mess already. I've been struggling with depression and suicidal ideations since last year and have been doing better in recent months. So I started reaching out to people again, including my mother. But I can already feel this shit knocking me off balance.
There's no definitive guide written on yet on how to deradicalize a Cueball. I think people are working on it. That casualities subreddit is a good support group somewhat when they're not just 'dunking' on people like so many reddit things devolve to.
No contact is a viable strategy if that's good for your mental health. You can also try the ultimatum "Don't discuss this to me or send me links or I'll stop talking to you". Or the sneak technology attack where you set up some whitelist on her browser and Facebook to block some of those websites and keywords
No contact is a viable strategy if that's good for your mental health. You can also try the ultimatum "Don't discuss this to me or send me links or I'll stop talking to you". Or the sneak technology attack where you set up some whitelist on her browser and Facebook to block some of those websites and keywords
It's scary that this is happening with most of our parents.
It's so bizarre, the same people who said "don't play games it'll rot your mind", "don't trust people online", are now fully trusting and believing of everything that they feel is right they read or hear.
I don't even know if you can try to reason with them either, in their mind it's completely black or white with truth and lies.
It's so bizarre, the same people who said "don't play games it'll rot your mind", "don't trust people online", are now fully trusting and believing of everything that they feel is right they read or hear.
I don't even know if you can try to reason with them either, in their mind it's completely black or white with truth and lies.
De-radicalizing conspiracy theorists is extremely challenging. It used to take entire institutions to deprogram neo-Nazis back in the day but now thanks to the prevalence of the internet that tall responsibility now falls to individuals. Plus there's the weaponized grafting aspect of all this that is basically a capitalistic take on selling people false beliefs.
I don't think you'll ever get her back to earth the way she was before. I do however think you can leverage her love for you and her other children to at least get her to shut up with all the direct call outs. The biggest danger here is her throwing money at these charlatans so that's probably the thing I'd tell you to worry the most about.
I don't think you'll ever get her back to earth the way she was before. I do however think you can leverage her love for you and her other children to at least get her to shut up with all the direct call outs. The biggest danger here is her throwing money at these charlatans so that's probably the thing I'd tell you to worry the most about.
My wife's mom islike this.
She is the kind of person that could be talked into a gardening magazine subscription while living in an apartment. I'm not exaggerating, this happened, along with 3 other subscriptions someone sold her door-to-door. Very gullible and impressionable, and a hoarder.
So not surprising she started spouting this crap this year. We're gonna turn into GMOs because we got the vaccine and die in the next year, so I hear. She's listening to an end-times preacher on social media who touts a veterinarian as a vaccine expert (who is *coincidentally* working on his own "universal vaccine" for everything).
I'm not getting near her, she won't get the vax, she's 70 and around a bunch of other stupid people too, it sounds like my wife's brother is always spouting conspiracy theories too.
She is the kind of person that could be talked into a gardening magazine subscription while living in an apartment. I'm not exaggerating, this happened, along with 3 other subscriptions someone sold her door-to-door. Very gullible and impressionable, and a hoarder.
So not surprising she started spouting this crap this year. We're gonna turn into GMOs because we got the vaccine and die in the next year, so I hear. She's listening to an end-times preacher on social media who touts a veterinarian as a vaccine expert (who is *coincidentally* working on his own "universal vaccine" for everything).
I'm not getting near her, she won't get the vax, she's 70 and around a bunch of other stupid people too, it sounds like my wife's brother is always spouting conspiracy theories too.
I'm sorry, the what challenge? Can you explain what he was trying to do, or trying to convince you of?
Covid vaccine have a microchip so if you put a magnet against your injection site it'll stick. There are so many ways even the dumbest person would understand why this is beyond ridiculous but people are straight up lost at this point
What kind of blows me away about all this is that these were the same people that told us 25 years ago that everything on the internet is a lie and that it's probably bullshit unless it's actually published in a book.
Just seems like an entire generation of older people went from one extreme to the other and lost all sense of skepticism.
Just seems like an entire generation of older people went from one extreme to the other and lost all sense of skepticism.
we are getting to the point where we gotta take the interweb away from them
its just doing way too much harm
they're reading all this stuff and just taking it as truth
if my mom ever starts this shit im smashing her fucking Comcast internet box
its just doing way too much harm
they're reading all this stuff and just taking it as truth
if my mom ever starts this shit im smashing her fucking Comcast internet box
I hate to ask but this bird thing is hilarious and I gotta know what this is
Here's a doctor that details it and debunks it. It's been making the rounds among the tinfoil hat brigade over the past month:
I think there's much less inconsistency here than it might seem.
The people 25 years ago saying that the internet was full of lies were probably just repeating what they had heard about the internet in their contemporary medium of choice.
Nowadays they are still just repeating what they hear in their medium of choice, the major change being that it's now most likely internet-based and potentially totally divorced from reality.
i'd only heard it in passing but my 30 sec internet search tells me: a twenty something college kid states that birds are gov't drones because he's never seen baby birds, that covid was a cover to get everyone to stay inside so they could change their batteries, and when asked if it's a joke he says he is serious. lol 🤷 … oh and of course it's taken on a life of its own.
Yeah your brain changes as you get older.
In the 80s/90s my parents read the morning newspaper and laughed at the National Enquirer in the check out lanes. Now they are basically the opposite of that.
This. But my folks still mock me and say shit like, " At least I don't Google everything like you do/Stuff on Google is a lie/At least I know how to use a map without Google...Der hur hur"
But they turn right around and get knee deep in Tiktok/Facebook/Youtube land and scream their guts out over those evil fact-checkers.
I feel so bad for docs working with these fucking morons these days. Like you can hear the frustration and the complete shock that people could possibly be this fuckin ignorant and stupid.
AND what's even worse is that none of her arguments will even scratch these conspiracy morons. Everything she said "Check the websites, look at the ingredients" will immediately be met with people claiming every scientist lied and all that.
So... a micro chip small enough to be injected through a medical needle is going to hold a magnet on your skin when i can barely keep two stacked postcards to stick to my fridge?
I fucking hate these people. Like ... ya know, fine - don't get the free vaccine. Die instead you fuckin useless weirdos.
I love the microchip conspiracy theory mostly because of how stupid it is.
The US military with all the money in the world lost fucking combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq because their tracking units didn't always work. But sure - the US government took barely functioning technology and shrunk it down to an impossible size so that they could monitor how long you spent taking a dump in the McDonald's bathroom. That's clearly more important than making sure our troops don't accidentally blow each other up because they got lost.
Do yourself a favour and don't look at the like/dislike bar
In my experience, radicalization is deeply anchored in trauma and fear. The question is: what is she really scared of? I hope it's not inappropriate but her aging perhaps makes her feel like she is losing control of her life, which is why she is doubling down in the other direction: trying to keep a semblance of control around her.
Look up Birdsarentreal.com
Basically birds have been replaced by drones. Fair warning most "followers" of this one including myself don't take it seriously at all, at worst it's just a funny concept and over the top, at best illustrates how inane most of the conspiracy theories really are.
It's sad because when you start believing in this shit, you also start putting your guard down in other areas of your life.
My Stepdad is a full on MAGA supporter that dips into Qanon occasionally and he's like 65. He's still a smart guy. He used to be like obsessive with his money, protecting his identity, he would not give his payment information out to anybody for any reason and hated shopping online. He resisted online shopping and bill pay pretty much until around 2015 or so. The dude has a paper shredder and religiously used it on all his paper documents. Well in comes Trump and their whole thing being that they basically begged for his money every day. He'd send money freely any time he got riled up about Hillary Clinton or what have you.
He stopped caring and has put his guard completely down. Just recently he almost lost $2k to a mystery shopper scam. The only reason I caught it is because he was bragging about how smart he was at getting sent a $3k check to shop at home. He just hadn't gone out and bought the several gift cards these scammers were asking for quite yet.
Like completely rewired his brain.
Yup, people who are attracted to conspiracy theories generally do so because of some combination of two things:
- A desire to give simple explanations to the scary unknown. It's a form of comfort via the illusion of having some semblance of control in a chaotic and indifferent universe. See: organized religion.
- Community and a sense of belonging. Many people like this often feel their strongest sense of community from these fringe groups. It provides them a tribalistic sense of belonging. Not entirely difficult to understand, this forum is a type of community that provides a similar function for some members.
OP
OP
Could be. She's not one to ever show any vulnerability. Maybe a therapist would be able to figure something out, but she's never going to agree to that. At least not over this.
:(. I dunno, maybe it's just because I'm in a bad place but I'm taking this harder than I expected.
I dunno. She doesn't listen to or respect me in any capacity, and she's very stubborn.
She started expressing xenophobic, Trumpist stuff a few years back (we're not even in the US, but apparently there are Trump supporters everywhere because I've seen bumper stickers and such). She frequently brought this up at family dinners and while there are others within my extended family that would openly agree with her to a certain extent, they would never bring it up themselves. My brother's ex-girlfriend used to get upset and just leave the table when these discussions started. My ex on the other hand would immediately jump on it and start arguing. And since neither her nor my mother would back down, the whole thing was like a bomb waiting to go off.
I used to ask my mother to keep a lid on it for my sake, because I just wanted a nice and relaxed family dinner without her, the others, and my ex at each other's throats. But she never listened.
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